O rewolucji: 1905, 1917

by Róża Luksemburg, Feliks Tych (Contributor), Przemysław Wielgosz (Editor)

O rewolucji 1905 1917

322 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2018

Reviews

[Warszawiak1917 · Rating 5 out of 5]

O rewolucji: 1905, 1917 is a collection of texts by Polish-Jewish revolutionary socialist Róża Luksemburg, written about the 1905 and 1917 revolutions in the lands of the former Russian Empire (for 1905 this includes Congress Poland, the Baltic countries, Finland, Ukraine, and so on). The book is in Polish and features an excellent introduction by Feliks Tych, a Polish-Jewish historian who dedicated much of his life to the study of the workers' movement in Poland. There is also a short section about Tych himself by Holger Politt.

The first and longer part of the collection features not only translated versions of Luksemburg's German texts from Die Neue Zeit, Vorwärts, and Sächsische Arbeiter-Zeitung, but also some of her works from Trybuna Ludowa, Czerwony Sztandar, and Przegląd Socjaldemokratyczny in their original Polish. The 200 pages or so of this first part are originally from 1905-1908. There is some brilliant commentary here that really delves into the socioeconomic context of the 1905-1907 revolution, including a sociological analysis of Łódź in "Łódzka epopeja" as well as a month-by-month breakdown of the entire revolution in Massenstreik, Partei und Gewerkschaften and "Co dalej?". A succinct piece shows how, after a certain point leading up to and during the revolution, acts of terror lose their usefulness despite their moral satisfaction and the onus is instead on the revolutionary acts of the working class. There is a scathing essay on the counterrevolutionary nature of Russian liberalism, as well as the chauvinism of some German observers regarding the apparent backwardness of the Russian Empire's proletariat. Trade unions are aptly shown as a form of economic struggle for small reforms that make life easier under capitalism, but not a valid revolutionary tool for the system's overthrow.

Over 70 pages of texts from Spartakusbriefe, Der Kampf, and Spartakus – as well as Róża's fantastic "Die russische Revolution" – make up the second part of the collection. Here we have an in-depth inspection of the 1917 revolution, along with comradely critique and praise of the Bolsheviks and a damning account of the social-democratic betrayal of socialist values, which included siding with German imperialism in the First World War. Luksemburg also points out Bolshevik errors in mishandling the agrarian problem, giving in to nationalist aspirations that helped fragment the revolution, and limiting democratic freedoms in Russia; she is, at the same time, correct in pointing out that these compromises and mistakes were made due to the isolation of the Russian revolution, the lack of revolutionary action on the part of the German (plus wider European and world) proletariat, and the political bankruptcy of social-democracy in the West and within Russia. She contrasts this with the truly revolutionary socialist stance of the Bolsheviks.

In the end, we have a book full of ingenious texts about the revolutions of Eastern Europe and Siberia at the turn of the century (with comments on how they affected, and were affected by, the conditions in the Second Reich and the rest of the world). At the dawn and dusk of revolutionary upheaval, Róża Luksemburg did not waste time on philosophical pondering about what life in a future communist society might look like. Instead, she gave accurate and precise commentary on what the proletariat and revolutionary communist parties ought to do in order to complete the overthrow of capitalism.

[That show will never end · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ja mam jakieś inne wydanie, którego nie mogę tutaj znaleźć ani dodać i są w nim wyłącznie teksty z 1905. Tak daję znać jakby coś. Bardzo mi przykro, że jej książki są tak mało dostępne. Warto bowiem czytać jej wypowiedzi, a nie książki o niej per se. Współczesne wydania mają tendencję do przedstawiania autorki wyłącznie jako feministki całkowicie odcinając ją od jej socjalistycznego fundamentu. To ogromny błąd zakrawający na cenzurę. Teksty z którymi się zapoznałam to istna kopalnia wiedzy o ówczesnej polityce, o której świadomości próżno szukać chociażby w szkołach. Język jest cudowny, zrozumiały a jednocześnie zacięty i dosadny. Artykuł zrównujący Daszyńskiego z ziemia to miód na serce. Mimo, że Róża popełnia tu parę błędów, krytykowanych chociażby przez Lenina to jednak jej teksty czyta się niesamowicie w obecnym momencie w historii. Zostaje mi tylko grzebać dalej i wyszukiwać inne książki.