Stockholm Peace Conference of 1917

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The Stockholm Peace Conference also International Socialist Congress was a peace conference of the Second International during the First World War . To carry it out, socialists met in Stockholm in neutral Sweden from June 2 to June 19, 1917. They wanted to pave the way to a secure peace there. This attempt at informal diplomacy was viewed with great suspicion by the governments involved in the war. It remained ineffective because the Allied governments in particular prevented the delegates from their countries.

Karl Hjalmar Branting (in the middle) and Hungarian delegates to the Stockholm Peace Conference. Zsigmond Kunfi in the photo to the right of Branting.

background

After the beginning of the First World War, the series of international socialist congresses ended. Cross-border meetings only took place within the respective alliance system. The Social Democratic Party was divided in 1914 into three parts. On the left were the Zimmerwald , consisting of internationals, revolutionaries and pacifists who were named after their first conference in Zimmerwald , Switzerland . They organized themselves in the "International Socialist Commission" (ISK). The right wing was formed by the majority socialists who, depending on their national identification, were for or against a separate peace with Russia. The social democrats in the middle tried to restore relations between the socialists and the warring countries. These were represented in the “International Socialist Bureau” (ISB).

On April 15, 1917, the ISB chose the neutral Stockholm as its seat. The ISK did the same. The ISB provided the “Dutch-Scandinavian Committee” , which began to campaign for the peace conference. The driving forces behind the congress were Camille Huysmans from Belgium and the Dutchman Pieter Jelles Troelstra . In addition to the long duration of the war, the February Revolution in Russia also played a role as a triggering moment. Therefore, other interlocutors were the Petrograd Soviet , which was composed of Mensheviks, Bolsheviks and socialist revolutionaries.

Half a month later it became clear that the British , Belgians , French and Russians were negative about the conference. A long series of negotiations between the various parties began. While the Zimmerwaldists held their own conference to come to a decision on participation, the Russians started their own peace initiative. When the conference was finally due to take place, the governments refused, e. British Prime Minister Lloyd George , the Government of France and the United States issued passports to MPs who wished to attend. Georges Clemenceau declared that it was "improper" to sit down at the same table with the Germans while their armies were in Lille and Saint-Quentin and hundreds of thousands of French awaited liberation. According to the NZZ, Prime Minister Alexandre Ribot was “not the least applauded among the ranks of the socialists” when he argued that peace could not be the work of a single party. Due to the low attendance, the conference in the originally planned form failed.

Representatives of the MSPD ( Philipp Scheidemann , Hermann Müller and others) as well as the USPD ( Hugo Haase , Eduard Bernstein , Karl Kautsky , Joseph Herzfeld , Arthur Stadthagen , Georg Ledebour , Oskar Cohn , Robert Wengels and Adolf Hofer ) attended the Rump Congress from Germany . arrived. Karl Seitz from Austria took part. On the part of the MSPD, the Petrograd Soviet's demand for a peace without contributions and annexations was accepted in Stockholm. The Austrian participants Victor Adler, Wilhelm Ellenbogen and Karl Renner as well as the participants from the Hungarian half of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy took the view that peace should not be concluded at the expense of the territorial integrity of the Habsburg monarchy.

In the archives and library of the labor movement are 148 documents of the Conference. They provide information about the expectations and hopes of the participants, but also show the disagreement on the socialist side.

literature

  • Ludger Heid: Oskar Cohn. A socialist and Zionist in the German Empire and in the Weimar Republic . Frankfurt am Main, 2002 p. 172
  • Gerhard Hirschfeld a. a. (Ed.): Encyclopedia First World War , Paderborn, 2009 ISBN 978-3-506-76578-9 p. 511

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The refused passports , Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 7, 1917, number 1024, first morning paper, front page; Another quote: "(General applause, Jules Guesde gives the sign on the socialist benches)".
  2. See Manfried Rauchsteiner "The First World War and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy 1914-1918" (2013), p. 765.