Zimmerwald Manifesto
The Zimmerwald Manifesto was developed by Leon Trotsky written and on the Zimmerwald Conference ( 5. bis 8. September 1915 ), a secret international socialist conference in Berne village Zimmerwald adopted. No agreement was reached on various fundamental issues. The revolutionary views of Lenin and his supporters were rejected by the majority.
Content of the manifest
The Zimmerwald Conference was convened on the initiative of the Swiss Social Democrat Robert Grimm to reform the forces of the Socialist International , which had collapsed as a result of the truce policy at the beginning of the First World War.
The undersigned declared the First World War a "war of the capitalists " and called on the socialist forces to unite in the struggle for peace. They called on the socialist parties of all nations to withhold their consent to war credits and showed their unreserved solidarity with all victims of the war .
Participants and Signatories
The most prominent participants in the conference were
- Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov , known as Lenin, who was living in exile in Switzerland at the time , and
- another later leader of the October Revolution , Leon Trotsky .
Signed the manifesto
on behalf of the international socialist conference:
- for the German delegation: Georg Ledebour , Adolph Hoffmann ;
- for the French delegation: A. Bourderon, A. Merrheim ;
- for the Italian delegation: GE Modigliani, Constantino Lazzari;
- for the Russian delegation: N. Lenin , Paul Axelrod , M. Bobrow;
- for the Polish delegation: St. Lapinski, A. Warski, Karl Radek on behalf of Cz. Hanecki;
for the Inter-Balkan Socialist Federation:
- on behalf of the Romanian delegation: Christian Georgijewitsch Rakowski ,
- On behalf of the Bulgarian delegation: Vasil Kolarov ;
- for the Swedish and Norwegian delegation: Zeth Höglund , Ture Nerman ;
- for the Dutch delegation: Henriette Roland Holst ;
- for the Swiss delegation: Robert Grimm , Charles Naine .
Since the passports were refused to the English delegates, they could not come to the conference and consequently could not sign the manifesto. The Swiss state security seems to have escaped the conference. For example, it can be seen in the context that Lenin too received admission to Switzerland in 1914 after his asylum application as a politically persecuted person under tsarism "without major problems".
Lenin's Additional Protocol
Before it was adopted, Lenin added his own, more radical additional protocol to the Zimmerwald manifesto drafted by Trotsky , in which he addressed the proletarian potential for transforming the "imperialist war" into a civil war. In its ambivalence between pacifist and communist elements, the manifesto made a decisive contribution to the division of the Socialist International into "social patriots" (diction of the 1st Congress of the Communist International) and "revolutionary proletarians ".
Web link
- The Zimmerwald Manifesto Wording of the Manifesto, contribution by Einde O'Callaghan for the Marxists Internet Archive .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Urs P. Engeler: Big Brother Switzerland, 1990
- ↑ Swissinfo: Lenin and the revolution that did not take place