Clara Zetkin: Response to the tribute on her 64th birthday

(Third World Congress of the Communist International, 17th Session , 5 July 1921)

[My own translation from the Minutes of the III. World Congress of the Communist International, Protokoll des III. Weltkongresses der Kommunistischen Internationale, Moskau 22. Juni bis 12. Juli 1921. Hamburg 1921, pp. 743 f.. Corrections by English native speakers would be extremely welcome]

Comrades, you take my strength from me when you appreciate and praise me. When you trample on me, I feel quite comfortable, because then I think that in all these struggles I am serving the cause: the achievement of clarity for the advancement of the revolution. But when you praise me, I feel humiliated. Because I feel everything that I wanted and what I could not achieve; I feel everything that life, the idea of the revolution gave me and what I unfortunately had to owe to the revolution, because I could not surpass my strength. Comrades, what I did was as natural as anything. I have only always obeyed my nature and deserve no praise for it. I have not been able to be any other than I am, to act any other than I have acted. And does the river deserve praise for flowing downhill, does the bird deserve praise when it sings? It is natural. And so I have served the revolution because I had to serve the revolution out of inner necessity.

I will not go into all the beautiful things that Comrade Heckert has told about me here. But it is my duty to say one thing here before you: for my development and for what I was able to achieve, I owe a great deal to German theory and practice, and for practice, a great deal to the history and the example of our French and English brothers. But the sentiment for the will I have put at the service of the revolution, let me utter the word without any bourgeois connotation: for my revolutionary morality I remain forever indebted to the example of the Russian revolutionaries, the Russian Social Democracy and the Bolsheviks. What I have become morally, the measure of energy I put into the service of the revolution, I owe primarily to my intimate association with the Russian revolution from its 70s onwards. Let me say another thing here: I cannot stand here before you without being overwhelmed by the memory of the one who was and will remain a part of my being, Rosa Luxemburg. All that I was and worked for, it was joint work with Rosa Luxemburg. And I cannot hold back the pain that she is no longer beside me today, that she is not among us. All these flowers here, I place them on her grave in my mind.

Comrades, I am too moved to give you a beautiful speech. I say that there is only one wish in my heart that you can all contribute to fulfilling. Namely, to work and fight so that I do not go into the grave without first having seen the revolution in Germany and possibly also in other countries. (Loud applause.) There is only one resolution for my work, for my struggle, and that is to contribute to the proletarian revolution, to the victory of the revolutionary proletariat. (Prolonged, stormy applause and cheers.)