94994447-Merchant-of-Revolution-Alexander-Israel-Helphand-Parvus.pdf

THE MERCHANT OF REVOLUTION

Alexander Helphand. Drawing by Walter Bondy

THEMERCHANT OF REVOLUTION

The Life ofAlexander Israel Helphand (Parvus)1867-1924

Z. A. B. ZEMAN and W. B. SCHARLAU

LondonOXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESSNew York Toronto1965

Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C.4GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON

CAPE TOWN SALISBURY NAIROBI IBADAN ACCRAKUALA LUMPUR HONG KONG

Z. A. B. ZEMAN and W. B. SCHARLAU 1965

Printed in Great Britainby W. & J. Mackay & Co Ltd,

Chatham, Kent

For F. W. Deakin and E. Lehnartz

Contents

Introduction: The Nature of the Enigma 1

1. Disengagement from Russia 5

2. The Great Fortune 26

3. The Schwabing Headquarters 50

4. St. Petersburg, 1905 75

5. Strategist without an Army 101

6. An Interlude in Constantinople 125

7. Between the Socialists and the Diplomats 145

8. Not by Money Alone 170

9. Business and Politics 192

10. Revolution in Russia 206

11. Dirty Hands 235

12. Schwanenwerder 260

Epilogue 276

Bibliography 282

Index, 291

List of Illustrations

Alexander Helphand. Drawing by Walter FrontispieceBondy

I Karl Kautsky, 1905 facing page 68

II Helphand, Trotsky, and Lev Deutsch in the SaintsPeter and Paul Fortress, 1906 69

III Helphand and Deutsch on the way to exile in Siberia,1906 84

IV Rosa Luxemburg 85

V a Christo Rakovsky 132b Karl Radek, 1924

VI Rosa Luxemburg and Helphand 133

VII Lenin and his sister 148

VIII Konrad Haenisch 149

IX Brockdorff-Rantzau 212

X Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, Gottlieb vonJagow, and Karl Helfferich, 1915 213

XI Richard von Kuhlmann and Count Czernin, 1917 228

XII Philipp Scheidemann speaking outside the Reichstag,1919 229

Preface

This study has grown out of an association of the joint authorswith St. Antony's College, Oxford. They have both enjoyed, at differenttimes, the hospitality of the College, and they have benefited from itsstimulating international character. The authors are no less indebtedto the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst in Bad Godesberg whichfinanced, jointly with the College, a two-year scholarship in Oxford.The Warden of the College and Professor Dr. E. Lehnartz, the Presidentof the Austauschdienst, have been most understanding and helpfulwhile the work on this book was in progress, and to them the book isdedicated.

The authors would also like to thank the Carnegie Trust for theUniversities of Scotland, the Court of St. Andrews University, and theLandesregierung in Nordhein-Westfalen. Their generous grants maderesearch in a number of European archives possible.

It is difficult to indicate the gratitude the authors feel towards Pro-fessor Dr. Werner Hahlweg of Minister University, and to Dr. GeorgeKatkov of Oxford University, who supervised, with great patience, thetwo theses in which preliminary explorations were made. In addition,the authors have benefited by the advice and help of many scholars,and they should especially like to mention Professor Sir Isaiah Berlin,Mr. David Footman, Dr. Michael Futtrell, Professor Dr. Heinz Goll-witzer, Mr. James Joll, Mr. Peter Nettl, Dr. Eberhart Pikart, andProfessor Leonard Schapiro. The authors have also received valuableinformation from Helphand's friends and contemporaries, in particularfrom Frau Martha Jackh of New York, Dr. Moritz Bonn of London,Herr Arno Scholz of Berlin, Herr Bruno Schnlank, jun., of Zrich,and Mr. Satvet Lutfi Tozan, O.B.E., of Istanbul.

This biography, a joint work of a German and a British historian,appeared in Germany last year. This edition can, however, be regardedas a separate book rather than as a literal translation of the Germanversion.

January 1965 W. B. SCHARLAU Z. A. B. ZEMANHamburg. St. Andrews,

Scotland.

Introduction:

The Nature of the Enigma

About eight miles due west from the centre of Berlin,the River Havel broadens into the Wannsee: Schwanenwerder isthe smaller of two islands on the lake. In the nineteenth centuryit provided building-sites for the houses of some of the richestBerlin families; the cooks and butlers were still attending to theneeds of their employers between the two wars. A few largeresidences now remain; their private landing-stages are deserted.From time to time the desolate, shuttered peace of the island isdisturbed by a boatload of tourists who come to inspect theruined house that used to belong to Josef Goebbels. But twelveyears before Hitler's Minister of Propaganda acquired hisSchwanenwerder estate, a man who had been one of the first tar-gets of Nazi vituperation had died there. His name was AlexanderIsrael Helphand: he died at the sumptuous house on 12 Decem-ber 1924.

His obituaries lightly glossed over a life of extraordinaryeventfulness. Konrad Haenisch, then Minister of Culture inPrussia, eulogized Parvushe was better known under thispseudonym in socialist circlesas the 'ablest head of the SecondInternational'.1 The liberal Berliner Tageblatt regarded him as a'knowledgeable man in a class of his own' who, 'without being inthe foreground, exercised a considerable influence'.2 The con-servative Kreuzzeitung, on the other hand, saw Helphand as aman 'completely without character, a morally empty type of apolitical and business crook'. The obituary in a communistmagazine, by an erstwhile friend of Helphand, discerned a sharpbreak in the life of the deceased man. Before the First World War,Helphand had been an original thinker, an influential socialistand revolutionary. But then he sold out; after August 1914 he1

Parvus, Ein Blatt der Erinnerung, Berlin, 1925, p. 5. 2 13 December 1924.

2 The Merchant of Revolution

became a traitor to the working class, a German chauvinist, acorrupt war profiteer.3 Karl Radek, the leading Soviet publicist,took the same line on Helphand in Pravda, where Radek alsodescribed him as a 'traitor', while pointing out that he had been'one of the foremost of the revolutionary writers in the era of theSecond International'.4

After his death, Helphand's striking personality and the uniquerole he had played in the history of Russia and Germany in thefirst two decades of the century sank farther and farther intooblivion. Admittedly, the restless, uncertain years of the WeimarRepublic that gave way to Hitler's dictatorship and the holocaustof another war, as well as the conditions that obtained in theSoviet Union between the wars, were not conducive to dispas-sionate inquiry into so recent a past. And then, there was some-thing in Helphand's activities that discouraged remembrance andprevented inquiry.

The German Socialists intermittently remembered him as aleading Marxist theorist and a brilliant journalist; historians whoconcerned themselves with Germany's eastern policy in the FirstWorld War, knew that Helphand had had connexions withthe Imperial German Government, and that he had advised theForeign Ministry. It also emerged that he had taken part in thesupport, by the government in Berlin, of the revolutionarymovement in Russia, and that he had played some role in con-nexion with Lenin's famous 'sealed train' journey across Germanyin April 1917. Nevertheless, the politicians and soldiers who knewthe facts preferred to surround the relations between the govern-ment and the revolutionary movement in Russia with a conspiracyof silence.

The memoirs of Bethmann-Hollweg, of Helfferich, Nadolny,Ludendorff, and Kuhlmann made not a single reference to thename of Helphand. It was given certain prominence when hebecame one of the principal whipping-tops of Nazi propaganda.As a rich Jew and a Marxist revolutionary, he presented the idealtarget for men like Alfred Rosenberg and Josef Goebbels, whoincluded him among the ranks of the 'November criminals'the3 Clara Zetkin, in Die Kommunistische Internationale, No. I, January 1925.

4 14 December 1924.

Introduction: The Nature of the Enigma 3

enemies of the German people who had destroyed ImperialGermany and who had opened, on the frontier of Europe, theflood-gates of Bolshevism. In the Soviet Union, Helphand's nameaccompanied that of Trotsky into the limbo of forgetfulness. Hewas given an entry in the first edition of the official SovietEncyclopedia: but from the second edition he disappeared.

The revelations from the captured archives of the GermanForeign Ministry, soon after the Second World War, made pos-sible at least a partial decoding of the enigma of Helphand's life.The secret Great War series among these papers contain a largenumber of documents concerning Alexander Helphand. Heemerged as the central figure in the conspiratorial connexionsbetween the Imperial Government and the Russian Social Demo-crat party, and in particular Lenin's Bolshevik faction of it. Thecontention that the Imperial German Government had taken agreat deal of interest in the spread of rebellion in wartime Russiacould now be supported by documentary evidence.5

Indeed, a far-reaching revision of the accepted views of theFirst World War resulted from the opening of the ForeignMinistry's archives. It became apparent that policy-making inBerlin during the war had been a much more complex processthan had been assumed. At the same time, men who had beenascribed historical greatness were demoted: the larger-than-lifefigures of Wilhelm II, of Ludendorff, or of Hindenburg, dis-appeared from their pedestals. Claims to historical prominencewere staked on behalf of new men: Alexander Helphand belongsamong them. Nevertheless, our knowledge of his motives andintentions, as well as of his personality, is still only fragmentary.The newly available information raised new problems, andaroused fresh controversies. Behind them the enigma of Help-hand's life remained unsolved.

Not that Helphand himself would have disapproved of themystifications that followed his death. In a brief apologia pro vitasua, published in Berlin in 1918, he wrote: 'My life is marked by

G. Katkov, 'German Foreign Office documents on financial support to the Bol-sheviks in 1917', in International Affairs, vol. XXXII (April 1956), pp. 181-9; St.T. Possony, Jahrhundert des Aufruhrs, Munich, 1956; W. Hahlweg (ed.), LeninsRuckkehr nach Russland 1917, Leiden, 1957; Z. A. B. Zeman (ed.), Germany and theRevolution in Russia 1915-1918, London, 1958.


my literary works as with milestones. From one year to another,one can establish what constituted the focal point of my thinking,what filled my life at any given time.'6 No potential biographercould have wished for more misleading advice. Helphand'swritten works represent only the surface of the iceberg. He wasobsessed by a desire for secretiveness; he preferred legend toserve his memory. He took, in the last years of his life, elaborateprecautions to achieve this aim. The case of Philipp Scheide-mann's book of reminiscences, Der Zusammenbruch, throws asharp light on the manner in which Helphand acted after the war.Scheidemann was a German Social Democrat leader, and he wrotethe book under Helphand's guidance, while staying at the houseon the Wannsee; when the book appeared, it bore the imprint ofHelphand's publishing house. Although he had been closelyassociated with Helphand during the war, Scheidemann did notonce mention his host's name in his reminiscences.

And then shortly after Helphand's death, his son, togetherwith a number of his friends, searched the Schwanenwerder housefor his political papers. They found nothing. It is very probablethat he had destroyed the documents before his death: only afterthe last war was a small collection of Helphand's business docu-ments discovered in Berlin. A considerable number of his papersmust also have been deposited in Copenhagen: a young Englishscholar, who recently worked in the archives in the Danishcapital, gained the impression that a mopping-up operation hadbeen carried out there as well. All this sounds true to form:secretiveness was the hallmark of Helphand's activities.

For more than three decades after his death, Helphand's de-termined effort to discourage inquiry into his secret operationsappeared to have been successful. The authors of this biographyoften found themselves following false trails; their patience wasseverely tested by the peculiar elusiveness of their subject. Never-theless, they believe that they have deciphered some of themystery which Helphand had done his best to create.6 Im Kampf um die Wahrheit, p. 45.

1Disengagement from Russia

In 1867the year of Helphand's birthEurope wasstill the powerful centre of the civilized world. It was changing,but not very rapidly. There were trains, but no cars; in the capi-tals gas was still providing the light, and horses the short-distancetransport; although telegraph was available, there were notelephones. In this year, a clumsy typewriting machine made itsappearance; Alfred Nobel took out the patent for his new inven-tion, dynamite. In Vienna, Strauss delighted his devoted publicwith the latest light-hearted composition, the Blue DanubeWaltz; in London, Karl Marx completed the first volume of hismagnum opus, Das Kapital.

And from now on, the course of the main political develop-ments in Europe was by no means difficult to forecast. Theunification of Germany under Bismarck would soon be com-pleted, and a trial of strength between the new state and Francewas a matter of speculation. Austria had been forced to withdrawfrom the affairs of both Italy and Germany, but she would soonfind a new interest in the Balkans. Here, the influence of theSublime Porte was fast declining: the question was whetherAustria or Russia would fill the gap. Here, sooner or later, theinterests of the two powers would clash.

In the country of Helphand's birth, Alexander II, who hadtaken over the management of autocracy after the Crimean War,was still preoccupied with internal affairs. In Russia, the imple-mentation of his reformsthe emancipation of the serfs in 1861and the reorganization of local government three years laterleft a lot to be desired. These were formidable tasks, the instru-ments for their accomplishment had proved inadequate, and theranks of ill-wishers numerous. Even while the reforming zeal ofthe Tsar lasted, it made no serious inroads into the citadels of

M.R.-B


autocracy. In an age when new sections of the hitherto apoliticalmasses were forcing their way into the political affairs of theother European states, when Russia's neighbours to the west,Germany and Austria-Hungary, were experimenting with con-stitutions, Russia herself remained an autocracy, without a con-stitution or a parliament. She was supervised by a corrupt policeforce and administered by an inefficient bureaucracy. Togetherwith the autocrat, graft reigned supreme. The Tsar may haveexpected gratitude from his subjects for his edicts of reform;if he did, he was bitterly disappointed. Karakozov's attempton Alexander's life in April 1866 put an end to the era ofreform.

And as reform from above abated, the radicalism of the Rus-sians changed. Alexander Herzen and his generation had sharedthe hopeful atmosphere of the fifties and the early sixties; theyhad had no use for violence and revolution. These now becamefashionable. Although revolution remained a distant and hazygoal for the young radicalsonly Bakunin dreamt of it in exile,uttering, from time to time, the precise date of its outbreakterrorism became the accepted revolutionary technique. Therepercussions of the terrorists' activities were out of proportionto their real numbers: the first victims were slain and the firstmartyrs of the revolution were created. In 1881 the Tsar himselfwas assassinated: his successor, Alexander III, could do no betterthan turn his back on the progressive aspects of his father's reign.Under the guidance of Pobedonostsev, the Tsar's chief adviser,plans for constitutional reform were shelved; the police force wasstrengthened and a stricter censorship introduced; the liberaluniversity statute of 1863 was repealed. Among these conditions,radical revolutionary doctrines exercised an ever-growing attrac-tion on the young educated Russians.

Soon, another group was to go through a process, similar to thatof the young radicals, of alienation from the established socialorder; this was Russian Jewry. They had lived inside the 'pale'their settlements in western and south-western Russiain rela-tive peace until the assassination of Alexander II. Their time oftrials began in 1881. They suffered from further discriminatorylegislation from above, and by persecution inflicted from below. It

Disengagement from Russia 7

was tolerated and sometimes even encouraged by the Tsaristauthorities: it deflected the fury of the mob from the genuinecauses of its suffering. The word pogrom passed into the Englishlanguage early in this century; it had acquired its frightful con-notations in Russia some twenty years before.

There were two periods of violent outbreaks of antisemiticfeeling in Russia, in the years 1881 and 1883, and then again in1903 and 1906. The pogroms soon developed their characteristicpattern. The localized disturbance spread like an avalanche; themob would methodically proceed from one Jewish street to thenext, from one Jewish shop to another. The property that couldnot be stolen was smashed. The pogromsthe revolutionarymovement of the moronic mobdrove many Jews away fromeastern Europe. The exodus to the west, as far afield as theeast end of London, the Bronx in New York, and Palestine,started soon after the first violence had died down. It was notsurprising that many young Jews who stayed behind in Russiaeventually joined a revolutionary group of one kind oranother.

Israel Lazarevich Helphand was born a Russian Jew, andbecame a revolutionary. The place of his birth was Berezino inWhite Russia, a small town some ninety miles east of Vilno, in theprovince of Minsk. This was the northern part of the "pale',where the Jews accounted for more than a half of the total popu-lation.1 Russians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and Poles made upthe rest of the population of the province. The Jewish communitywas self-contained. Barred from political appointments of anykind and from many of the professions, the Jews were eithertradesmen or artisans; they rarely employed Gentiles, and werenever employed by them. The Jews were mostly literate, but theycould read and write Hebrew only, they spoke Yiddish, and knewlittle or no Russian. They led their separate lives: trade and sexoutside marriage were their only links with the Gentile world.They lived in the past, on their historical memories. The exodusirom Egypt, Abraham's sacrifice, the occupation of Canaan, theseevents were alive for them, and hotly disputed. Such subjects

1 The census of 1897 gave these figures for the province of Minsk: total population

90.879; Jews-49,957.


were more pleasant to think about than the drab, depressing, andoften dangerous present.2

Helphand was born into a lower middle-class Jewish family inthis province on 27 August 1867. There is very little we knowabout his descent, his childhood, and youth; even the date of hisbirth is likely to be an approximation. After Helphand left Russia,he had to fill out a number of forms, in Switzerland or in Ger-many, and 27 August was the date of birth he gave on these. Healso adopted the name of Alexander: it was as Israel AlexanderHelphand that he appeared in the police files of a number ofEuropean countries.

His father was an artisan, perhaps a locksmith or a blacksmith;we have only one vivid memory from Helphand's childhood onrecord. It is an account of a fire at his native town :

A part of the town in which we livedit was a Russian provincialtownburnt down one evening. But at first I, a small boy, knew no-thing about it, and continued to play in a corner of the room. Thewindow-panes acquired a beautiful red glow, I noticed it, and it gaveme pleasure. Suddenly the door was flung open, and I saw the frigh-tened face of my mother, who rushed towards me and who took me,without saying a word, into her arms, and carried me away. My motheris running through the street, I am toddling behind her, firmly held bythe arm, stumbling, nearly falling over, puzzled, clueless, but withoutany feeling of fear, surprised and looking around with the wide-openeyes of a child, people running everywhere. They are all carrying beds,chests, pieces of furniture. We hear hurried, hollow voices. A confusionof voices in the semi-darkness of the night. I want to look round, but Icannot, I am being dragged forward too fast. Then we come to an openspace, filled, in two rows, with all kinds of possessions, pieces of furni-ture, beds, etc. There are some of our things already there. An encamp-ment is built from beds and cushions, and I am sat down there withstrict orders not to move. I was not thinking of doing that anyway:everything around me is so unusual, fantastic, it came so unexpectedly,and now I am sitting so snugly among the many soft cushions. The openspace becomes enveloped in darkness. One sees the swaying hand-lampscut across it like large will-o'-the-wisps, they approach us or they merge2 Jehudo Epstein, Mein Weg von Ost nach West, Stuttgart, 1929, p.8 et seq.


into the darkness. At first, one sees a red spot of light in the distance,then nearer and nearer, a growing circle of light, and behind it vague,shadowy outlines of people, carriages, large pieces of furniture. The skyis black, without stars, only in one place a glare can be seen, growingbigger, striving upwards, it hurriedly reaches out and flares up morebrightly, but soon it draws back and grows dimmer, and then againthe lost territory is quickly reclaimed by the glowing surfaces. Dogs arehowling. But with all this going on I feel secure, so peaceful behind theentrenchment, among the enormous, white pillows, that I stretch outand soon doze off, having no notion of the catastrophe that afflicted awhole town.3

The destruction by fire of the Helphands' house was followedby their move to Odessa. They had a long way to go for they hadto traverse the whole length of the Ukraine, north to south, be-fore they reached the Black Sea port. The reason for the family'smove may well have been the fact that Odessa was the birthplaceof Helphand's father. In the circle of his friends, young Help-hand later fondly remembered his family's Odessa origins, wherehis ancestors had been well known for their physical strengthamong the Jewish stevedores in the harbour.

At the time of the family's arrival in the south, early in theeighteen-seventies, Odessa was going through a period of un-precedented prosperity. The town itself was one of the biggesttrading centres of the Empire; in the privileged free port, thedockers handled large cargoes of Ukrainian grain. Russians,Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Turks, Tatars, and Persians made upthe colourful crowds in the streets, where rows of tradesmen'sand artisans' houses occasionally gave way to the splendid whitepalaces of the rich merchants. The open horizons and the sun,the proximity of the sea, and the active, prosperous citizens ofOdessa leading an alfresco existence, combined to create theatmosphere of a Mediterranean town. It did not encourage anysection of its inhabitants to brood and stagnate in isolation: theJewish community in Odessa led a life which bore little resem-blance to that of the Jews in the northern provinces of the 'pale'.Most of them could speak Ukrainian or Russian; religious ortho-doxy had never been strongly entrenched in the town on the3 C. Lehmann and Parvus, Das hungernde Russland, Munich, 1900, pp. 172-3.


Black Sea, and many Jews there discarded the rigid ritual of theirfaith. Some of them belonged among the rich grain merchants, thevital and explosive figures of Isaac Babel's short stories. Theirstrong attachment to life was their main virtue; riches, they knew,came and went. They found as much satisfaction in the risk anduncertainties of their business as in the profit they made.

Although the Odessa Jews were not spared the horrors of mobviolence unleashed after the assassination of Alexander II, theyears young Helphand spent at the Black Sea port provided himwith a Russian background. He went to a local gymnasiumagrammar school that stressed the classical disciplinesand healso received some private tuition in the humanities before hewent to university. But formal education gave Alexander onlyformal qualifications. Influences outside the school were moredecisive for his intellectual development. He returned to themmany years later:I dreamed under the starry heaven of the Ukraine, listened to the surfon the shores of the Black Sea. In my memories the songs of the Ukraineand the fairy tales and other yarns of the master craftsmen from thecentral Russian provinces, who visited my father every summer, gotogether. Shevchenko was the first to acquaint me with the idea of classstruggle. I was enthusiastic about the haidamaki. Mikhailovski, Schedrin,and Uspenski played an important role in my further intellectualdevelopment. John S. Mill's book, annotated by Chernyshevski, was thefirst work on political economy I ever read.4

Such accomplishments were not taught at Russian schools:like many other young men of his generation, Helphand had toacquire them for himself. He learned about class struggle, rathersurprisingly, from Shevchenko, the poet of Ukrainian nationalfreedom; his imagination was fired by the haidamaki, the peasantsand the cossacks of the Dnieper region who had repeatedly re-belled against Polish domination in the eighteenth century. Allthis had specifically local, Ukrainian connexions: the rest of hisspiritual guides Helphand shared with the Russian intelligentsia.Mikhailovski, the journalist and the founder of an influentialschool of thought in sociology; Saltykov-Schedrin, a bureaucrat4 Im Kampf um die Wahrheit, Berlin, 1918, pp. 4-5.


by profession, whose vitriolic satire ridiculed the bureaucracy;Uspenski, one of the founders, in 1879, of the Narodnaia Volya,the secret terrorist organization. Such guides showed youngHelphand the path to a reasoned contempt for the Tsarist order.In addition to the impulses he shared with the Russian intelli-gentsia, his Jewish background may safely be assumed to havecontributed to the formation of his political attitudes.

At the same time, however, he had to face the first problemsand doubts arising out of his revolutionary faith. What were thebest means of furthering the revolution? Should he dedicate him-self to terrorist activity, and follow the example of the NarodnaiaVolya? The party was fast losing its prestige, and was found tohave been riddled with police agents; some radicals had alreadystarted questioning the political effectiveness of terror. 'Going tothe people'in order to establish contact between the intelli-gentsia and the submerged masses, and to introduce them torevolutionary ideasappeared, to Helphand, a more attractivealternative.

He spent the year 1885 together with a friend of his calledZhargorodski, learning a trade and getting to know the workers.The two friends became apprenticed to a locksmith, and subse-quently they tramped from one workshop to another. The peopleHelphand and his friend 'went to' were workers and not peasants,an indication of the path which his political interests would soontake. Nevertheless, the year of experiment proved to Helphandthe falseness of his romantic revolutionary enthusiasm; it is un-likely that he received much inspiration from his friend, forZhargorodski was a simple, unintellectual young man, a naturalrebel. Only their youth could have obscured the fundamentaldifferences between the two friends, and their ways soon parted:Zhargorodski later became a Social Revolutionary, whose con-temporaries in Russia knew him as a fat, uninspired journalistwho lived in poverty with his large family, anaesthetized by alcohol.5

In 1886, when he was nineteen years old, Helphand wentabroad for the first time, hoping that 'travel would resolve mypolitical doubts'.6 Since most of the revolutionary literature was

5 Feliks Kon, Za piatdesat let, Moscow, 1936, vol. 3, p. 254.

6 Im Kampf um die Wahrheit, p. 5.


not available in Russia, and many of the revolutionary leaderslived in exile, there was some justification for the young traveller'shopes. He went to Switzerland: her placid, orderly towns at-tracted the discontented Russians. In Zrich the treasures ofrevolutionary writings lay open to Helphand; he read withfervour, beginning with the early books of Alexander Herzen.

Although the young man may have been impressed with whathe read, he certainly was not satisfied. His practical turn of mindasserted itself. He came to Switzerland immediately after a yearspent among the workers in South Russia, and he knew that verylittle of what he was reading was suitable for their enlightenment.Although he perused all the revolutionary literature he could gethold of in Zurich, he found 'nothing there for the workers apartfrom the book Clever Mechanics and Dickstein's pamphlet'.7 TheKhitraya Mekhanika was a light-weight propaganda handbook,used especially by the populists; Dickstein's pamphlet had a self-explanatory title'Who Lives on Whom'. Although youngAlexander was able to explore revolutionary literature during hisfirst visit to Switzerland, voracious reading did not entirely solvehis doubts. Indeed, the new maze in which he now found himselfwas more complex than the one he had left behind him in Russia.The accumulation of a large body of literature of an unusual kindwas the most striking result of the activities of the Russian intelli-gentsia during the preceding decades. It raised a large number ofquestions, and it gave a bewildering variety of answers. Problemsof the internal development of Russia, of her future, of her placein the world, were examined and many fields of intellectualactivity were drawn on for illustration and evidence.

And then in the early eighteen-eighties, Marxism entered intocompetition for the favours of the Russian intelligentsia. Althoughthe translation of the first volume of Das Kapital, by NikolaiDanielsonan economist and one of Marx's correspondents inRussiahad appeared as early as 1872, Russian Marxism did notemerge as a movement until some ten years later. In 1882, a yearbefore his death, Marx wrote the preface to the Russian transla-tion of his Communist Manifesto of 1848, in which he attempted toprovide an answer to the problem of Russia's future development.7 ibid., pp. 5-6.


He knew that the peasant commune, a form of primitive collectivepropertyan institution on which many Russian writers, includ-ing Alexander Herzen, had placed high hopeswas beingdestroyed, but he was of the opinion that 'if the Russian revolu-tion becomes the signal for the workers' revolution in the West,so that one supplements the other, then the present form of landownership in Russia may be the starting point of a historicaldevelopment'.8

Nevertheless, Russia was an uncharted territory for Marx: themain body of his theories applied to the conditions obtaining inthe highly industrialized countries of western Europe. Russia,on the other hand, was going through the opening stages of in-dustrial development, and Marx's doctrine, even if correct, washardly applicable to her. Why should it then have exercised anattraction on a considerable section of the Russian intelligentsia?Why should they have complicated their already difficult liveswith a doctrine unsuited to Russian conditions? First of all,Marxism was a revolutionary doctrine: although the effectivenessof revolution as a means of political and social progress was soonto be questioned even by the Marxist socialists in the West,revolution remained the Russian radicals' only bright hope.Marxism also offered them a 'scientific', all-embracing explana-tion of human society. It had an authoritative, even a prophetic-ring; it claimed to be not only a dispassionate examination of thepast, but a blue-print for the future. It in fact dealt in terms forwhich the Russian intelligentsia were prepared by their earlierradical literature. In addition, Marx examined the kind of societymany Russians wished to construct: the 'westernizers' of anearlier generation, who maintained that Russia had to follow thepath of western European development, were the intellectualancestors of the Russian Marxists. By adopting Marx's doctrines,the Russians anticipated the development of their country, whilehoping that such a process would provide them with the classicalMarxist revolutionary conditions. They indulged in an interestingpiece of wishful double-thinking.

In 1883, Plekhanov, who had gone into exile three years earlier,started to expound Marxist doctrine in his pioneering works; in

Communist Manifesto, Moscow, 1959 edition, p. 20.


the same year, together with Vera Zasulich, the translator of theCommunist Manifesto, Pavel Axelrod, and Lev Deutsch, he foun-ded the Emancipation of Labour Group, the first RussianMarxist organization. When Helphand visited Zrich some threeyears after its foundation, it was this group of exiles which mostattracted him. He later wrote that a 'programme, which put classstruggle of the proletariat into the foreground, appealed to me'.9But in the same place he remarked that 'as far as Russia was con-cerned, I was disturbed by the fact that Plekhanov's programmehad no place for the peasantry; Russia is, whichever way onelooks at it, an agricultural country'. Helphand had become aMarxist revolutionary: the second remark hinted, however, at acertain confusion at the back of his mind. He had a personaldecision to make: was it possible to be a Russian Marxist? Wasthe description not a contradiction in terms ?

Back in Odessa from his visit to Switzerland, Helphand wasrestless and he did not stay there long. In 1887, less than a yearlater, he left his native country for a much longer time. He re-turned after twelve years, for a brief visit; he had started buildinga new life for himself abroad.

It is possible that, during his stay in Russia between the twotrips abroad in 1886 and 1887, the police became interested inHelphand, and that he had to leave for the sake of his personalsafety. On his return journey from Switzerland, he had had hissuitcase searched for illegal literature, and had been subjected toa thorough personal search on the frontier; a plain-clothes manhad kept him company on the train to Odessa.10 It is certain thathe went through a protracted spiritual and personal crisis at thetime. More important than the problems connected with hisrevolutionary faith were those arising from his Jewish back-ground. In the autobiographical fragments scattered among hislater writings, he tended to play down his Jewish origins, and henever made a single reference to their specific implications innineteenth-century Russia. But he must have witnessed thepogroms of the eighteen-eighties, which reached an especiallyviolent peak in Kiev and Odessa. Such experiences must have


10 G. Lehmann and Parvus, Das hungernde Russland, p. 12.


made young Helphand search widely and intently for a solu-tion to his personal problems. As a Jew, he would not have beenable to rise above the inferior rank of second-class citizen.

Nevertheless, the town where he had spent the best part of hisyouth made an indelible impression on Helphand. Indeed, thevarious aspects of Odessa can be recognized as they unfold them-selves in the adventurous Jew's life. The cosmopolitan atmo-sphere of the town gave him some idea of the infinite variety oflife; its wide horizons meant more than the mere absence ofphysical barriers. Odessa was an eastern town, and it was atrading town. In his later travels Helphand rarely crossed theRhine on his way farther west. He came to lead a wandering life,but within certain limits. France, England, and America, the livesand aspirations of their peoples, the political traditions of thesecountries, remained a closed book to him. In central Europeinside the vast quadrilateral area demarcated by St. Petersburgand Constantinople, Copenhagen and ZrichHelphand felt athome. And when he set out on the road to becoming a rich man,he did so in the manner of the Odessa merchants: grain tradealong the shores of the Black Sea was the foundation of hisfinancial success.

On his return to Switzerland in 1887, Helphand started toshed his former Russian and Jewish identity, discarding his purelyRussian revolutionary interests, and turning towards the studyof political and economic developments farther west. Helphandhimself tells of a characteristic incident which happened to himshortly after his arrival in Switzerland. Plekhanov asked him towrite an article on Belinski, the famous Russian literary critic ofthe first half of the nineteenth century; Helphand refused to doso, because, in his own words, he was then 'busy with problems oflabour legislation and state monopoly'. Plekhanov used theopportunity to admonish young Helphand: 'Do you know what?First of all, you must honour your own national literature.'11

Such patriotic sentiments fell on barren soil. Helphandthought he had more important problems than articles on old-fashioned literary critics to tackle. He felt a desire to get awayfrom the life of the Russian exiles, which could hardly have11

Im Kampf um die Wahrheit, p. 7.


agreed with his mood at the time. He did not settle down in oneof the main exile centres, but went farther afield, and, at thebeginning of the autumn term in 1888, he entered the Universityof Basle. The atmosphere of the quiet bourgeois town on theRhine agreed with his studious mood, and with the exception ofone term in the summer of the following year, for which he trans-ferred to Berne, Helphand spent all his university years in Basle.

Its reputation commended Basle to the young man. JacobBurckhardt, the historian of the Renaissance, Friedrich Nietzsche,the philosopher of the superman, and Alphonse Thun, theauthor of one of the first studies of the Russian revolutionarymovement, had taught there. But when Helphand came to Basle,it was Professor Bucher who struck an especially modern note inhis lectures. He had taught at the University of Dorpat before hecame to Basle early in the eighteen-eighties; at the Swiss univer-sity he lectured on political economy and its history. He wascareful to relate his academic discipline to contemporary econo-mic and political problems; he gave his pupils the benefit of hisexperience as a journalisthe had worked for the FrankfurterZeitungand tried to instil into them a regard for hard facts andan abhorrence of empty theorizing.

He exercised a strong influence on Helphand. PoliticaleconomyHelphand's main subject at Baslewas still an un-established academic discipline. The conservatives amongthe university teachers disapproved of it because it 'adverselyaffected legalistic thinking'.12 Although the warning may haveinfluenced Swiss students, it had no effect on the young Russians.Bucher's lectures dealt with subjects which concerned the Rus-sians most intimately: the fundamental principles of politicaleconomy, questions of contemporary economic development, andespecially the problems of capitalism and socialism. Such a sylla-bus exactly corresponded to the demands Helphand made on auniversity education. Biicher taught him the value of precisestatistical analysis: later, Helphand's Marxism always containeda certain empirical element. Marx was for him a teacher and guiderather than a fountain-head of preconceived ideas.

Helphand's four years at the Swiss university were by no12

Karl Bucher, Lebenserinnerungen, 1847-1890, Tubingen, 1919, vol. 1, p. 325.


means carefree. Acquaintance with the police and the censor, thepogroms and the terrorist societies, made the Russian studentsimpervious to the light-heartedness and youthful navet of theirmore fortunate Swiss colleagues. The Russians were nave,but in a different way. They thought of their studies as a kindof preparatory course for the revolution; they were neitherinterested in a vocational training, nor were they preparing tobecome gentlemen. One of Helphand's contemporaries observedthat if the Swiss students had any problems at all, they wereconnected either with money or with sex, with 'accounting andmarriage'.13 To the Russian students, on the other hand, suchdifficulties did not apply. Most of them lived in acute poverty andthey knew that, below a certain minimum of income, accountingdid not pay; a middle-class marriage was out of the question forthem. There was no prospect of ordered lives before them, and ifthere were, they would have considered it humdrum and dullin comparison with their main preoccupations. The Russianstudents were busy with problems they thought more importantthe future of the world, Russia's place in it, her future develop-mentsuch were the most popular subjects of their endless,meandering conversations. The attics of bourgeois houses inSwiss university towns became the nurseries of future revolu-tionary leaders, who were already starting to disturb the noctur-nal repose of middle-class society.

Helphand learned nothing from his Swiss colleagues: theRussian way of life was much more congenial to him, and untilthe end of his life he preserved a keen distaste for bourgeoisvalues.

But the doubts and questions which he had brought with himfrom Russia on his first visit to Zrich were finally resolved. Theyouthful, romantic admirer of the haidamaki became converted,under the influence of Karl Marx, into a rational, orthis wasthen the fashionable descriptiona 'scientific' socialist. Marxgave him a clear insight into the world of politics; the uncertain-ties of an erstwhile sympathizer of the Narodnaia Volya werereplaced by the self-confidence of a Marxist.

His newly acquired self-confidence was reflected in his13

F. Brupbacher, 60 Jahre Ketzer, Zrich, 1935, p. 53.


academic work. In the Michaelmas term of 1890 he started, onBucher's advice, to write a thesis on the problem of the division oflabour. It gave him an opportunity to apply Marxist methods to aconcrete piece of research. Within six months he was able to puthis ideas on paper. The historical part of the study dealt with theviews on the distribution of labour expressed by the classicalwriters on political economy: Helphand examined in detailthe theories of Adam Smith, Wakefield, and John Mill; hereserved, nevertheless, many more pages for the consideration ofMarx's views. The conceptual framework of Helphand's studyalso pointed to the economist to whom Helphand felt himselfmost indebted: 'the suppression, or, to use a blunt but descrip-tive modern word, the exploitation of the massesslaveryisthe basis of the division of labour.'14 AndMarx's ideas also inspiredthe young student to offer a suggestion which, he thought, woulddo away with the disadvantages of the advancing division oflabour: 4There exist special circumstances that counter theseharmful influencesmainly the organization of the working classand the awakening class consciousness.'15

By the time Helphand completed his study in the summer of1891 an important change had occurred in his faculty. Bucherhad left for Karlsruhe and was replaced by Professor Kozak, ofthe Zrich Polytechnic. Kozak had no sympathy for Helphand'sMarxist approach: he approved the draft of the thesis only aftersome revision. Helphand then had a rough passage at his vivavoce examination; in addition, he did not distinguish himself inhis subordinate subjects, mineralogy and physics. On 8 July 1891he was granted his doctorate, but with a rather disappointingriderritethe equivalent of a third-class degree. The Univer-sity of Basle, Helphand must have perceived, was a 'scientific'but not a socialist institution; it may even have been class-conscious, but it certainly was not proletarian.

In the future, Israel Alexander Helphand, Doctor of Philo-sophy, would never again have his Marxist studies considered bya board of solemn academics. From now on, he would write for14

I. Helphand, Technische Organisation der Arbeit ('Cooperation' und 'Arbeitsteilung'), Einekritische Studie, Fil. Dis., Basle, 1891, p. 50.

15 ibid., p. 72.


the audience of the European proletariat: it might show a greaterunderstanding for his exertions than did the bourgeois professorsof Basle University.

When he finished his studieshe was then twenty-three yearsoldHelphand was faced with the most important decision ofhis life. Should he return to Russia and help to organize theworking class there? Or should he stay in Switzerland with therevolutionary Russian exiles? Or should he shed his Russianidentity, and join one of the western European workers' parties?

He had no desire to return to Russia: there was nothing thereto attract him. He felt an aversion towards her backwardness,perhaps even towards the harshness of her native people. He hadseen western Europe, and was impressed by its material andspiritual achievements. He had written his first study in German,and Germany was for himas for many other Jews from theEastthe key to western Europe. This aversion of Helphand'sto Russia was still more intense in regard to the Russian exiles,and it made the second possibilitynamely to join one of theirgroupsalso distasteful to him. He thought of them as a deadbranch, cut off from the living body of the people. They lived ina world of shadows, where theory became a substitute for realityand talk replaced action. About this young Helphand had feltstrongly at the very outset of his studies: in 1887 he avoidedGeneva and Zrich, the main marshalling-grounds of the exiles;he went to outlying Basle instead. He retained his distrust of theRussian intelligentsia, isolated from the masses, until the end ofhis life.

It was the last choiceto join a west European working-classmovementthat Helphand was prepared to consider seriously.In this way he could both serve socialism and earn a living. As aMarxist, he knew that there existed a profound difference bet-ween the revolutionary struggle in western Europe and inRussia: whereas constitutional and civil liberties were still themain object of the revolution in Russia, western Europe hadarrived at this stage of development in 1848, or, at the latest, in1871. The workers in the West had a socialist aim before them,namely, the overthrow of capitalism and the introduction of asocialist economic order. And in Helphand's view, Germany was


the country most advanced on the path to socialism; the Germanswere running the best organized workers' movement in Europe.Helphand was convinced that the world revolution, which wouldemancipate the proletariat everywhere, would be decided inGermany: the class struggle in Berlin was of much greater impor-tance to him than the opposition against Tsarism in Russia.

Alexander Helphand was the first emigrant to decide to givehis full loyalty and support to a socialist organization in westernEurope. He thus became the predecessor of a number of well-known socialists who made their names before the outbreak of theGreat War: Rosa Luxemburg, Julian Marchlewski, and KarlRadek in Germany, Charles Rapaport in France, and AngelicaBalabanoff in Italy. None of Helphand's successors identifiedthemselves with their adoptive parties as fully as he did.

But it should be said at once that his break with the Russianrevolutionary movement was not as clean as Helphand himselflater chose to remember. Although, until the turn of the century,he took no direct part in the movement, the personal contactswith the exiles he had established in Switzerland kept him intouch with Russian affairs for three decades to come. He mightlook down at the political achievements of the exiles: he would,however, always value highly the personal contacts with hisRussian and Polish friends.

He regarded Plekhanov as too academic, 'classical', and vain.He was much more impressed by the selfless and retiring mannerof Pavel Borisovich Axelrod, the benign patron of a wholegeneration of Russian revolutionaries. Helphand also admiredVera Zasulich, the romantic heroine of the Narodnaia Volya., aneccentric and motherly person, who affectionately called youngHelphand 'the seal'. Lev Deutsch appealed to the adventurousstreak in Helphand: Deutsch had developed the technique ofescaping from Tsarist prisons into a fine art: he was a kind ofrevolutionary Odysseus, whose resourcefulness was surpassedonly by his desire for action.

Apart from the older generation of the Russian revolutionaryleaders, Helphand also became acquainted with a group of Polishstudents in Switzerland, who later came to play important rolesin the history of European socialism. Julian Marchlewski, Rosa


Luxemburg, Leo Yogiches, and Adolf Warszawski-Warski livedin Zrich at the time, where they were studying political econ-omy. Marchlewskiwho later used the pseudonym of Karskiand Rosa Luxemburg came to figure prominently in Helphand'slife.

Late in the summer of 1891, Helphand left Basle for Germany.It was a prosperous and hopeful country that he decided to makehis home. Yet in his own view, his decision had somewhat nar-rower implications: he wanted German Social Democracy, andnot Germany as a whole, to receive him. He had no sympathy forthe conservative, aristocratic, and absolutist side of his adoptedcountry; he gave little thought to the question of how much of aGerman he would have to become by becoming a German SocialDemocrat. As a Marxist, he could perhaps play down the nationalelement involved in his decision; he later wrote: 'WhetherRussian or German, the struggle of the proletariat always remainsthe same, and it knows neither national nor confessional differ-ences.' And he added: 'When I became unfaithful to my nativeRussia, I also became unfaithful to that class from which Ioriginated: the bourgeoisie. My parting of company with theRussian intelligentsia dates from that time.'16

The party which received Helphand into its ranks had existedfor sixteen years. The policy of repression of the socialist move-ment that had been initiated by Bismarck in the early eighteen-seventies had drawn the two main streams of German socialismtogether: at the Gotha congress in 1875 the Lassallianstheolder, non-Marxist movementmerged with Liebknecht's SocialDemocrats, who, in the following years, consolidated their leadingrole in the party. Bismarck's anti-socialist laws lapsed in 1890:from a period of rigorous chicanery, the party emerged unscathed.By then, German socialism had acquired its characteristicfeatures. Belonging to the party did not only imply adherence toa certain set of political beliefs; it was a way of life. Social Demo-cracy claimed to look after its members from birth until death andit demanded, in return, their undivided loyalty. A similar demandwas made by the Prussian State and the Catholic Church: thethree-cornered fight was complicated and hard, and the resulting16

Im Kampf um die Wahrheit, p. 7.M.R.-c


tensions were reflected inside the party itself. At a party congress,Vollmar, the leader of the Bavarian socialists, was accused by oneof his comrades of not really understanding the struggle of theworking class because he was a wealthy man; the accusation thata party member was 'in the pay of the state' was a serious andfrequently used charge. The Social Democrat leadership becamelargely a lower middle-class preserve; the attitudes and moralityof this class dominated the organization. It was run primarily forthe benefit of the German workers; only lip-service was paid tothe international brotherhood of the proletariat'. Nor did theparty have any great interest in foreign policy or in developmentsoutside Germany. It was parochial but dedicated, with limitedhorizons, but confident.

Stuttgart was Helphand's first stop. The local party organiza-tion enjoyed, at this time, a special position in the socialist move-ment; it was a suitable jumping-off ground for a socialist careerin Imperial Germany, and it received the young Russian withgreat sympathy. It was dominated by two socialists of conse-quence : Karl Kautsky and Clara Zetkin.

Nothing very kind is written about Kautsky nowadays. He isgenerally regarded as an eclectic and a popularizer of ideas,who could seldom call a thought his own. He of course wrotetoo much, too dryly and didactically; Kautsky the politicianand writer faithfully reflected Kautsky the petit bourgeois, thedispirited patriarch, who seemed to have been born alreadyold. But when Helphand first met him, Kautsky, together withFriedrich Engels, was a leading ideologist of European socialism.And after the death of Engels, Kautsky, as his friend and heir,achieved a position of power such as only a few socialists mightsince have claimed. He was the pope of socialism, a kind of oracleof the approaching revolution. He had devoted admirers amongthe working class, and he profoundly influenced the youngsocialist intelligentsia. As the editor of the leading theoreticalorgan of the party, the Neue Zeit, he carefully tended journalistictalent: he was the foster-parent and mentor to a generation ofyoung socialist writers and theorists in the whole of Europe. Hishouse was an editorial office, a university, a school of journalism,a meeting-place for socialists who came to learn and talk there.


Kautsky recognized talent when he encountered it, and heopened the gate for Helphand to German party journalism. Asearly as the end of 1891, Neue Zeit published his first contribu-tions signed 'Ignatieff' or initialled 'I.H.': a review, an essay onBohm-Bawerk's theory of the accumulation of capital, and an-other one on the position of Jewish workers in Russia.

Clara Zetkinthe other leading light of the Stuttgart partyorganizationalso helped the young man. This acid, embittered,socialist suffragette was not to be outdone by Kautsky in kind-ness. As the head of the socialist women's societies she ran herown magazine, Gleichheit. Helphand wrote for it, and its feescontributed to his meagre income.

But it hardly covered his day-to-day needs. His appearancewas pitiful; his trousers came down in shreds to the trodden-down heels and he wore an oily, second-hand working man's cap.He gave the impression of extreme poverty. Yet he made anindelible impression on his German comrades: he was an exoticphenomenon among them. In the tatty clothes there was a power-ful body, supported by rather short legs: his head was solid, witha high forehead, further enlarged by the beginnings of prematurebaldness. Karl Kautsky's children called their father's Russianfriend 'Dr. Elefant' (this, and not helfende Hand, was inciden-tally, the etymological origin of his name): there was indeed acertain heavy, powerful formlessness about his appearance. Hewas exuberant, larger than life, and used striking, angulargestures when he spoke: his vitality was somewhat overpowering.

By the end of 1891, Stuttgart had become too small for him.He wanted to go to Berlin, and Kautsky gave him the introduc-tions he needed. His arrival at the nerve-centre of German poli-tics and commerce did not improve his material circumstances.He took a cheap room in a working-class district in North Berlin,and from there he had to walk several miles to the editorial officesof Vorwrts, the main daily organ of the party, in Beuthstrasse,carrying his contributions to the newspaper in his pocket. Hecould afford neither the tram fare nor the postage.

Nevertheless, he made a successful start in his career as ajournalist. All the most important party newspapers and periodi-cals printed articles by him; in 1892 he received a commission


from Vorwrts to write a series of articles on the famine in Russia.The examination of the Russian famine, following the catas-

trophic harvest of 1891, was his first major success in socialistjournalism.17 His German comrades were not accustomed to thepresentation of a well-informed analysis of the foreign scene:Helphand's views sounded convincing, and the Social Democratsaccepted themas they were to do on many later occasionsasauthoritative and above question.

Helphand did not regard the famine as an accident, but ratheras a 'chronic illness of long standing'. The emancipation of theserfs in the eighteen-sixties had transformed Russia into a pro-ducer of goods, and she was now undergoing the transition fromsimple to complicated forms of production. The peasantry wouldsupply the necessary reserve of labour for the fast development ofa modern industry in Russia: the place of the impoverishedpeasants, who had so far acted as a reliable support of the Tsaristregime, would be taken by the rising bourgeoisie. Nothing couldbe expected, Helphand wrote, of the Russian middle class in theway of political progressthe freedom to enrich itself wouldbecome essential for this class, and it could be guaranteed onlyunder the established order. The proletariat was, Helphandinformed his readers, the only reliable revolutionary force inRussia.

So far, Helphand's reasoning was similar to that of Fried-rich Engels and Georg Plekhanov, who also concerned themselveswith the famine. But in his conclusions, Helphand went muchfarther than either of the two older men. Engels concluded thatthe weakening of Russia would mean safety for Europe; Plek-hanov described the famine as a 'prologue' to the rise of theworkers' movement in Russia. Helphand, on the contrary,thought in much larger dimensions, in terms of decades and con-tinents. He was not misled by temporary set-backs in Russia: heforecast rapid progress in industry and in agriculture; in someten or fifteen years the country would flourish in, of course, thecapitalist sense. Europe would thus find itself pushed out fromits position of economic hegemony by Russia and by America.The resulting competition would bring about, in Germany, an17

Four articles entitled 'Die Lage in Russland', printed in Vorwrts in June 1892.


increase in the price of corn: the European proletariat should beprepared for a period of sharp wage disputes.

Helphand's articles on Russia contained two points whichlater appeared in the key places of his thinking: the position ofEurope between the two great capitalist powers, Russia andAmerica, and the lack of revolutionary enthusiasm of the Russianbourgeoisie.

In a postscript to his earlier series of articles,18 Helphand madehis first contribution to the relations between the Russian andthe German socialists. Until this intervention, the Germansocialists had regarded the narodnikithe decaying populistrevolutionary movementas the embodiment of progressiveforces in Russia. Helphand demonstrated to his comrades theerror of their ways. He was highly critical of the populists, and hepointed to the Marxist Emancipation of Labour Group, placing itfirmly among the European working-class movements. His argu-ments made a profound impression on the German party. Thecontributions of the two narodniki correspondents to Vorwrts,Lavrov and Rusanov, ceased to appear in the pages of the SocialDemocrat organ; in December 1892, the newspaper printed anopen letter from Plekhanov to Liebknecht, the first piece writtenby a Russian Marxist ever to appear in the newspaper.

Nevertheless, the Prussian police became interested in theyoung man before his name became familiar to the Germansocialists. The Ministry of the Interior closely followed his literaryactivities; the file of press-cuttings of his articles was growingfast. As early as the beginning of 1893 his presence in the capitalappeared so dangerous to the Prussian officials that heas anundesirable alienwas served with a police order to leave Berlin.

Prussia was not to remain the only federal State where Help-hand was accorded this kind of treatment.

'Die Sozialdemokratie in Russland', Vorwrts, 23 September 1892.

2The Great Fortune

For two years after he had been expelled from Berlin,Helphand led the life of a wandering socialist scholar. He trav-elled between Dresden and Munich, Leipzig and Stuttgart, withoccasional expeditions to Zrich where his Polish friends,Marchlewski and Luxemburg, were always ready to listen eagerlyto the descriptions of his experiences in Germany. He travelledlight, frequently, and invariably third class.

But despite the way he lived, his position in the German partywas full of promise. Apart from his qualifications as an economist,he possessed an intimate knowledge of foreign countriesanunusual accomplishment among the German socialists; he was apolyglot writer and journalist, which made it possible for him toconsult, in the original, the publications that concerned hisspecial interests. He found it easy to place his pieces in the social-ist press: his theoretical studies in Neue Zeit were regarded ashighly as his occasional articles in the daily press. Karl Kautskywas so favourably impressed by his new, still only twenty-six-year-old contributor, that he recommended him to his Austriancomrades as a correspondent for their main organ, the ViennaArbeiterzeitung. In a letter to Viktor Adler, a highly intelligentand sophisticated doctor, now leader of the Austrian SocialDemocrats, Kautsky wrote:

'Here we have a Russian, Dr. Helphand, who has spent sixyears in Germany, a very shrewd chap . . . who attentively fol-lows German developments and who has good judgement. . . .He is living in Stuttgart, because he has been expelled fromBerlin. He would like best to become naturalized in Austria, inorder to be able to join the movement openly. His naturalizationin Germany is out of the question, since his deportation order.

The Great Fortune 27

The party would gain in him an excellent, well-trained worker.Do you regard naturalization as possible?'1

In his letter to Adler, Kautsky mentioned the problem thatvery much occupied Helphand at the time: the question of hisnaturalization in Germany or Austria. It mattered little to himwhether it was to be Prussia, Wurttemberg, Bavaria, or Austria,that would grant him the rights of a citizen. Before he moved toStuttgart he had written from Switzerland to Wilhelm Liebknecht,editor-in-chief of Vorwrts: 'I am looking for a fatherland, wherecan one get a fatherland cheaply?'2

His enthusiasm for German Social Democracy made him over-estimate the actual political influence of the Berlin party execu-tive. Instead of gaining Prussian citizenship, he was expelled fromPrussia: the negotiations in Vienna, in spite of Viktor Adler'shelp, led to nothing; another attempt in 1896, this time inWiirttemberg, also brought no success. Until the First WorldWar, Helphand, in fact, had no defence against the Germanpolice. And when, in February 1916, he finally became a Prussiancitizen, it was in circumstances that the young revolutionarycould hardly have foreseen in 1893.

In spite of the uncertainty of his legal position, Helphandvigorously participated in the political discussions then takingplace in Germany. In this respect, no reserve or carefulness wasapparent in his behaviour. His German comrades were oftenastonished by the uninhibited and self-confident manner inwhich he conducted his public polemics; he made his mark as anoutspoken and independent young revolutionary.

The German socialists were treated to a preview of Help-hand's assertiveness when, in October 1893, he put forward hisviews on the elections to the Prussian Diet in the Neue Zeit. Asan expression of their disapproval of the three-tier suffrage, theSocial Democrats had never taken part in the Prussian elections,and for a long time this practice was allowed to continue un-challenged. Finally, before the elections in 1893, a distinguishedvoice condemned the socialist attitude to the Diet. Eduard Bern-stein, then living in exile in London, was, together with Engels1 V. Adler, Briefwechsel mit August Bebel und Karl Kautsky, Vienna, 1954, p. 182.


28 The Merchant of Revolutionand Kautsky, a member of the Marxist ideological triumvirate.An inquiring thinker, he was one of the least dogmatic of theparty theorists. Bernstein suggested that, despite their customaryattitude, the socialists should take part in the forthcomingPrussian elections: he pointed out that abstention was farfrom being an effective political weapon. The socialists shouldlay aside their objections to, in Bismarck's words, 'the poorest ofall election systems', and take part in the elections.

Bernstein's suggestions were not well received in Germany.The Neue Zeit wrote that 'it might work, but it doesn't'; Vorwrts referred to a 'fatal mistake'. The old socialist guard were

clearly attached to their demonstration of moral disapproval: likeBernstein, Helphand was unimpressed by this show of senti-mentality. Under the pseudonym Unus he made a plea, in theNeue Zeit, in support of Bernstein's suggestions. His article wasin fact a sermon to his comrades on the importance of the Diet,which controlled justice and the budget of the Prussian State.Such an influential institution could not be, according to Help-hand, left at the mercy of the reactionary parties. He realized thatthe political influence of the socialist fraction would be small; butthe socialists could use the Diet as an agitation platform. 'Theenlightenment of the masses can be achieved by action, by politi-cal activity, by social struggle.'3 As far as Helphand was con-cerned, inactivity and reserve were quite unsuitable as means toconduct the class struggle.

The German socialists who read the attack on their sacro-sanct practice in the Neue Zeit were puzzled by the identity of theperson behind the pseudonym. Who would dare, they asked,support Bernstein's heresies, after the party had made its mindup in such a unanimous manner? But before the pseudonym wasdeciphered, Helphand was ready for another foray.

In the summer of 1894 the socialists in the Bavarian Diet, ledby Georg von Vollmar, decided to support the government'sbudget proposals. Once again, a tradition of the party was aboutto be challenged: to withhold support for the budget was gener-ally regarded as a demonstration against the established order.

Helphand thought the incident important enough to release a3 Unus, 'Die preussischen Landtagswahlen, Neue Zeit, 1893-4, vol. 2, p. 44.


broadside against his comrades in Bavaria. Again, he signed thearticle with a pseudonym: this time it was Parvus. It remainedwith Helphand until the end of his life. As Parvus he would be,from now on, praised and disapproved of, attacked and admired.But when the first article by Parvus appeared, the German social-ists realized that they could not afford to ignore the name infuture.

Helphand's article in the Neue Zeit on support for the Bavarianbudget shocked the party out of its complacency. 'Not a singleman and not a single penny', Helphand proclaimed on thequestion of support for the regime. 'Support for the budget isequivalent to the support of the predominant political order,because it would make available the means for the maintenanceof this order.'4

Opposition to the budget proposals was, according to Parvus,the most powerful 'means of parliamentary struggle' at the dis-posal of the partythe best way of expressing its oppositionalstandpoint. He could not understand how support for the budgetcould be wrong in theory but right in political practice. 'Whenone is no longer able to reconcile theory and practice, to deducepractice from theory . . . it is a certain sign that something iswrong with the one or the other side.'5

This article by Parvus set off a discussion inside the socialistmovement which continued, intermittently, until the outbreak ofwar. Did support for the budgeteven when it brought substan-tial concessions from the governmentmean a compromise withthe established order, or was it merely a part of the give and takeof political life? Was it opportunism or political wisdom? Theparty was unable to find an answer acceptable to all its regionalorganizations. Parvus thus opened a wound which it was impos-sible to heal. The following party congress at Frankfurt in 1894witnessed the first debate of principle in regard to this question:it was an inconclusive engagement. As Helphand had no mandateto the congress, Fritz Kundert, a delegate from the Halle con-stituency, had undertaken to speak on Helphand's behalf, and to

4 Parvus, 'Keinen Mann und keinen Groschen, Einige Betrachtungen uber das

bayerische Budget', Neue Zeit, 1894-5, vol. 1, p. 81.5 ibid., p. 86.

30 The Merchant of Revolutionlead the attack against Vollmar and the Bavarians. The majorityof the delegates preferred, however, to withdraw into a position ofneutrality, and the result of the fight remained undecided. Parvuswon no victory, but he had made a name for himself.

Bruno Schnlank, editor-in-chief of the socialist LeipzigerVolkszeitung, read the article by Parvus with great interest.Schnlank, a man with artistic leanings, had a liking for eccen-trics; he discerned in Parvus the kind of talent he needed on hisnewspaper. From Leipzig, Schnlank had initiated a journalisticrevolution: from a rather ponderous vehicle for socialist agitationhe attempted to transform the Volkszeitung into a modern dailynewspaper, which would capture its readers' interest and informthem, in a swift and comprehensive manner, of current events.Such an experimentit in fact meant that Schnlank enteredinto competition with the bourgeois presswas viewed by theparty with consternation. Only many years later, when theLeipzig experiment could be regarded as a success, did otherGerman socialist newspapers follow Schnlank's pioneeringpolicy.

At the beginning of 1895, Schnlank was convinced that hehad found a suitable assistant in Helphand. He invited the youngman to come to Leipzig as an editor of the Volkszeitung. Helphandcould not afford to turn the offer down: it meant a secure positionin German journalism, a position from which he could betterinfluence the politics of the party.

Schnlank was not disappointed. The young immigrant fromRussia soon proved his ability as a journalist. The articles hewrote for the Volkszeitung did not lack in substance or conviction;the political analysis contained in them was far-reaching, inter-laced with considerations of principle; they were based on soundfacts, and their argument moved effortlessly. Schnlank alsoliked Helphand as a person. Their conversations which could notbe finished in the editorial offices in the evening were usuallywound up, late at night over a glass of wine, at the ThuringerHof. Helphand's zest for work appeared to have no limits. After asleepless night he was back at his desk early in the morning, freshand ready for another day. The early months of the friendshipbetween Schnlank and Helphand were almost idyllic: the calm


of their relationship was suddenly broken, by a difference ofopinion on a matter of principle, late in the summer of 1895.

Together with Georg von Vollmar, Schnlank had suggested,at the 1894 party congress, that a committee should be set up toformulate a programme of agrarian agitation in the coming year.Vollmar and Schnlank believed that the Social Democrats shouldlook after the interests of the small peasants, and draw the ruralpopulation into their organization.

Schnlank became a member of the committee which was setup at the congress: before it properly embarked on its delibera-tions, Engels published, in the Neue Zeit, a forceful warningagainst the possibility of ideological misconceptions in theagrarian question. Engels reminded the German socialists thatthe progressive concentration of industrial and agriculturalpropertythe trend towards large economic units forecast byMarxwould eventually destroy the small peasants. The custo-dian of the great fortune of Marxist inheritance appeared reluc-tant to see the German socialists formulate a tactical line inregard to the party's agitation in the countryside: he elegantlyavoided the issue by his proposal that the party should do nothingfor the peasants.

Karl Kautsky and Viktor Adler were outspoken in their con-demnation of any attempt to look after the peasants; EduardDavid, on the other hand, a former teacher from the wine-growingdistrict of the Rhine, supported the necessity of a constructiveagrarian programme. Among the committee, opinion was equallydivided. Its findings took the form of a compromise which satis-fied no one. Bebel, who had taken a mildly orthodox position,complained to Kautsky of a 'bastardization' of the party pro-gramme. He asked Kautsky to put the committee's findings,without any regard to the comrades who had worked them out,'under a magnifying glass and edit them'.6

Before Kautsky was able to take up Bebel's suggestion, Parvuslaunched, from Leipzig, a ruthless campaign against the sup-porters of the agrarian programme. Although Schnlank intendedto recommend the committee's findings to the party, he wasbroadminded enough to allow Helphand to examine them in the

6 A letter from A. Bebel to K. Kautsky, 11 July 1895, Kautsky-Archiv.

32 The Merchant of Revolutioncolumns of his newspaper. The young man did not regard theeditor's magnanimity as a sufficient reason for restraint on hisown part.

Helphand's series of articles treated the committee's findingsas a worthless scrap of paper. If the party adopted the improve-ment of the existing order as its task, he wrote, 'for what purposethen the social-revolutionary struggle?'7 A social revolutionshould be the aim of the party, and not 'petty reforms'. Help-hand's main charge against the findings of the committee wasthat they were unrealistic and unpractical, because they were notrevolutionary enough.

On the whole, Helphand's views corresponded with those ofthe majority of his comrades who attended the party congress inBreslau in 1895. After three days of heated debate, the congressrejected the programme of the agrarian committee. Nevertheless,the decision made in Breslau did not satisfy the young man inLeipzig. There seemed to be no end to his acid comments in theVolkszeitung and in the Neue Zeit. Even the patient and broad-minded Schnlank could not stand such overpowering fanaticism.He saw no other way of stopping his assistant's tirades, than tofire Helphand, which he finally did.

This might well have been a serious set-back to the youngman's career. Fortunately, the Dresden socialists were at the timelooking for a new editor-in-chief for their financially ailingSchsische Arbeiterzeitung. They needed a man like Parvus: theywanted to appoint to the office someone who could put the news-paper on a sound financial basis. Parvus accepted the offer. Hewas fully compensated in Dresden for his swift exit from Leipzig.

Until the spring of 1896 the Arbeiterzeitung had been edited byGeorg Gradnauer, who then joined Vorwrts in Berlin. The restof the editorial board stayed behindEmil Eichhorn, who be-came head of the Berlin police force during the revolution of1918, was one of its members. When Helphand took over thedirection of the newspaper, Dr. Julian Marchlewski, his Polishfriend from Switzerland, came to help him: Helphand alsosecured contributions from young Rosa Luxemburg, whose first7 The series of articles was published in the Leipziger Volkszeitung on 18, 19, 22, 24,31 July, and on 1 and 2 August 1895.


articles in the German party press appeared in the Dresdennewspaper.

First of all, Helphand gave his attention to the state of thepaper's finances. In order to make the newspaper profitable, hecontemplated the acquisition of its own printing-presses; but thecredit he asked for was too high, and the party executive inBerlin turned down his request; the leaders there liked theprovincial press to look after itself, without making demands onthe central exchequer. Only the Berlin Vorwrts was in a privi-leged position, and Wilhelm Liebknecht, its chief editor, did hisutmost to maintain it.

Helphand was undeterred by the refusal from the party execu-tive; he secured an offer of help from the trade unions. Theirgenerous credit, together with some private contributions,provided enough capital for the purchase of a printing-press forthe newspaper. And success was not long in coming: as Parvushad calculated, the finances of the newspaper soon improved tosuch an extent that its balance-sheet began to show a small profit.8

As far as editorial policy and the make-up of the newspaperwere concerned, Helphand was much less successful. His temperand harshness made co-operation with his editorial board adelicate problem: his conflicts with them often just stopped shortof physical violence. The situation eventually became so strainedthat Helphand moved to Stuttgart, from where he tried to guidethe editorial policy of the paper.

Even its make-up reflected the editor's predilections. Heseemed to have forgotten everything that Schnlank had taughthim. Instead of offering his readers concise information, newsaccompanied by short, sure-fire comment, he printed long seriesof endless leading articles, often spilling over the front page,which could be reprintedas they frequently werein the formof rather big pamphlets. He treated the Arbeiterzeitung as if itwere his own publishing enterprise, serving no other purposethan as a receptacle of his own unlimited journalistic output.Schnlank, his erstwhile guide, was shocked by the 'anarchy'reigning in Dresden; even Rosa Luxemburg, who otherwise held

8 Parvus, 'Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie', Die Glocke, 1915, p. 30; cf. Im Kampf um die

Wahrheit, p. 21.


Helphand's writing in high regard, called the Arbeiterzeitung 'themost neglected paper'.9

However shocked the professional journalists may have been,the working-class readers of the Arbeiterzeitung and, even more,the young socialist intellectuals, read Helphand's articles withenthusiasm. They were unconcerned with journalistic formulas:they were more impressed by the spectacle of the newspapermoving swiftly into action when a political controversy flared up;they liked its forthright attitude to matters that were overlookedby their comrades in Berlin, usually out of fear of governmentaction; they were delighted to read Marxist tracts that madesense even to ill-educated workers. The voice of the Saxon partyorganization could now be heard all over Germany; in Dresden,'the Russian', or 6Dr. Barfuss'Parvus in Saxon dialectwasspoken of with respect.

With the support of the local organization behind him, Parvuswas able to exercise a considerable influence on the climate ofopinion inside the German party. For two years he continued toinundate the party executive and the congresses with suggestions,criticism, and polemic. He was obsessed by the idea of revolution,and he conducted, single-handed, a war on the self-satisfactionand torpor of many members of the party. After the agrariancontroversy had died down, Helphand remorselessly continuedthe argument. The question had been whether the policy oftrying to win the support of the peasants for the party be aban-doned because it ran counter to Marxist dogma: Parvus wassingle-minded in his defence of the purity of the Marxist laws ofdevelopment. In his view it was not the theory but political prac-tice that needed shaking up. He intended to prove to his Germancomrades that they had to revise their policy within the frame-work of Marxist theory, that European socialists could not affordto wait, hands folded in their laps, for the automatic collapse ofcapitalism. To stand still meant, for him, to retreat; he arguedforcefully that the German party should use its strength for theconquest of one citadel of capitalism after the other.

He publicized his views on the tactics of the attack soon after9 In 'Einige Briefe Rosa Luxemburgs und andere Dokumente', Bulletin of the Inter-national Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, 1952, No. 1, p. 17.


he had taken up the job on the Arbeiterzeitung in Dresden.Rumours were in circulation, at the time, of the possibility of areactionary coup d'tat which would do away with general suf-frage on the federal level: this occasioned Helphand's examina-tion, in the Neue Zeit, of the effectiveness of a political massstrike. His series of articles entitled 'Coup d'tat and the PoliticalMass Strike'10 was intended to convince the German party that,although it could no longer fight on the barricades against amodern army (Engels had made this point some time ago), it wasnot entirely defenceless in regard to the power of the state. In themass strike the party possessed an up-to-date weapon. Parvus atfirst regarded the strike as a means of defence, a show of power,which had the advantage of being legal.

Again, together with Bernstein, who had first discussed thestrike in the Neue Zeit some five years before, Helphand initiateda discussion of socialist tactics, which continued to occupy partycongresses until the outbreak of the First World War. The laterdiscussion, however, in which Karl Kautsky, Henrietta Roland-Hoist, and Rosa Luxemburg figured prominently, was of littleinterest to Helphand. He had said his last word on the subjectbefore the beginning of the official party debate, when, in August1904, he raised the strike from a weapon of defence to an instru-ment of attack. The disruption in the life of the state occasionedby the strike, he then added, would force the party into a positionin which a 'basic decision' would have to be taken: in otherwords, the party would have to engage in an open contest forpower in the state. Such a strike could no longer mean, in thewords of Jean Jaures, 'tactics of despair', but a 'method ofrevolution'.11 By then Helphand did not expect the leaders ofGerman Social Democracy to be shifted from their position by theforce of his arguments; he was unmoved when his concept of massstrike was described as 'general nonsense'. He was hoping that,sooner or later, political events would make his points for him.

10 Staatsstreich und politischer Massenstreik', Neue Zeit, 1895-6, vol. 2, pp. 199-206.

261-6, 304-11, 356-64, 389-95. In 1897, the articles appeared as a pamphlet,entitled 'Wohin fhrt die politische Massregelung der Sozialdemokratie? Kritik derPohtischen Reaktion in Deutschland'. The quotations given here are indicatedfording to the pagination of the pamphlet.11

Parvus, 'Der Generalstreik', in Aus der Weltpolitik, Munich, 16 August 1904.


His analysis of the mass strike brought Helphand's thinkingon the problem of instilling a new vigour into the socialiststruggle to another point of departure. This was the total andtight organization of the proletariat. Socialist sympathies or evenmembership of the party were not enough for him. The politicalorganization had to be reinforced by the trade unions, whichwould represent the basic material interests of the workers. Inthis respect, Helphand was again little concerned with the lowview of the value of the trade unions which the Berlin partyexecutive had adopted. At the Koln party congress in 1893, Bebelhad expressed the opinion that 'for natural and self-evidentreasons . . . one lifeline after another will be cut off' from thetrade unions: Helphand violently disagreed with this sentiment,and he wrote: 'The near future belongs, in Germany, to thetrade unions.'12 Every trade union fight was a class fight, andevery class fight was a political fight: the trade unions completedand lightened the political work of the party.

Although Helphand harped on the organizational indolenceand petty suspicion of the party executive in regard to the tradeunionsthey were not directly subordinate to the executivehesupplemented his criticism with a number of constructive sug-gestions. Social Democracy, he argued again and again in a seriesof articles, must learn how to use its own strength. The prole-tarian masses could not be contained within the movement in theexpectation of a revolution alone, a revolution that was to takeplace at an unspecified time in the future. The workers were afterimmediate and concrete gains. Helphand regarded the shorteningof working hours as an aim that could be successfully achieved;the slogan concerning the eight-hour day, coined at the founda-tion congress of the Second International in 1889, he regarded asa magic formula that could be used to inspire the masses to a moreintensive fight against the established order.

From Dresden he caused two resolutions to be put before theGotha congress in 1896, which would bind the party to take theinitiative in respect of the eight-hour day. When the speakers atthe congress said that such ideas, although 'stimulating' were'utopian', and that 'demands that cannot be achieved [should not12

Leipziger Volkszeitung, 20 and 22 June 1895.


be] put forward as resolutions', Helphand was far from dis-couraged. He tried again in the following year. He suggested tothe Hamburg congress in 1897 that the demand for the eight-hourday should become the main plank in the socialist platform at thenext general election. After his suggestion had once again fallenflat, he took it upon himself, in 1901, to surprise the party with aready-made draft law: all the socialist deputies had to do was toput it before the Reichstag. Bebel, for one, was unimpressed withHelphand's legislative abilities. He informed the Dresden con-gress in 1903 that he himself also wanted a law concerning thelength of working hours. But the evidence in this case was socomplex that he preferred the law to be drafted by experts, suchas the Prussian 'Privy Councillors'.13

BebePs pronouncement finally broke Helphand's patience.So much respect for the authorities, such coyness and lack ofpolitical initiative was beyond his power of understanding. Hefuriously reminded Bebel that 'complete withdrawal from allmatters of parliamentary initiative would mean . . . only pureopposition. An anti-government attitude would become thelode-star of party tactics.'14

Again and again Helphand attacked the optimism that hadnourished German Social Democracy since it threw off, in 1890,the fetters of Bismarck's anti-socialist laws. This optimism founda classical expression in the words of August Bebel: 'The bour-geois society is working so forcefully towards its own downfallthat we only have to wait for the moment to pick up the powerthat drops from its hands.'15

In an atmosphere of such tawdry illusion, Helphand's plansfor the unfolding of offensive revolutionary tactics appearedmore than ephemeral. His occasional pin-pricks did not move theworthies on the executive in Berlin from their optimistic lethargy.Instead, while Helphand was preaching the course of a militantrevolution from Dresden, another, equally distinctive voice washeard. Eduard Bernstein started his funeral oration over thegrave of the revolution.13

Protokoll Dresden, 1903, pp. 311 et seq.14

Parvus, 'Nutzloser Streit', Aus der Weltpolitik, 31 August 1903.15

Erfurt Protokoll, 1891, p. 172.M.R.-D


In October 1897, the first of a series of articles by Bernsteinentitled 'Problems of Socialism' appeared:16 they confronted theparty with some of its unquestioned, favourite assumptions. Thecapitalist system, Bernstein argued, was far from breaking down.The economic development of the past years had proved that theperiodic crises forecast by Marx had lost their sharp edge andwere having little effect on the existing order. The socialist party,Bernstein suggested, would do well to take note of the new factsof capitalism, and then proceed to draw the right conclusionsfrom them: instead of waiting passively for a distant revolution,the outcome of the breakdown, the party should unite in a deter-mined effort of reform which wou

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