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Axelrod and Kautsky

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Abraham Ascher
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Abstract

The intimate friendship between Pavel Borisovich Axelrod and Karl Kautsky, stretching over almost half a century, had an important bearing on the Russian Social Democratic movement and international socialism. Kautsky, who, after Engels’ death in 1895, became the most authoritative exponent of Marxism and the major theorist of the Second International, followed developments in Russia with interest and leaned heavily on Axelrod in forming his opinions about events in that country and its Social Democratic Party. The German socialist's curiosity was aroused not only because he recognized, as early as the 1890s, the potential importance of the Marxist movement in Russia but also because Russian Marxists were especially eager to obtain his advice. “Whenever a controversial question arose,” wrote the Menshevik Rafael Abramovich, “whenever a problem emerged, the first thought [among Russian Social Democrats] was always: What would Kautsky say about this? How would Kautsky resolve this question?“

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , March 1967 , pp. 94 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1967

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References

1 Rafael Abramovich, “Karl Kautsky und der Richtungsstreit in der russischen Sozialdemokratie,“ in Ein Leben fur den Sozialismus: Erinnerungen an Karl Kautsky (Hannover, »1954). P. 83.

2 Axelrod to Kautsky, Jan. 5, 1917, Nicolaevsky Collection on deposit at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace.

3 Karl Kautsky, “Was uris Axelrod gab,” Die Gesellschaft, II (Berlin, 1925), 117.

4 Unpublished portion of Axelrod's memoirs, on deposit at the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam, hereafter cited as IISH.

5 Axelrod to Kautsky, Dec. 6 and 12, 1898, Kautsky Archive, IISH.

6 Kautsky to Axelrod, late in 1898, Axelrod Archive, IISH. In his recent work Keep accepted at face value Bernstein's claim that Axelrod sympathized with his point of view (J. L. H. Keep, The Rise of Social Democracy in Russia [Oxford, 1963], p. 65).

7 Axelrod to Kautsky, Dec. 6 and 12, 1898, Kautsky Archive

8 Kautsky to Axelrod, Jan. 21, 1899, Axelrod Archive.

9 P. B. Aksel'rod, “Ob“edinenie rossiiskoi sotsialdemokratii I eia mzadachi,”Iskra, No.55, Dec.15,1903,and No. 57, Jan. 15, 1904.

10 In January 1904 Axelrod complained that since the previous July he had gone to Geneva six times, “naturally not for pleasure” (Axelrod to Kautsky, Jan. 28, 1904, Kautsky Archive). Axelrod lived in Zurich, and the other Menshevik leaders were then in Geneva.

11 Axelrod to Kautsky, May 22, 1904, ibid.

12 “Kautskii o nashikh partiinykh raznoglasiiakh,” Iskra, No. 66, May 15, 1904.

13 Potresov to Kautsky, May 22, 1904, and Dan to Kautsky, June 2, 1904, Kautsky Archive.

14 Axelrod to Potresov, May 21, 1904, in Sotsial-demokraticheskoe dvizhenie: Materialy, ed. A. N. Potresov and B. I. Nikolaevskii (Moscow and Leningrad, 1928), p. 121.

15 Kautsky to Axelrod, June 4, 1904, Axelrod Archive.

16 Axelrod to Kautsky, June 6, 1904, Kautsky Archive. For the published version see Iskra, No. 68, June 25, 1904.

17 Axelrod to Kautsky, June 23, 1904, Kautsky Archive.

18 Kautsky to Axelrod, July 4, 1904, Axelrod Archive.

19 Dietrich Geyer, “Die russische Parteispaltung im Urteil der deutschen Sozialdemokratie 1903-1905,” International Review of Social History, III (Amsterdam, 1958), 195-219, 418-44. For an approach different from mine to the exchange of views between Axelrod and Kautsky during the years 1903-5 see this fine article.

20 For details on these events see ibid., pp. 421-32.

21 Kautsky to Axelrod, Feb. 6, 1905, Axelrod Archive.

22 Axelrod to Kautsky, Feb. 10, 1905, Kautsky Archive.

23 Kautsky to Axelrod, Feb. 14, 1905, Axelrod Archive.

24 Axelrod to Kautsky, Feb. 17, 1905, incomplete draft, ibid.

25 Kautsky to Axelrod, May 13, 1905, ibid.

26 Kautsky to Axelrod, Feb. 14, 1905, ibid.

27 Kautsky to Axelrod, May 13, 1905, ibid.

28 Kautsky to Adler, July 20, 1905, in Victor Adler, Briefwechsel mit August Bebel und Karl Kautsky, ed. Friedrich Adler (Vienna, 1954), pp. 464-65.

29 The reference is to the money the Bolsheviks acquired from the “Schmitt inheritance“ and the “expropriations“; see Bertram D. Wolfe, Three Who Made a Revolution (New York, 1948), pp. 371-98.

30 Axelrod to Kautsky, June 5, 1911, Nicolaevsky Collection.

31 Luise Kautsky to Axelrod, June 12, 1911, Axelrod Archive.

32 Leonard Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (London, 1960), p. 122.

33 Kautsky to Lunacharskii, Aug. 9, 1911, Nicolaevsky Collection.

34 Axelrod to Stein, Sept. 24, 1911, ibid.

35 Axelrod to Luise Kautsky, June 14, 1911, incomplete draft, Axelrod Archive. Peukert was an anarchist regarded with great contempt in German radical circles. In 1867 he allegedly informed on another anarchist, Reve, who was then sentenced to a fifteen-year term in prison. See Franz Mehring, Geschichte der deutschen Sozialdemokratie (8th ed.; Stuttgart, 1919), IV, 297.

36 Kautsky to Adler, Feb. 27, 1915, in Adler, p. 613.

37 Axelrod to Kautsky, n.d., but probably late in 1916, Nicolaevsky Collection.

38 Kautsky to Axelrod, Dec. 6, 1916, Axelrod Archive.

39 Axelrod to Kautsky, Oct. 17, 1917, Nicolaevsky Collection.

40 Izvestiia Tsentral'nogo Ispolnitel'nogo Komiteta i Petrogradskogo Soveta Rabochikh i Soldatskikh Deputatov, No. 133, Aug. 2, 1917. In a speech on October 29 M. I. Tereshchenko, the foreign minister, declared that the decisions of the Stockholm Conference “could not have decisive importance for the state power and the governments“; see The Russian Provisional Government 1917: Documents, ed. Robert Paul Browder and Alexander F. Kerensky (Stanford, 1961), II, 1143.

41 Axelrod to Kautsky, n.d., but probably sometime between August and October 1917, Nicolaevsky Collection.

42 Kautsky to Axelrod, Sept. 20, 1917, ibid.

43 Kautsky to Axelrod, Nov. 10 and Dec. 22, 1917, ibid.

44 Axelrod to Kautsky, n.d., 1918, ibid.

45 Axelrod to Kautsky, Dec. 8, 1918, ibid.

46 Axelrod developed these thoughts in 1918 in letters to socialist leaders; see P. Axelrod, Die russische Revolution und die sozialistische Internationale: Aus dem literarischen Nachlass von Paul Axelrod, ed. I. Tseretelli and W. Woytinsky (Jena, 1932), pp. 159-62, 168-76.

47 The other members of the commission were Friedrich Adler and Bauer from Austria, Hilferding from Germany, Longuet from France, and Henderson from England.

48 Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, Protokoll über die Verhandlungen des ausserordentlichen Parteitages vom 2. bis 6. März 1919 (Berlin, n.d.), pp. 123, 220.

49 Axelrod to Kautsky, Dec. 8, 1918, Nicolaevsky Collection.

50 Formally founded in 1923, the Socialist and Labor International was, in effect, the successor to the Second International, whose official name had been identical with that of the new organization.

51 Karl Kautsky, Die Internationale und Sowjetrussland (Berlin, 1925). This was the published version of Kautsky's memorandum.

52 Kautsky to Axelrod, Jan. 5, 1925, Axelrod Archive.

53 Kautsky, Die Internationale und Sowjetrussland, pp. 52-53.

54 Adler to Kautsky, Dec. 23, 1924, Kautsky Archive.

55 Dan to Greulich, July 14, 1925, uncatalogued, IISH.

56 Dan to Kautsky, Dec. 19, 1925, Kautsky Archive; see also Theodor Dan, “Kautsky über den russischen Bolschewismus,” Der Kampf, XVIII (Vienna, 1925), 241-50.

57 Axelrod to Kautsky, beginning of Feb. 1925, Kautsky Archive.

58 Kautsky to Axelrod, March 11, 1925, Axelrod Archive.

59 Axelrod to Tsereteli, Dec. 25, 1924, and June 29, 1925, Nicolaevsky Collection.