scholarly journals Underground Press of Social Democratic Organizations in Šiauliai in 1904–1914

Knygotyra ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 77 ◽  
pp. 236-276
Author(s):  
Tomas Petreikis

This article deals with propaganda activities, such as publishing proclamations (20 publications), revolutionary songs (1), and underground periodicals (1), by local organizations of the Bund, LSDDP, LSDP and RSDDP in Šiauliai in 1904–1914. Political changes in Russia in 1904–1907 created favorable conditions for social democratic organizations to actively carry out propaganda activities, but the intensity at which they were carried out was not uniform across Lithuania. The proletarian profile of Šiauliai and the particularly active activity of the LSDP allowed to mobilize propagandists in a short time, to prepare the necessary proclamations on the spot, and to provide the necessary press equipment. During the years of the revolution (1905–1907), Šiauliai had to emerge as the second center of the social democratic movement in Lithuania. After the defeat of the revolution in Russia, due to the increased persecution of social democratic forces, the underground organizations failed to mobilize their press capacity or develop more active propaganda events; therefore, the political parties even had to suspend the activities of local organizations in Šiauliai. The integration of social democratic youth into the social democratic organizations of Šiauliai took place in c. 1912 and gave hope for a stronger revival of propaganda. The resumption of activities ceased in the first years of the First World War. The large-scale underground press developed in underground conditions expressed the expectations of the local population, reflected the involvement of parties in the formation of political views of the urban population, and was a counterweight to official information. Therefore, its assessment is inseparable from the realities of the political context of that time.

Author(s):  
Lars T. Lih

The strategy of European Social Democracy, as embodied in the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and set forth in the canonical writings of Karl Kautsky, was based on the aggressive use of political freedom to carry out large-scale propaganda campaigns. Lenin aimed at implanting this strategy into the uncongenial soil of Russian absolutism, which gave rise to his organizational ideas for the Social Democratic underground. After the 1905 revolution, Bolshevism was defined by a scenario for overthrowing the tsar in which the socialist proletariat would provide class leadership to the putatively democratic peasantry. Lenin responded to the crisis of European Social Democracy in 1914 by putting forward a vision of a new era of global revolutions, taken in large part from Kautsky’s writings. There is more continuity between pre-war Bolshevism and the revolution in 1917 than is commonly realized, but one crucial shift was the marginalization of political freedom.


Author(s):  
Aled Davies

This book is a study of the political economy of Britain’s chief financial centre, the City of London, in the two decades prior to the election of Margaret Thatcher’s first Conservative government in 1979. The primary purpose of the book is to evaluate the relationship between the financial sector based in the City, and the economic strategy of social democracy in post-war Britain. In particular, it focuses on how the financial system related to the social democratic pursuit of national industrial development and modernization, and on how the norms of social democratic economic policy were challenged by a variety of fundamental changes to the City that took place during the period....


Author(s):  
Aled Davies

This chapter concerns the politics of managing the domestic banking system in post-war Britain. It examines the pressures brought to bear on the post-war settlement in banking during the 1960s and 1970s—in particular, the growth of new credit creating institutions and the political demand for more competition between banks. This undermined the social democratic model for managing credit established since the war. The chapter focuses in particular on how the Labour Party attempted in the 1970s to produce a banking system that was competitive, efficient, and able to channel credit to the struggling industrial economy.


1967 ◽  
Vol 40 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 383
Author(s):  
J. A. A. Stockwin ◽  
George O. Totten III

1957 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-61
Author(s):  
Christopher Dawson

The origins of modern democracy are so closely bound up with the history of liberalism that it is a matter of considerable difficulty to disentangle them and to distinguish their distinctive contributions to the common political tradition of modern Western culture. For this question also involves that of the relation between the three revolutions, the English, the American, and the French, which transformed the Europe of the ancien régime, with its absolute monarchies and state churches, into the modern world. Now all these three revolutions were liberal revolutions and all of them were political expressions of the movement of the European enlightenment in its successive phases. But this movement was not originally a democratic one and it was only in the second half of the eighteenth century that the democratic ideal was clearly formulated. On the continent of Europe the revolution of ideas preceded the political and economic revolutions by half a century, and the revolution of ideas was not in any sense of the word a democratic movement; it was the work of a small minority of men of letters who looked to the nobles and the princes of Europe rather than to the common people, and whose ideal of government was a benevolent and enlightened absolutism, like that of Frederick the Great or the Empress Catherine of Russia. There was an immense gulf between the ideas of Voltaire and Turgot, of Diderot and D'Alembert, and the opinions of the average man. The liberalism of the philosophers was a hothouse growth which could not be easily acclimatized to the open air of the fields and the market place.


Author(s):  
Anna Matveeva

The study focuses on assessing the representativeness and relevance of diplomatic documents for the study of key aspects of German domestic politics. Three issues are central to the analysis of the documents from the Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire: the completeness of the indicated sources for understanding the factors of the German Empire’s inner policy; the assessment of the subjectivity of the author of diplomatic dispatches, i.e. how much the ambassador's personality determined the content of the dispatches that he sent to the ministry; the relevance of highlighting key issues of internal life in Germany from the point of view of Russian diplomats. Among constantly present in the messages, the most important was the problem of the socialist movement and the Social-Democratic Party’s activities. The socialists were mentioned for significant reasons: the repeal of the Law against the Socialists, the Berlin Conference on the Labor Protection (1890); elections to the Reichstag (1893, 1898); the Reichstag votes on issues important for Russia. The measures of counteraction to the socialists, discussed by the emperor and the government, also aroused interest. The study of archival documents (1890–1898) allows the author to draw the following conclusions. The dispatches adequately reflect the main trends in the socialist movement and the tactics of the SPD, therefore they can be used to study many internal problems faced by Germany in the course of its political evolution. The development of the social-democratic movement was rightly interpreted by Russian diplomats as one of the fundamental reasons for the internal instability of the German state during the reign of Wilhelm II. At the same time, the conclusion drawn by the diplomats can be primarily explained by the Russian imperial regime and its substantial characteristics, rather than the political realities within Germany itself. They considered parliamentarism, limiting the monarch actions (the state interests), to be the main reason for the high popularity and the broadest electoral support of the SPD. The key factor preventing the monarch from defeating the “coup parties” was defined as the activities of liberal political parties, which demanded the unconditional observance of the freedoms prescribed in the Сonstitution of 1871, as well as the prevention of the introduction of Exceptional Laws and other measures of an extraordinary nature.


Author(s):  
Charles S. Maier

This chapter examines issues arising from the elections that were held in France, Germany, and Italy in the spring of 1924, asking in particular whether the elections could resolve the political ambiguities persisting in the three countries. It suggests that the presence of important political alternatives could not guarantee that the voting would yield clear decisions. Even where significant majorities or shifts of opinion occurred, the results were not unequivocal in terms of the issues at stake. Choices on the ballot did not parallel real policy alternatives. Superficially decisive victories led merely to coalitions built around opportunity rather than policy. The chapter considers the limits of Benito Mussolini's majority, the setback suffered by the Social Democratic Party (SPD) at the polls, and the coalition between the Radical Socialist Party and the SPD to form the Cartel des Gauches.


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