Lenin League

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The Leninbund (also Lenin-Bund or Leninbund (Left Communists) ) was a communist party in Germany.

history

The Leninbund was constituted at the beginning of April 1928, its (initially about 6,000) members were essentially former KPD members who were excluded from positions of responsibility in the party after the “ultra-left” and left wing were ousted by the leadership under Ernst Thälmann resigned.

These included several members of the Reichstag and Landtag (who acted in the Reichstag and the Prussian Landtag under the name of Left Communists ) and other prominent party members such as Ruth Fischer , Arkadi Maslow , Werner Scholem , Paul Schlecht , Hugo Urbahns and Guido Heym . The founding members expressed their solidarity with the positions of the United Opposition around Trotsky and Zinoviev in the Soviet Union and criticized various aspects of the Comintern and CPSU policies (for example Stalin'ssocialism-in-one-country ” line and the alliance with the Kuomintang in China) as a legal deviation.

Before the Reichstag elections in 1928 , the first major split occurred when, with the exception of Hugo Urbahns (who led the Lenin League to its end), all prominent politicians (among other things as a result of Zinoviev and Kamenev's capitulation or criticism of participation in the election, which was considered premature) left the organization , the election result of 0.26% or 80,230 votes was accordingly disappointing. The slow but steady process of disintegration could no longer be stopped, especially since the KPD verbally overtook the Lenin League from 1928 onwards as part of the ultra-left Third Period policy. Individual members such as Fritz Schimanski also rejoined the KPD, others such as Guido Heym joined the SPD , so that the Lenin League initially shrank to around 1,000 members. The Lenin League remained significant only at the local level, where it B. in Dortmund , Neu-Isenburg , Brunsbüttelkoog and some Brandenburg cities such as Bernau and Rathenow was also represented in local parliaments. In the Rhineland and Berlin, some of Karl Korsch's supporters joined the organization after their own structures had been formally dissolved; In 1930, however, the genuinely Trotskyist wing around Anton Grylewicz split off after controversies over the question of the reformability of the KPD and Comintern and the character of Soviet foreign policy and constituted itself as the Left Opposition of the KPD , which, however, did not reflect the reference of the Lenin League to Trotsky's theoretical positions Aborted. Recognizing early on the danger to the workers 'movement from the growing NSDAP , the Leninbund was involved in various attempts from 1930 to build a united front of the workers' parties SPD and KPD against fascism , which mostly only led to an intensified cooperation with other left small organizations like the KPO and the SAPD led.

After several bans by the press (the newspaper Volkswille , which was initially published daily in 1928, three times a week from 1928 to 1930, weekly from 1930 to 1932 and biweekly until the final ban, and the theoretical organ, the flag of communism , biweekly) of the Lenin League came in 1932 the organization had to go underground after the Reichstag fire in 1933 . Unlike other left-wing small organizations, however, the Leninbund did not succeed in establishing a functioning foreign leadership (a group in exile led by Hugo Urbahns existed in Stockholm) or in building up centralized illegal structures. Resistance groups from the area of ​​the Lenin League were active in various regions such as Hamburg, Thuringia or the Ruhr area, often in cooperation with other left organizations. After the outbreak of war in 1939, their traces were lost.

See also

literature

  • Marcel Bois: In the fight against Stalinism and fascism. The left opposition of the KPD in the Weimar Republic (1924–1933). In: Kora Baumbach, Marcel Bois, Kerstin Ebert, Viola Prüschenk (eds.): Currents: Political Images, Texts and Movements (= Rosa Luxemburg Foundation: Manuscripts. 69 = Rosa Luxemburg Foundation: Doctoral Seminar. 9). Dietz, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-320-02128-3 , pp. 86-109, (PDF; 12.0 MB).
  • Marcel Bois: Communists against Hitler and Stalin. The left opposition of the KPD in the Weimar Republic. An overall picture. Klartext, Essen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8375-1282-3 (also: Berlin, Technical University, dissertation, 2014).
  • Leon Trotsky: The Defense of the Soviet Republic and the Opposition. The ultra left and Marxism. Which way is the Lenin League going? Grylewicz, Berlin 1929, (historical polemics by Trotsky against the Lenin League).
  • Rüdiger Zimmermann : The Lenin League. Left communists in the Weimar Republic (= contributions to the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Vol. 62). Droste, Düsseldorf 1978, ISBN 3-7700-5096-7 (also: Darmstadt, Technical University, dissertation, 1976).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. For the history of the “ultra-left” cf. Ralf Hoffrogge : For Lenin, against Stalin. Left-wing extremists in the Weimar Republic: Werner Scholem and the “ultra-left” of the KPD . In: Analysis & Criticism. No. 596, from August 19, 2014, p. 32.
  2. Werner Scholem in particular criticized participation in the elections, cf. Ralf Hoffrogge : Werner Scholem. A political biography (1895–1940). UVK-Verlags-Gesellschaft, Konstanz et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-86764-505-8 ; Pp. 335–339, (At the same time: Potsdam, Universität, Dissertation, 2013).