The Weimar Left

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Jay
Keyword(s):  
Political History ◽  
Missed Opportunities ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Republic

This chapter challenges long-perpetuated and exaggerated narratives concerning the mistakes and missed opportunities of the German Left during the Republic: neither the brutal repression of radical socialists at the Republic's birth nor recurrent fissures between the Social Democrats and Communists throughout its history guaranteed either the collapse of the Republic or a diminishing influence of the Social Democrats (SPD) within it. Ultimately, however uninevitable were the disastrous outcomes that befell the Republic and especially members of the Left. The chapter argues that a fresh engagement with Weimar political history might serve as lessons for future socialist movements within liberal and social democracies.

Party preferences and political participation: the emergence of the Turkish-origin German voter

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-40
Author(s):  
Vera Eccarius-Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Green Party ◽  
Missed Opportunities ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Turkish Origin ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Specific Interests

The article examines trends in voting preferences and voting behavior of Turkish-origin German voters. Despite only representing a small percentage of the total German electorate, Turkish-origin voters are gaining an opportunity to shape the future political landscape. While the Social Democrats have benefited most directly from the minority constituency so far, this author suggests that the Green Party is poised to attract the younger, better educated, and German-born segment of the Turkish-origin voters. All other dominant national parties have ignored this emerging voting bloc, and missed opportunities to appeal to Turkish-origin voters by disregarding community-specific interests. 

The Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) leadership’s trial in 1938.

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-82
Author(s):  
Tatiana Melnichenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Political History ◽  
State Archive ◽  
Black Spots ◽  
Russian State ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic

This article is devoted to one of the most tragic topics in the history of this party and the history of the Spanish Republic as a whole, namely, the trial of the leaders of the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification. The following unpublished documents stored in the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History were used for the analysis (F. 495. Op. 183): letters, personal files, protocols of interrogations after May Days, lists and reports on the “connection” between Trotskyi and the POUM, reports on the preparation and course of the trial of the POUM. Members of the POUM were accused of participating in a “rebellion”, moving to change the social order of the Republic. The accusation of the POUM connections with Franco did not seem convincing, either in Spain or abroad. The international public’s attention was focused on the trial of the POUM. Despite the fact that Spain failed to organize a show trial in the style of the “Moscow trials” and the “conspiracy between Trotskyi and Fascists” was not confirmed, the verdict had a negative impact on the POUM reputation. Thus, the trial of the POUM remained in history as one of the “black spots” in the interaction between the Spanish Republic and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. However, the prisoners of the POUM resisted pressure, they were supported morally by participants of the campaign of solidarity in Spain and abroad. The struggle for a kind of rehabilitation of the party continued in emigration.

Social Democrats and Communists in Weimar Germany

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joachim C. Häberlen
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Weimar Germany ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter discusses the Social Democratic and Communist Parties during the Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic was the working-class movement’s biggest accomplishment; and yet, it was also an immense disappointment for many in the working-class movement. Social Democrats considered the achievements of the republic, such as equal voting rights and the extension of the social welfare state, a tremendous victory; for Communists, by contrast, the revolution of 1918 had not gone far enough. They had hoped that Germany would follow the Soviet Union’s example towards socialism, and when this did not happen, they felt that Social Democracy had betrayed the revolution. The result was a lasting division within the working-class movement, which the chapter analyses. The chapter first inquires about the role both parties played in the foundation of the republic; it then looks in more detail into the parties during the republic, emphasizing the Social Democrats’ support for Weimar, and the Communists’ attempts to prepare for a revolution in non-revolutionary times; finally, the chapter explores how both parties responded to the economic depression and the mounting political violence at the end of the republic.

The dilemmas of Czech political life and their pragmatic solutions. 1998–2002

2021 ◽  
pp. 179-196
Author(s):  
Ella G. Zadorozhnyuk ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political History ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Radical Shift ◽  
Political Decision Making

In 1998, the Czech Republic underwent a radical shift from the confrontational/conflicted political style of the first half of the 1990s to a pragmatic/consensual style. The leaders of the two largest political parties - the center-left Czech Social Democratic Party and the center-right Civic Democratic Party - signed the Opposition Treaty. From that point, it is possible to describe a new political mechanism that reformed the framework of cooperation between the Social Democrats and the Civil Democrats. These techniques of negotiation appeared again, and in a modified version, after another turning point in Czech political history, when the Action movement of disaffected citizens focusing on pragmatic solutions, made a compromise agreement with the CPCzM in 2011. This style of political decision-making can also be given a more expansive interpretation: it can be seen as a specific feature of the political history of a state located in the heart of Europe, economically prosperous and politically extremely turbulent.

The Economic Origins of the Noskepolitik

1994 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-86
Author(s):  
William Carl Mathews
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Martial Law ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
The Social ◽  
Revolutionary Violence ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Very High ◽  
Rosa Luxemburg

On 29 December 1918 Gustav Noske was appointed as a People's Commissar and charged with command of the armed forces in Germany. Within days Noske was confronted with an armed in surrection in Berlin, the so-called Spartacist Uprising, and subsequent revolutionary outbreaks in Bremen, Braunschweig, and the Ruhr, where sympathy for the events in Berlin existed. Relying on volunteer units, the Free Corps (drawn from war veterans, students, and the middle classes), Noske developed a powerful army on which he could rely to suppress the revolutionary violence from the Left. Using military force and martial law, he reestablished order throughout Germany in 1919 and 1920. The results of the so-called Noskepolitik were at best mixed. Mass movements based on the councils (Räte), often identified as “bolshevism’ by Noske and his contemporaries, were indeed suppressed, but the price was very high: counterrevolution and right-wing terror developed to the point that massive protests were provoked among wide segments of the working class. Bloodshed ensued, including the political murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht by members of the Free Corps. Many workers became alienated from the newly formed Weimar Republic, while the Reichswehr drifted into hostility toward the young democracy, and some units joined in the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch in March 1920. Noske, already under serious criticism from his own party, the Social Democrats, was forced to resign because of his inability to control the army and guarantee its loyalty to the Republic.

scholarly journals The historical and sociological determinants of Polish-Ukrainian political dialogue

2021 ◽  
pp. 81-91
Author(s):  
Cezary Trosiak
Keyword(s):  
Political History ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Forced Displacement ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Political Dialogue ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Republic

The presence of over a million Ukrainian immigrants in Poland has inspired various analyses and studies. They seek to answer the question of how this largest group of immigrants, living in Poland mainly for economic and educational purposes,will influence the course of discussions on the social, political, cultural and, finally, economic consequences of migration. Yet another question, which the author of this article is attempting to answer, concerns how historical events such as the “Volhynia slaughter” and the forced displacement of Polish and Ukrainian people from 1939 to 1952 will affect the content and intensity of Polish-Ukrainian political dialogue and the content of political history. The author formulates the thesis that both Poles and Ukrainians can use these events to achieve short-term political goals. Overcoming historical burdens is a process that will take many years and last for generations. Politics, however, is more short-term and its vectors frequently change. This observation should encourage taking up the challenges related to Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation, which is a necessary condition for good neighbourly relations between the Republic of Poland and Ukraine, and more broadly, between Poles and Ukrainians, both in Poland and in Ukraine.

Nazistowski mord na Żydach w prasie polskich komunistów (1942–1944).

2006 ◽  
pp. 54-75
Author(s):  
Klaus Peter Friedrich
Keyword(s):  
Shared Responsibility ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
Polish Government ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Right

Facing the decisive struggle between Nazism and Soviet communism for dominance in Europe, in 1942/43 Polish communists sojourning in the USSR espoused anti-German concepts of the political right. Their aim was an ethnic Polish ‘national communism’. Meanwhile, the Polish Workers’ Party in the occupied country advocated a maximum intensification of civilian resistance and partisan struggle. In this context, commentaries on the Nazi judeocide were an important element in their endeavors to influence the prevailing mood in the country: The underground communist press often pointed to the fate of the murdered Jews as a warning in order to make it clear to the Polish population where a deficient lack of resistance could lead. However, an agreed, unconditional Polish and Jewish armed resistance did not come about. At the same time, the communist press constantly expanded its demagogic confrontation with Polish “reactionaries” and accused them of shared responsibility for the Nazi murder of the Jews, while the Polish government (in London) was attacked for its failure. This antagonism was intensified in the fierce dispute between the Polish and Soviet governments after the rift which followed revelations about the Katyn massacre. Now the communist propaganda image of the enemy came to the fore in respect to the government and its representatives in occupied Poland. It viewed the government-in-exile as being allied with the “reactionaries,” indifferent to the murder of the Jews, and thus acting ultimately on behalf of Nazi German policy. The communists denounced the real and supposed antisemitism of their adversaries more and more bluntly. In view of their political isolation, they coupled them together, in an undifferentiated manner, extending from the right-wing radical ONR to the social democrats and the other parties represented in the underground parliament loyal to the London based Polish government. Thereby communist propaganda tried to discredit their opponents and to justify the need for a new start in a post-war Poland whose fate should be shaped by the revolutionary left. They were thus paving the way for the ultimate communist takeover

Resettlement Processes in the Ukrainian SSR during the Holodomor (1932–34)

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-99
Author(s):  
Olesia Rozovyk
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Power ◽  
Socialist Republic ◽  
Soviet Socialist Republic ◽  
The Social ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Federative Socialist Republic

This article, based on archival documents, reveals resettlement processes in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1932–34, which were conditioned by the repressive policy of the Soviet power. The process of resettlement into those regions of the Soviet Ukraine where the population died from hunger most, and which was approved by the authorities, is described in detail. It is noted that about 90,000 people moved from the northern oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR to the southern part of the republic. About 127,000 people arrived in Soviet Ukraine from the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR) and the western oblasts of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). The material conditions of their residence and the reasons for the return of settlers to their previous places of inhabitance are described. I conclude that the resettlement policy of the authorities during 1932–34 changed the social and national composition of the eastern and southern oblasts of Ukraine.

The Ideology of Socialism and the Armenian Political Parties

wisdom ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-113
Author(s):  
Gegham HOVHANNISYAN
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Given

The article covers the manifestations and peculiarities of the ideology of socialism in the social-political life of Armenia at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. General characteristics, aims and directions of activity of the political organizations functioning in the Armenian reality within the given time-period, whose program documents feature the ideology of socialism to one degree or another, are given (Hunchakian Party, Dashnaktsutyun, Armenian Social-democrats, Specifics, Socialists-revolutionaries). The specific peculiarities of the national-political life of Armenia in the given time-period and their impact on the ideology of political forces are introduced.

Some reflections on social structure: Theoretical and practical aspects

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 1063-1078
Author(s):  
T.N. Skorobogatova ◽  
I.Yu. Marakhovskaya
Keyword(s):  
Service Industry ◽  
External Factors ◽  
Infrastructure Development ◽  
Social Infrastructure ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
The Social ◽  
Study Results ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Internal And External Factors ◽  
The Impact

Subject. This article discusses the role of social infrastructure in the national economy and analyzes the relationship between the notions of Infrastructure, Service Industry and Non-Productive Sphere. Objectives. The article aims to outline a methodology for development of the social infrastructure of Russia's regions. Methods. For the study, we used the methods of statistical and comparative analyses. The Republic of Crimea and Rostov Oblast's social infrastructure development was considered as a case study. Results. The article finds that the level of social infrastructure is determined by a number of internal and external factors. By analyzing and assessing such factors, it is possible to develop promising areas for the social sphere advancement. Conclusions. Assessment and analysis of internal factors largely determined by the region's characteristics, as well as a comprehensive consideration of the impact of external factors will help ensure the competitiveness of the region's economy.

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