Imagining the Balkans as a Space of Revolution: The Federalist Vision of Serbian Socialism, 1870–1914

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 402-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Robertson
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
World War ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
The Social ◽  
Intellectual Milieu ◽  
Progressive Party

Between the years 1870 and 1914, leftist intellectuals in the Kingdom of Serbia theorized and promoted a project of Balkan Federation as a strategic priority in the social, economic, and political transformation of the region. This article offers a genealogy of these federalist ideas and places them in dialogue with rival projects of regional unification in the Balkans and Eastern Europe during the long nineteenth century. It begins by developing a typology of federalist projects in Europe, categorizing these according to the underlying models of sovereignty upon which they were founded. I identify four categories: revolutionary-republican, imperial-reformist, imperial-irredentist, and revolutionary-social. Instead of organizing these federalisms according to their authors’ ideological commitments (socialist, nationalist, pan-Slavic) or their geographic scope (Balkan, Danubian), the article argues that examining their respective models of sovereignty offers intellectual historians a more productive approach to identify the unexpected convergences and divergences of federalist projects during this period. The article then moves into a discussion of the development of Serbian socialist ideas of Balkan Federation, beginning first with the work of Svetozar Marković (1846–1875) and then turning to the writings of the fin de siècle Social Democratic Party in the decade before World War I. Situating this genealogy of socialist Balkan federalism in its broader European intellectual milieu, I use the above typology to identify the ways in which Serbian socialists converged and diverged from contemporary federalist projects, including the reformist ideas of the Austro-Marxists, the irredentist strategy of the Serbian Progressive Party, and the republican ideas of Karel Kautsky.

The Dimensions of Social Conflict at the End of World War I

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles S. Maier
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Conflict ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Polarization ◽  
Class Divisions

This chapter examines social conflict at the end of World War I in three dimensions: in terms of class, elite, and interest groups. Conservatives throughout Europe were preoccupied with class divisions and the vulnerability of their own favored stations in life, but their sense of vulnerability emerged in different language and day-to-day disputes. In France, social defensiveness was revealed directly by continuing justification and discussion of the bourgeoisie, while in Germany the fixation with the Social Democratic Party and in Italy the defense of “liberalism” disclosed underlying class malaise. The chapter explains how these differences emerged within a pervasive anxiety about social polarization. It also considers the ways in which the elites sought to utilize the opportunity to reassert their older social hegemony in the context of corporate capitalism.

Social Continuity and Political Radicalization: Essen in the World War I Era

1985 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-69
Author(s):  
Eric D. Weitz
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Coal Mines ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
German Republic

In the reichstag election of June 1920, Germany’s Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) more than doubled its 1919 vote, while the Social Democratic Party (SPD) declined precipitously. Coming only nineteen months after the establishment of a German republic, the election indicated widespread discontent with the governments led by the Social Democrats, who had assumed power in November 1918. In Essen, located in the center of the Ruhr and dominated by coal mines and the giant Krupp works, the SPD was almost eliminated as a political force (Essen, Amt für Statistik und Wahlen, n.d.).

‘The Business Had to March On’ De Arbeiderspers in Time of War

Quaerendo ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 40 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 256-283
Author(s):  
Frederike Doppenberg
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
National Socialists ◽  
Party Press ◽  
Second World

AbstractDuring the Second World War the social-democratic publisher De Arbeiderspers [The Workers’ Press] was transferred into National Socialist hands. The National Socialists wanted to transform the party press of the SDAP, the social democratic party of the Netherlands, into a National Socialist platform. The publisher, however, had a secure circle of socialist customers whom the new management did not want to deter. This article is a study, based on a reconstruction of the list of publications during the period ’40 -’45, of how the National Socialist managers attempted to change the ideological foundation of De Arbeiderspers.

The Tony Sender Papers

1972 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 5-7
Author(s):  
Robert F. Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Metal Workers ◽  
The Social ◽  
German Revolution ◽  
Important Position

For many years students of German Labor history have speculated about the possible existence of a Tony Sender Nachlass somewhere in the United States. Ms. Sender, a Social Democratic journalist, was active in the Socialist Women's anti-war movement during World War I, played an important local role in the German Revolution of 1918 (in Frankfurt/Main), was a leading member of the Independent Social Democratic and later the Social Democratic party, held an important position in the German Metal Workers Union, and sat in the Reichstag throughout the Weimar Republic. She'fled Germany in 1933 and eventually migrated to the United States where she died in 1964 at the age of 76. Following her death what remained of her papers were entrusted to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in Madison where they are now located and available for use.

scholarly journals The Election of Hugo Haase to the Co-chairmanship of the SPD and the Crisis of Pre-war German Social Democracy

1968 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-188
Author(s):  
Kenneth R. Calkins
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Future

The election of Hugo Haase to the Co-Chairmanship of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1911 was an event of immense importance for the future of German Social Democracy. It was Haase who served as the principal spokesman of the opposition to the cooperationist policies of the majority during World War I. It was he who led that opposition out of the SPD in 1917. After the war, as co-chairman both of the revolutionary government and of the Independent Social Democratic Party, he helped to insure that the German movement would remain permanently divided.

Who Were the German Independent Socialists? The Leipzig City Council Election of 6 December 1917

1992 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Mckibben
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
City Council ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich

The emergence of the Independent Socialist party (USPD) in Germany during World War I had momentous and long-reaching consequences. Organized as a group of dissenters within the established German Social Democratic party (SPD), independent socialism grew into a movement that split Germany's working class into two, then three, warring factions. The result was a struggle for supremacy among socialist party factions to which subsequent writers have attributed the “failed” revolution of November 1918, a Weimar Constitution that alienated rather than satisfied German workers, and ultimately the inability of German Socialists to present a unified front against the ultimate threat to German democracy: Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich.

The Tony Sender Papers

1972 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 5-7
Author(s):  
Robert F. Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Metal Workers ◽  
The Social ◽  
German Revolution ◽  
Important Position

For many years students of German Labor history have speculated about the possible existence of a Tony Sender Nachlass somewhere in the United States. Ms. Sender, a Social Democratic journalist, was active in the Socialist Women's anti-war movement during World War I, played an important local role in the German Revolution of 1918 (in Frankfurt/Main), was a leading member of the Independent Social Democratic and later the Social Democratic party, held an important position in the German Metal Workers Union, and sat in the Reichstag throughout the Weimar Republic. She'fled Germany in 1933 and eventually migrated to the United States where she died in 1964 at the age of 76. Following her death what remained of her papers were entrusted to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in Madison where they are now located and available for use.

Bernstein, Eduard (1850–1932)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgiana Perlea
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
World War I ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Central Organ ◽  
Fabian Society

Eduard Bernstein was a prominent politician in the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), which in the late nineteenth century was the largest workers’ party in Europe. With August Bebel and Karl Kautsky, he wrote the SPD’s official platform, the Erfurt Program (1891), and also edited the SPD’s central organ, Vorwärts. However, he spent many years exiled in London: ties to the Fabian Society tinged his views with English practicality and moderation. Against the Marx-Engels party orthodoxy, which awaited the logical implosion of capitalism, Bernstein suggested in The Prerequisites for Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy (1899) that gradual changes, peacefully enacted within the existing order, are more likely to bring about social justice. He critiqued the theory of surplus value and argued for protectionism where Marx had favoured free trade as catalyst for the catastrophe. His is an evolutionary socialism, commending in all matters strategic compromise and piecemeal reforms. This rightist deviation from the party line was labelled ‘revisionism’ and sparked a vigorous debate. Bernstein was vilified. Before World War I, reformism nonetheless dented the standard doctrine of the SPD (embodied by Kautsky) at the same time as radicals (including Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and Lenin) were challenging it from the left, preparing a revolution proper.

Rumanian Socialists and the Nationality Problem in Hungary, 1903-18

Slavic Review ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-90
Author(s):  
Keith Hitchins
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
First World War ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
New Members ◽  
The Social ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
First World

The history of the Rumanian socialists of Hungary in the decade before the outbreak of the First World War and during the final crisis of the Dual Monarchy in 1918 offers a striking illustration of the importance of national feeling in socialist and working-class movements of peoples who had not yet achieved their national-political emancipation and who were still overwhelmingly agrarian. In seeking support, Rumanian socialists had to compete with the middle-class Rumanian National Party, which was well established as a staunch defender of Rumanian rights against the aggressive nationality policies of the Hungarian government, and the church, which maintained a strong hold over a devout and traditional peasantry. They were hampered also by having only a modest constituency of their own. Not only was the Rumanian working class small, but in those places where Rumanian factory workers had congregated in significant numbers—Budapest, Arad, Timisoara—they were swallowed up in the greater masses of Magyar and German workers.and were in danger of losing their national identity. They provided only a fragile base for an independent socialist party. Until the First World War, Rumanian socialists developed their activities under the aegis of the Social Democratic Party of Hungary (MSZDP). In time, they found ideological and financial subordination to the MSZDP to be a serious handicap in efforts to recruit new members. At a time of growing national tension, they were hard put to explain how a party dominated by Magyars, even socialists, could benefit Rumanians. Yet, in spite of their protestations of socialist internationalism and their open disdain for nationalistic impulses, they could not ignore nationality. Indeed, the idea of nationality lent their movement a distinctiveness that set it apart from the other socialist movements of Hungary and, in the end, gave it its reason for being.

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