The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

The NEP (New Economic Policy) in the economic sphere, applied in Russia after March 1921, was preceded by
a diplomatic NEP on the part of the Russian state. It sought to make alliances with various capitalist states.
Through the mediation of Karl Radek, imprisoned in Germany, contacts were made from autumn 1919 with the
Reichswehr and its generals 523 , but also with the millionaire Walther Rathenau, with the aim of investigating the
possibility of a military and economic alliance between Germany and Russia. From October 1919 Radek
declared clearly: “The possibility of a peace between capitalist states and proletarian states is not a utopia”. 524 A
de facto alliance directed against the treaty of Versailles and the Allies was established in 1920, during the
Russo-Polish war; Germany declared its ‘neutrality’ which meant the prohibition of the transport of Allied
munitions for Poland across its territory. Commercial agreements with Allied countries were sought and
obtained: one was concluded between Great Britain and Russia on 16 th March 1921, at the same time as the
events in Kronstadt. The modus vivendi between the capitalist world and the Soviet state, denounced previously
by Pannekoek, slowly became a reality. The contours of the Treaty of Rapallo on 16 th April 1922 were beginning
to emerge.
But most disturbing was the complete submission of the Komintern to the national aims of the Russian state. The
latter tended to make its interests predominate over the revolutionary interests of the International. Turkey
provides a striking example of this antagonism. From 1919 contacts were made in Berlin, still through Radek as
intermediary, between the Russian government and the Turkish nationalist leader, Enver Pasha, who later
attended the Baku Congress. Friendly relations were established with Mustafa Kemal from 1920, leading to the
signature of an agreement with Turkey on 16 th March 1921. Mustafa Kemal not only crushed the peasant
movement, which was supported by the Komintern, he also executed the entire leadership of the Turkish
Communist Party trained in Germany by the Spartakists and hostile to all nationalism. This massacre did not
hinder the good relations between the Russian state and Turkey. 525 For the first time it was shown that
governments seeking good diplomatic relations with Russia could assassinate and outlaw revolutionary militants,
members of the Komintern, without forfeiting their good relations with the Russian state whose policies were, in
principle, subordinated to those of the Komintern. These events, unfolding in January 1921, were the direct
consequence of the support accepted by the 2 nd Congress for movements of so called ‘national liberation’.
The tragedy of Kronstadt (March 1921)
More than foreign policy, the events of Kronstadt brought to light the growing divorce between the Russian state
and the proletariat. Strikes were in fact escalating in February 1921 in the Petrograd factories, which were
always the heart of the Russian revolution. They were directed as much against food rationing as against the
economic and social policy of the state and the bolshevik party.
Despite the allegations that the strikes were fomented by the Mensheviks, the social Revolutionaries or the
anarchists the majority of the latter were in prison the movement assumed a spontaneous character, without
leaders or organisation. It extended to all the large factories, including the Putilov factories, the main bastion of
the 1917 revolution. Faced with this Zinoviev and the Petrograd Bolsheviks responded with repressive measures:
dispersal of demonstrations by the Cadets (koursantis); lock outs of factories on strike; loss of ration cards for
strikers: institution of martial law; widespread arrests; immediate executions in the case of political groupings;
surveillance of workers in the factories by troops of armed Bolsheviks. 526 These measures had the effect of
523 See: E.H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution (1917-1923), Vol. 3 (London: Macmillan, 1952).
524 K. Radek, Zur Taktik des Kommunismus: ein Schreiben an den Oktober Parteitag der KPD (Hamburg 1919), pp. 11-12.
Radek went even further in “advocating a modus vivendi with the capitalist states”(idem). See too: J.-F. Fayet, op. cit.,
pp. 253-315.
525 From August 1920 the Soviet government delivered 400 kilos of gold to Mustafa Kemal; arms followed shortly
afterwards. To appear radical, the Kemal government formed an ‘official’ CP, composed of a whole election of
overmedalist generals, ministers and high functionaries (cf. P. Dumont, Mustafa Kemal (Brussels: ed. Complexe, 1983).
526 See P. Avrich, Kronstadt 1921 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970); A. Berkman, The Russian tragedy
(Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1982); and I. Mett, Kronstadt Uprising (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1993). In Russian:
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