“The Stalinist transformation was particularly rapid within the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands. During its early phase the KPD was still a democratic party that was open to discussion. Members met regularly, the Opposition was able to stake out positions in every organisation, and controversial issues were debated in the party press. Otto Wenzel’s assessment was that even in 1923 ‘fully free debate prevailed. Criticism of all decisions by party headquarters was allowed’. It was also not the least bit unusual for the leadership to be in the minority during disputes. One prominent example was when Rosa Luxemburg was outvoted at the founding congress on the question of whether the KPD should participate in the elections to the National Assembly in January 1919.
Under the Ruth Fischer leadership from 1924, as Mario Kessler’s chapter discussed, the party began a process of ‘Bolshevisation’, which included the creation of centralist structures. Ironically, the Left itself soon fell victim to this development and was removed from leadership in late 1926, then expelled from the KPD altogether. A significant reason for this was that the leaders of the Left pursued a course that was independent of Moscow, despite their support for Bolshevisation. It was only under the leadership of Ernst Thälmann in the second half of the 1920s that the KPD began to orient itself, without significant opposition, to the Stalinised CPSU, and thus towards a strictly hierarchical
organisation with military-style discipline. It was a culture that contrasted starkly with the party’s early years. The formation of party factions was forbidden in 1925, debate was largely prohibited, and conflicts were not ‘resolved’ politically but rather organisationally – through expulsions. Thälmann’s Central Committee banned critics from speaking or summarily removed them from the party. Overall, the membership and leadership underwent an enormous turnover. For example, by 1929 only two of the sixteen officials who had been top-ranking in 1923 and 1924 were still in the Politbüro; no fewer than eleven had been expelled.
As in the Soviet Union, this bloodletting led to an ideological ossification. Political positions within the KPD became increasingly dogmatic or, in the words of historian Sigrid Koch-Baumgarten, the Soviet Union was ‘stylised as the holy land and Marx, Engels, and Lenin […] as founders of a religion’. Hermann Weber stated that Thälmann became ‘as the infallible leader a German copy of Stalin’
Left Opposition to Stalinisation
Left Communists rebelled against this process. They fought back against bureaucraticisation and advocated a return to the ‘old KPD’. Despite their heterogeneity, this resolute opposition to Stalinisation united all left-wing groups. As the ‘Letter of the 700’ makes clear, they also espoused a fundamental critique of the developments in the Soviet Union. On this point, they differed from, for example, the other major oppositional tendency within the KPD, namely the party’s ‘right wing’ – around Heinrich Brandler and August Thalheimer – which in 1929 founded the Communist Party of Germany (Opposition) (KPO). Although they opposed the KPD’s Stalinisation, the new party refrained from criticising the Soviet Union’s domestic politics under Stalin for a long time.
The Left published its views in the KPD press and put its positions up for debate at party meetings for as long as it was possible to do so. But opportunities to do so became increasingly infrequent. In this respect, the ‘Letter of the 700’ was, in a way, the high point in the struggle for the party. Indeed, the leadership felt forced to respond to the Opposition’s demand and permitted discussion of the ‘Russian Question’. But, at the same time, it also intensified its fight against the Left. As Günter Wernicke wrote, ‘The decisive phase of degeneration from what had once been a radical Marxist party to a Stalinised party machine had begun’.
Prominent representatives of the Opposition like Hugo Urbahns, Werner Scholem and Anton Grylewicz were expelled in the months that followed. The wave of repression would ultimately reach its height in March 1927 at the KPD’s Eleventh Congress in Essen when in the months before, some 1300 officials were expelled, as were entire local branches.
The wave of expulsions forced the oppositional Communists to take more decisive steps. In late 1926, a national conference of the Left elected its own national leadership and passed a resolution to publish a bi-weekly newsletter. In contrast with the increasingly undemocratic party, the Opposition was ‘one of the strongholds of political discussion’. In March 1928, the Left finally decided to establish an independent organisation: the Leninbund. This was prompted by Zinoviev and Kamenev’s ‘capitulation’ to Stalin and the ensuing collapse of the ‘United Opposition’ in the Soviet Union. Most of the German opposition was composed of Zinoviev supporters, but, in this instance, they did not follow his lead. Given that they regarded the Soviet Opposition’s relative disorganisation as a primary reason for its failure, they instead continued to strive to unite left-wing communists.
153 delegates and approximately 100 guests participated in the founding congress of the Leninbund during Easter 1928. Most members of the new organisation came from the KPD, although the majority had already been forced to leave it. Pierre Broué thus describes the Leninbund as ‘undoubtedly a revolutionary workers’ organisation […] a legitimate child of Spartacus, the left wing of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany and the United KPD’. Hermann Weber pointed out that it 'included the most prominent names from all the left opposition groups’. In fact, it had managed to
bring together almost all well-known left-wing critics of the KPD. With Fischer, Maslow, Scholem, Urbahns, Paul Schlecht, and Fritz Schimanski, the new organisation included six former members of the Central Committee. Moreover, various representatives to the Reichstag and state parliaments also joined, including Wolfgang Bartels, Gustav Müller, Guido Heym, and Anton Grylewicz. Unfortunately, it is still very difficult to determine precisely how many members the organisation had, but was in the region of 3000 to 6000.
Before the Leninbund was founded, its leaders explicitly stated that the organisation would not be a second communist party. However, at Hugo Urbahns’s suggestion, the founding congress voted to field a candidate in the forthcoming Reichstag elections. Left Communists had previously debated this question in detail. Fischer and Maslow, for example, spoke resolutely against running an independent slate Even Trotsky, who had been following the discussion, warned from abroad that
Running your own candidates will mean saying that the KPD is no longer communist and down with it. It is a step that will complete the split and will make it impossible to retake the party.
The ‘electoral question’ broke the fragile unity of the Leninbund. The conflict led Scholem and Max Hesse to leave the organisation just a few weeks after it was founded. They were critical of the fact that, ‘A majority guided by entirely apolitical considerations decided to run its own slate in the upcoming elections’. This decision, ‘in fact means the formation of a second communist party, although it is clear that there is no possibility or justification for its existence’.
The Comintern’s renewed ‘left turn’ in 1928 was also part of the controversy. Scholem and his colleagues hoped that Moscow would now orient itself to the Left’s policies of 1924, which would mean rejecting the ‘united front’ in favour of a directly ‘revolutionary’ policy. Shortly afterward, the German Zinoviev supporters – Fischer, Maslow, Schlecht, Bruno Mätzchen and Schimanski – also left the Leninbund.
Consequently, the last promising attempt in the history of the Weimar Republic to unite the KPD’s opposition to Stalinism in a single organisation failed. After that, the Leninbund fragmented in four directions:
Some members remained under the leadership of Hugo Urbahns, but the rump organisation lost important publications, suffered from financial difficulties, and putting up candidates for the Reichstag elections proved to be a fiasco;
Fischer and Maslow, among others, reapplied to rejoin the KPD on the terms set out by the Comintern, but only Schimanski was readmitted;
Other members joined the SPD, notably in the former stronghold of Suhl in Thuringia under Guido Heym, while the daily newspaper, Volkswille, also went to the Social Democrats;
Contacts between the rump Leninbund and Trotsky, now in exile, complicated the organisation’s development.
Differences between Urbahns and Trotsky, over the vexed issue of whether to reform the KPD or create a new party, led to a split. In February 1930, those who supported Trotsky, like Grylewicz and Kurt Landau, were expelled and came together with part of the Wedding Opposition and the Leipzig-based Bolshevik Unity organisation to form the United Left Opposition of the KPD – the first explicit Trotskyist organisation in Germany.
After this new split in 1930, ‘the Leninbund, which had struggled with signs of decay since its founding, lost even more significance’. In 1932, the group only had about 500 members. But after a year, the newly established ‘United Left Opposition’ also disintegrated into two groups, each of which referred to itself as the Left Opposition of the KPD. While both groups did subsequently undergo a certain ‘boom’, their combined membership of little more than 1000 people kept them far removed from their goal of reforming the KPD – a project that had probably been illusory from the outset. Social Democrat Walter Riest correctly stated in 1932 that, ‘These splinter groups will have no influence on the fate of the KPD, to say nothing of the labour movement’.”
- Marcel Bois, “Opposing Hitler and Stalin: Left Wing Communists after Expulsion from the KPD.” in Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918–1933. Edited by Ralf Hoffrogge and Norman LaPorte. Part of the Studies in Twentieth Century Communism Series. Chadwell Heath: Lawrence & Wishart, 2017. pp. 153-157.