Leo Jogiches

Leo Jogiches
Born	(1867-06-17)17 June 1867 Vilnius, Vilna Governorate, Northwestern Krai, Russian Empire
Died	10 March 1919(1919-03-10) (aged 51) Berlin, Germany
Nationality	Russian
Known for	Marxist revolutionary

Lev "Leo" Jogiches (Russian: Лев "Лео" Йогихес; "yū-gē-khěs"; 1867 – 1919), also commonly known by the party name Jan Tyszka (Russian: Ян Тышка), was a Marxist revolutionary active in Lithuania, Poland, and Germany. He was a founder of the political party known as The Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania and a key figure in the underground Spartacus League in Germany during the years of World War I.

For many years the personal companion and a close political ally of internationally famous revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, Jogiches was assassinated in Berlin by right wing paramilitary forces in March 1919 while investigating Luxemburg's murder some weeks before.

Biography

Early life

Lev Jogiches was born to a wealthy ethnic Jewish family in Vilnius, Lithuania, then part of the Russian empire, on June 17, 1867. Little is known of his childhood years, although it is perhaps instructive that Jogiches spoke no Hebrew and had no more than a rudimentary grasp of Yiddish, indicating a closer familiarity with other regional languages and cultures than those of his ethnic roots.

As a young man of 18, Jogiches founded one of the earliest underground socialist study circles in Vilnius, its 1885 origin predating the foundation of the first mass international socialist organization in the Russian empire by a dozen years. Using the first of many pseudonyms, Liofka (little Lev), Jogiches attained an almost legendary local status for his tenacious dedication to the anti-Tsarist cause. This commitment led to two arrests and short terms in jail, in both 1888 and 1889.

Zurich emigration

With the threat of conscription into the Tsar's army looming — possibly a penal battalion — Jogiches escaped to Zurich, Switzerland. He brought with him during his furtive departure a considerable sum of money, including both personal and donated funds earmarked for the publication and distribution of socialist literature. A few months after his arrival in Zurich, the 23-year old Jogiches met a fellow 20-year old ethnic Jewish political émigré from Tsarist autocracy, Rosa Luxemburg. The pair fell in love and became both close political allies and personal companions.

Shortly after his arrival in Switzerland, Jogiches made contact with pioneer Russian Marxist Georgy Plekhanov and proposed a business partnership for the publication of radical literature, in which Jogiches' money and publishing expertise would be complemented by Plekhanov's prestige and copyright control of Russian editions of works by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

A financial split of 50-50 was proposed by Jogiches, which was abruptly rejected by Plekhanov and an ongoing personal frostiness between the pair ensued. Not to be deterred by the clash of egos and the dispute over money, Jogiches would nevertheless proceed to establish his publishing house, The Social-Democratic Library (Sotsialdemokraticheskaya Biblioteka) in 1892, issuing pirated editions of works by Marx, Karl Kautsky, and others — further poisoning relations with Plekhanov.

The bitter battle with Plekhanov over publishing had the effect of isolating Jogiches (and his companion Luxemburg) from the bulk of the exile Russian colony in Switzerland. In 1893 the émigré publishing house formally charted its own independent political course with the establishment of a new Marxist political party, the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP), later known as the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL). This organization stood aloof from the broad umbrella organization founded in 1892, the Polish Socialist Party (PSP), the organization supported by the bulk of the Russian exile community.

Jogiches turned his primary attention to Polish affairs for the next several years, doubtlessly influenced in the decision to a great extent by Luxemburg. In July 1893 Jogiches financed a new Paris-based socialist publication in the Polish language, Sprawa Robotnicza (The Workers' Cause), which emphasized close cooperation between Polish and Russian radicals in their joint goal of overthrowing Tsarist autocracy and emphasizing the internationalist essence of the socialist movement. Writing as "R. Kruszyńska," Rosa Luxemburg played a key role in contributing content to this paper, soon taking over the editorship. The paper's internationalist political line proved somewhat at odds with the program of the PPS, however, with the latter emphasizing the aspect of Polish national liberation from Russian control, and consequently no support of the paper by the PPS leadership was to be forthcoming.

Personal split with Luxemburg

Leo Jogiches as he appeared in 1910.

Although an intelligent person and dedicated revolutionary socialist thinker, Jogiches was virtually incapable of converting his ideas into written words — "the mere thought of putting his ideas on paper paralyzes him," Luxemburg later recalled. Consequently, the chief contribution of Jogiches was that of literary stimulant to the skilled publicist Luxemburg, as well as behind the scenes organizer of the fledgling underground political party which he had helped to establish.

As Luxemburg grew in fame as a Marxist theoretician, Jogiches became gradually more embittered about his life, until by his middle 30s he had come — as one Luxemburg biographer phrased it — to have "fully realized the gap between his youthful aspirations and the disillusionments of reality."

Historian Bertram D. Wolfe summarized the differences in personalities and abilities of the two revolutionary exiles:

"Leo Jogiches, three years older than Rosa, was, when he fled to Zurich in 1890, already a fully formed conspirator and revolutionary.... Jogiches was taciturn, stern, gloomy, secretive about his past and his private life, with none of her eloquence or outgoing capacity for friendship. Moreover, he was, as she was not, a consummate conspirator, an able organizer, a natural born faction fighter. Under the conditions of underground life in Poland and Russia, it is doubtful if she could have built a movement without him. In Germany, however, where life was lived more publicly, he became a leader only by following in her wake."

Interpersonal conflict followed, exacerbated by the different trajectories of personal achievement, with the pair permanently separating in 1907.

Spartakusbund

Jogiches was a founding member of militantly anti-war Spartacus League (Spartakusbund), a revolutionary organization formed in 1915 together with Karl Liebknecht, Luxemburg, Franz Mehring and others. Following the jailing for their anti-war efforts of Liebknecht in May 1916 and Luxemburg that same July, Jogiches took over as the leader of the organization's underground activity. He would remain in this role until his own arrest in March 1918.

Assassination

The Spartacus League led the failed German Revolution of 1918/1919 after which Luxemburg and Liebknecht were killed by the right wing paramilitary Freikorps troops. Jogiches was killed in Berlin while he was trying to investigate the assassination of Luxemburg and Liebknecht.

See also

• Luxemburgism

Further reading

• George Adler, Peter Hudis, and Annelies Laschitza (eds.), The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg. London: Verso, 2011.
• Elzbieta Ettinger, "Comrade and Lover: Rosa Luxemberg's Letters to Leo Jogiches," New German Critique, whole no. 17, (Spring 1979), pp. 129-142. In JSTOR
• Elzbieta Ettinger (ed.), Comrade and Lover: Rosa Luxemburg's Letters to Leo Jogiches. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1979.
• Elzbieta Ettinger, Rosa Luxemburg: A Life. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1986.
• J.P. Nettl, Rosa Luxemburg. In Two Volumes. London: Oxford University Press, 1966.
• Grigory Zinoviev, "New Crime of the German 'Social-Democratic Government," The Communist International, vol. 1, no. 1 (April 1919). —Radio address following the 1919 murder of Jogiches.

External links

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