The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

when he was in fact in Spain at the time. His main fault was to be one of the main writers for De Roode Vaan.
All those who expressed their solidarity with Luteraan and Geers were excluded: in June, it was to be the turn of
the Zwolle militants (also Gerrit Jordens). It should be noted that all these exclusions were statutorily irregular,
since they emanated not from a congress of the party, but from the organs of the CPH. All the demands of those
excluded to lift the ban at least until the CPH congress, to be held in November, were rejected. Wijnkoop’s last
act against the opposition was an attempt to take over De Nieuwe Tijd, set up in 1896. He failed when the
majority of the editors of the old Marxist periodical opposed the move, and refused to turn it over to Roland
Holst, who was in the habit of sentimentally supporting the opposition but following through weakness the rule
of the majority. 574 The last issue finally appeared in December 1921. Pannekoek in the meantime had left the
CPH, remaining formerly on the editorial board of De Nieuwe Tijd, but with out joining the newly formed
KAPN.
The opposition organised actively after this wave of exclusions (of which the latest, by an irony of history, was
the Deventer section; Deventer, the glorious symbol of the Tribunist current, was also its death certificate).
About 200 of the CPH’s 2,000 members had been excluded. On 4 th September 1921 they formed the Communist
Workers’ Party of Holland (KAPN) at Amersfoort. It existed in 10 districts, including Amsterdam and
Rotterdam. As for the CPH, which Roland Holst followed in the split, it was not long before it split again and
again. 575
b) The exclusion of the Bulgarian left communists from the Komintern
The opposition was constituted between February and May 1919, within the Bulgarian Communist Party, which
had, at its founding congress 25,000 members, of whom barely 2,200 were industrial workers. At this congress it
already defended a left communist line: rejection of parliamentarism, rejection of all alliance with the peasantry,
of which the political representative was the peasant party of Stambulisky, who was at the head of the
government. 576 That was enough for a part of the Opposition to be excluded in April 1920 in Sofia – Ivan
Ganchev, Stefan Ivanov, and Georgi Petrov (pseudonym: Georgi Barzev) as ‘leaders’ –, so that it now existed
both inside and outside the Party. The Bulgarian left, despite the presence of Slavi Zidarov in Moscow, could not
obtain a consultative voice to express his antiparlamantarian positions, during the sessions of the second
he became the president of the pacifist movement ‘De Derde Weg’ (1952-56), “neither East nor West” movement. After
1956, he was member of the PSP (Pacifist Socialist Party).
574 At the 3 rd Congress of the Komintern, Henriëtte Roland Holst had the merit of defending Gorter and those who were
called the ‘KAPists’.
575 From 1923, a strong opposition, more directed against the despotic leadership of Wijnkoop than determined by questions
of principle, developed in the CPH. The minority, organised in a Committee for the Third International, and led by Jacques
de Kadt, wanted respect for party ‘democracy’. Wijnkoop’s response was the exclusion of De Kadt. While Sneevliet took
over the leadership of the Opposition in the CPH, De Kadt formed the ‘Federation of clubs for communist propaganda and
struggle’ (BKSP), outside the party, with Roland Holst, which she left in 1925 to form an ephemeral Revolutionair
Arbeiders Comité (RAC). In July 1924 it was to publish a weekly: De Kommunist. To prevent the disintegration of the party
the Komintern, through Zinoviev, imposed the dismissal of Wijnkoop, Ceton, and Van Ravesteyn from the leadership, and
the election of a new leadership in May 1925. A part of the BKSP, including Roland Holst, returned to the CPH. However,
in 1927, Roland Holst with Sneevliet left the CPH, after Stalin’s victory over Trotsky (Henriette Roland Holst verlaat de
Partij, De Tribune, 22 november 1927.) In 1928 De Kadt and other members of the BKSP went to the SDAP. Excluded in
1926, Wijnkoop then formed his own party the CPH (Central Committee); he returned to the CPH, with his supporters –
except Van Ravesteyn, who abandoned political activity completely in 1926 – in 1930 to follow all the twists and turns of
stalinism, but without ‘re-conquering’ the ‘leadership’ within the CPH. As for Sneevliet (who sympathised with Trotsky),
his opposition was made up of syndicalists from the NAS, and he left the CPH for good in 1927. That was the last left
opposition within the party which then went over definitively to stalinism.
576 See: I. Dujcev, V. Velikov, I. Mitev & L. Panaytov, Histoire de la Bulgarie des origines à nos jours (Roanne: Horvath,
1977). Above all, cf. J. Schärf in, La Révolution d’Octobre et le mouvement ouvrier européen (Paris: EDI, 1967), pp. 199-
206.
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