The
Zimmerwald Conference was held in
ZimmerwaldZimmerwald was until December 31, 2003 an independent municipality in the Canton of Berne, Switzerland. It is located on a hill in the proximity of the city of Berne in the Bernese Mittelland...
,
SwitzerlandSwitzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities...
, from September 5 through September 8, 1915. It was an international socialist conference, which saw the beginning of the end of the coalition between
revolutionary socialistsThe term revolutionary socialism refers to Socialist tendencies that advocate the need for fundamental social change through revolution, as a strategy to achieve a socialist society...
(
communistsCommunism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general. Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in human...
) and
reformistReformism is the belief that gradual democratic changes in a society can ultimately change a society's fundamental economic relations and political structures...
socialists (social democrats) in the
Second InternationalThe Second International was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
.
The conference had 38 delegates from countries such as
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
,
PolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe . Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
,
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
,
SwitzerlandSwitzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities...
,
BulgariaBulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a country in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe. Bulgaria borders five other countries: Romania to the north , Serbia and the Republic of Macedonia to the west, and Greece and Turkey to the south...
,
RomaniaRomania is a country located in Southeastern and Central Europe, North of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea. Almost all of the Danube Delta is located within its territory...
,
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
,
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
, The Netherlands,
SwedenSweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe...
, and
NorwayNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a country in Northern Europe occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as Jan Mayen and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard under the Spitsbergen Treaty...
. (No Norwegians actually participated in the Zimmerwald Conference, but the Swedish socialist
Ture NermanTure Nerman was a Swedish socialist. As a journalist and author, he was a well-known political activist in his time. He also wrote poems and songs.Nerman was a vegetarian and a strict teetotaler...
represented Norway.) On the eve of the conference, V.
The
Zimmerwald Conference was held in
ZimmerwaldZimmerwald was until December 31, 2003 an independent municipality in the Canton of Berne, Switzerland. It is located on a hill in the proximity of the city of Berne in the Bernese Mittelland...
,
SwitzerlandSwitzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities...
, from September 5 through September 8, 1915. It was an international socialist conference, which saw the beginning of the end of the coalition between
revolutionary socialistsThe term revolutionary socialism refers to Socialist tendencies that advocate the need for fundamental social change through revolution, as a strategy to achieve a socialist society...
(
communistsCommunism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general. Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in human...
) and
reformistReformism is the belief that gradual democratic changes in a society can ultimately change a society's fundamental economic relations and political structures...
socialists (social democrats) in the
Second InternationalThe Second International was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
.
The conference had 38 delegates from countries such as
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
,
PolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe . Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
,
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
,
SwitzerlandSwitzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities...
,
BulgariaBulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a country in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe. Bulgaria borders five other countries: Romania to the north , Serbia and the Republic of Macedonia to the west, and Greece and Turkey to the south...
,
RomaniaRomania is a country located in Southeastern and Central Europe, North of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea. Almost all of the Danube Delta is located within its territory...
,
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
,
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
, The Netherlands,
SwedenSweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe...
, and
NorwayNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a country in Northern Europe occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as Jan Mayen and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard under the Spitsbergen Treaty...
. (No Norwegians actually participated in the Zimmerwald Conference, but the Swedish socialist
Ture NermanTure Nerman was a Swedish socialist. As a journalist and author, he was a well-known political activist in his time. He also wrote poems and songs.Nerman was a vegetarian and a strict teetotaler...
represented Norway.) On the eve of the conference, V. I. Lenin organized a small group of socialist internationalists, the "
Zimmerwald LeftThe Zimmerwald Left was a revolutionary minority fraction at the Zimmerwald Peace Conference of 1915, headed by Lenin. The Left of the Zimmerwald Congress was made up of eight out of 38 people: Lenin, Zinoviev , J.A. Berzin , Karl Radek , Julian Borkhat , Fritz Platten , Zeth Höglund and Ture Nerman...
," which protested the centrist and centrist-leaning majority of the conference, the "Zimmerwald center", headed by
Robert GrimmRobert Grimm was a Swiss Socialist politician and former President of the Swiss National Council.Grimm was a leading member of the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland and opposed the First World War, which after the collapse of the Second International made him work closely with the world...
.
The main question discussed at the conference was about the struggle of the
proletariatThe proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class; a member of such a class is proletarian. Originally it was identified as those people who had no wealth other than their sons...
for peace during
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
. In the course of discussion of this question, revolutionary socialists presented a resolution and manifesto which:
- condemned the imperialistic
Imperialism, as defined by the dictionary of human geography, is “the creation and maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination.” Imperialism, in many ways, is described...
character of the world war;
- condemned social chauvinism
Social chauvinism can be described as aggressive or fanatical patriotism, particularly during time of war, in support of one's own nation versus other nation, displayed by those who are socialists or social democrats. During World War I, most left-of-centre political parties took a...
;
- called on the working people of the countries at war to wage civil war
A civil war is a war between organized groups within a single nation state, or, less commonly, between two nations created from a formerly-united nation state. The aim of one side may be to take control of the nation or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies...
as a means to attain political authority and the socialist organization of society.
The majority of the conference rejected both documents, proposing it be limited only to a pacifist declaration. Lenin, as the leader of the Zimmerwald Left, argued that that the world was on the eve of a revolutionary era in which the masses would do the revolutionary fighting, and that it was necessary for the manifesto to state the means by which this fight would take place. He also insisted on the concrete definition of the political slogans to be employed within the manifesto.
After some debate, the conference passed a compromise manifesto, which agreed to insert a call for the mobilization of the international proletariat to the fight against imperialism and the war, and condemned the leaders of the
Second InternationalThe Second International was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
as traitors. "The Manifesto", noted Lenin, "actually indicates a step toward the ideological and practical break with opportunism and social chauvinism". Participants in the conference agreed to a resolution of sympathy to those persecuted due to the war, that expressed fraternal sympathy to the
BolshevikThe Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903...
deputies of the
DumaA Duma is any of various representative assemblies in modern Russia and Russian history. The State Duma in the Russian Empire and Russian Federation corresponds to the lower house of the parliament. Simply it is a form of Russian governmental institution, that was formed after the last Czar,...
, exiled in
SiberiaSiberia , is the vast region constituting almost all of Northern Asia and for the most part currently serving as the massive central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, having served in the same capacity previously for the USSR from its beginning, and the Russian Empire beginning in the...
, and also
Karl Liebknechtwas a German socialist and a co-founder of the Spartacist League and the Communist Party of Germany.-Early life:...
,
Rosa LuxemburgRosa Luxemburg was a Polish-Jewish-German Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary for the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, the German SPD, the Independent Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party of Germany.In 1914, after the SPD supported German...
,
Clara ZetkinClara Zetkin was an influential socialist German politician and a fighter for women's rights. Until 1917, she was active in the Social Democratic Party of Germany, then she joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany and its far-left wing, the Spartacist League; this later became...
,"and to all comrades, who were persecuted or arrested for the fact that they were against the war".
An International Socialist Commission was created, which was actually a new
International Socialist BureauThe International Socialist Bureau was the permanent organization of the Second International, established at the Paris congress of 1900. Before this there was no organizational infrastructure to the "Second International" beyond a series of periodical congresses, which weren't even given a uniform...
, chosen in spite of the will of the old one, on the basis of the manifesto, which directly condemned the tactics of the old one. Two different positions, which were and remained independent, were presented at the Zimmerwald conference: those of the centrists and centrist-leaning, which prevailed at the conference, and those of the revolutionary internationalists.
In the end, the two leading political figures of the conference abandoned the International Socialist Commission: Robert Grimm, the leader of the centrist majority, left in favor of the short lived
2½ InternationalThe International Working Union of Socialist Parties was a political international for the co-operation of socialist parties...
; and Lenin, the leader of the revolutionary left, returned to Russia to take part in the civil unrest which ultimately incited the
October RevolutionTheOctober Revolution , also known as the Soviet Revolution or Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution. It began with an armed insurrection in Petrograd traditionally dated to 25 October 1917 Julian calendar...
.
External links
- Archive of the Zimmerwald Conference located in the History of the Second International
The Second International was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
on the Marxists Internet ArchiveMarxists Internet Archive is a volunteer based non-profit organization that maintains a multi-lingual Internet archive of Marxist writers and other similar authors...
. Retrieved March 11, 2006.