Rosa Leviné-Meyer, Leviné: Life of a Revolutionary, Saxon House, £2.40/[illegible].
There have been many occasions in history when [illegible] have been compelled to lead revolutionary uprisings which they knew were doomed in advance [illegible] 1919, was given the task of leading the young German Communist Party in Bavaria during the German Revolution. The whole debacle is recounted by Leviné's widow, Rosa Leviné-Meyer, in a book which provides a vivid portrait of the little-known revolutionary whom some described as 'the German Lenin'. The story is told partly in his own words.
The revolutionary upsurge in Germany broke out in November 1918, following the defeat of the German armies on the Western Front. The Kaiser abdicated, and Workers' and Soldiers' Councils were set up in many towns and cities of Germany. In some towns, these councils overthrew the local bourgeois governments and formed workers' governments and seized power. But the leadership of the German working class was in the hands of the Social Democrats, who intended to preserve German capitalism intact and set up a parliamentary democracy. The SPD government in Berlin [illegible] against the working class and frequently, where its efforts to undermine the councils from within failed, sent in troops to suppress them. Many hundreds of workers were killed by the troops under the command of the Social-Democrat Minister of War Gustav Noske, in the early months of 1919.
In Bavaria, the revolution reached its climax only after the revolution in the rest of Germany had suffered severe defeats. The proclamation of the Soviet Government in Munich, the capital of Bavaria, in April 1919 followed on the heels of a severe defeat of the workers in Berlin a month earlier, where Noske's troops conducted a massacre. Kurt Eisner, the social-democratic leader of the Munich proletariat, had just been murdered by reaction. The SPD government in Munich, under Hoffman, proved unable to push through even modest socialization measures against bourgeois resistance, and the patience of the workers could no longer tolerate the growing shortages of food and fuel. The workers of Munich were preparing to overthrow the bourgeois parliament, in which the bourgeois parties were about to capture a majority, when the Hungarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed. The representatives of the Munich workers believed that if Bavaria acted, Austria would soon follow too and embrace the Soviet [illegible].
Leviné tried to hold back this movement. He understood that a Soviet Government in Munich could not survive unless the workers throughout Germany were able to come to its aid. The political situation at the time ruled this out. Bavaria itself was not an industrial state, and the workers of Munich were surrounded by a population of small farmers to whom the Soviet Government, unlike the one in Petrograd, would be able to offer little by way of land reform. The bourgeoisie had already regained its influence over the rural population under the Hoffman government.
The left social democrats who took the leadership of the workers in these months advocated the Soviet system without understanding its implications. The workers, however, took them at their word. Even though workers' councils and a workers' militia had not been prepared, the workers' leaders declared a Soviet Government. Leviné wrote: 'The third day of the Soviet Republic . . . in the factories the workers toil and drudge as ever before for the capitalists. In the offices sit the same royal functionaries. In the streets the old armed guardians of the capitalist world keep order. The scissors of the war profiteers and the dividend hunters still snip away.'
The communist had no choice but to take the leadership of the doomed experiment when, after five days, the Hoffman government which had retired to Bamberg launched military action against Munich. Under Leviné's leadership, workers' and soldiers' councils were hastily constructed to give some foundation to the government, and a Red Army was prepared to defend the city. Leviné explained his attitude to these two tasks: 'We cannot avert the catastrophe but a revolutionary leadership is responsible for the state in which the workers emerge from it . . . an honourable death and experience for the future is all we can salvage from the present situation . . . we must transform the bogus Soviet Republic into a genuine one and thus give the workers an object lesson about its real nature.'
Against those who had refused to learn the lessons from the reprisals following the defeat in Berlin, he argued: 'We must not make it easy for the counter-revolution to shed our blood. Sell your lives dearly. This is the only way of wresting concessions from the enemy and checking the White terror. It is a fallacy to believe meek surrender is a better way to avoid or reduce bloodshed.' After an armed resistance by the rapidly maturing Bavarian proletariat, the counter-revolution triumphed in Munich. The Soviet Government lasted only four weeks. At his trial, Leviné's defence speech included the apt and famous words: 'We communists are all dead men on leave.' He was executed on 5 June 1919.
In the course of this fascinating book, other important problems are discussed, such as 'entrism' into the Socialist Party, ultra-leftism and bourgeois elections, and the importance of factory-cell organization. A review in the Sunday Times termed Eugene Leviné a footnote of history. With more footnotes like him, the working class would storm the pages of history.
Carl Gardner.