Leon Trotsky: Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg

January 18, 1919

[Leon Trotsky, Portraits Political & Personal, New York 1977, p. 14-27]

We have sustained, at one blow, two heavy casualties, and together they fuse into one great and terrible loss. Two of our leaders have been struck down from our ranks. Their names are entered forever in the great book of the proletarian revolution: Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. They have perished. They have been killed. They are no longer with us.

The name of Karl Liebknecht, famous even earlier, acquired immediate worldwide significance from the first months of the terrible European slaughter. It sounded like a name of revolutionary honor, like a promise of future victory. In those first weeks, when German militarism was celebrating its first orgies, rejoicing over its first mad victories; in those weeks when German regiments were marching through Belgium, sweeping away Belgian fortresses like houses of cards; when the 420 mm German cannon seemed to threaten all Europe with subjugation and enslavement to Wilhelm; in those days and weeks, when the official German Social Democracy, headed by Scheidemann and Ebert, was bending its patriotic knee to German militarism, to which — it seemed then — everything had succumbed: both externally-crushed Belgium, and France, where the North had been seized — and internally: not only the German Junkers, not only the German bourgeoisie, not only the chauvinistic petty bourgeoisie, but also the officially recognized party of the German working class — in those dark, terrible, base days, there resounded in Germany the stormy voice of protest, indignation, denunciation — this was the voice of Karl Liebknecht. And it sounded throughout the world!

In France, where the mood of the broad masses was weighed down by the German invasion; where the ruling party of the French social patriots was proclaiming to the proletariat the necessity of a fight not for life, but to the death — how could it be otherwise, when in Germany the “whole nation” was striving to seize Paris! — even in France the sober, warning voice of Liebknecht sounded, tearing down the barriers of lies, slander, and panic. One felt that Liebknecht alone spoke for the stifled masses.

In fact, though, he was no longer alone, even then, For hand in hand with him from the first day of the war was the courageous, unhesitating, heroic Rosa Luxemburg. Arbitrary German bourgeois parliamentarism denied her the opportunity of sounding her protest from the parliamentary platform, as Liebknecht had done — thus less was heard from her. But her share in arousing the best elements of the German working class was no less than the share of her co-fighter in the struggle and in death, Karl Liebknecht. These two fighters, so different in nature and yet so alike, complemented each other, strove unyieldingly for the common goal, met death at the same time, and will go down together in history.

Karl Liebknecht represented the true, complete incarnation of the unbending revolutionary. During the last days and months of his life countless legends grew up about him. Some were senselessly malicious — made up by the bourgeois press; some heroic — circulating by word of mouth among the working masses.

In private life Karl Liebknecht was — alas, already we must say was! — the incarnation of kindness, simplicity, and brotherhood. I first met him more than fifteen years ago. He was a charming person, attentive and sympathetic. You could say that in his character there was an almost feminine tenderness, in the best sense of the word. But along with this womanly tenderness he was distinguished by an exceptional temper of revolutionary will, an ability to fight for what he considered just and true, to the last drop of his blood. His spiritual independence was shown even in his youth, when he dared more than once to insist on his own opinion against the indisputable authority of Bebel. His work among young people was distinguished by great courage, as was his struggle against the Hohenzollern military machine. Finally, he revealed his true worth when he raised his voice against the unity of the bellicose bourgeoisie and the treacherous Social Democracy in the German Reichstag, where the whole atmosphere was permeated with the stench of chauvinism. He revealed the full measure of his personality when, as a soldier, in Berlin’s Potsdam Square he raised the banner of open insurrection against the bourgeoisie and its militarism. Liebknecht was arrested. Prison and penal servitude did not break his spirit. In his cell he waited and confidently predicted. Liberated by the revolution of November last year, Liebknecht immediately took his place at the head of the best, the most decisive elements of the German working class. A Spartacus appeared in the ranks of the Spartacists and died with their banner in his hands.

The name of Rosa Luxemburg is less well-known in other countries, and even here in Russia. But it can be said with great confidence that her nature was in no way less than that of Karl Liebknecht. Small in height, frail, with a noble cast of face and beautiful eyes which shone with intelligence, she was striking for the courage of her thought. She had such perfect command of the Marxist method that it almost seemed a physical part of her. One could truly say that Marxism had entered into her very blood.

I have said that these two fighters, so different in temperament, complemented each other. I want to underline and clarify this. If the inflexible revolutionary Liebknecht had a feminine tenderness in his personal manner, then this frail woman had a manly power of thought. Ferdinand Lassalle once spoke of the physical power of thought, the tense force with which it exerts itself as it seemingly overcomes the physical obstacles in its path. That was precisely the impression you got, chatting with Rosa, reading her articles, or hearing her speak from the rostrum against her enemies. And she had many enemies! I remember once at a party conference — in Jena, it would be — how her high-pitched voice, tense as a violin string, cut through the stormy protests of the Bavarian, Baden, and other opportunists. How they hated her! And how she scorned them! Small in height and frail in build, she dominated the congress from the rostrum, like the incarnation of proletarian revolutionary thought. By the force of her logic and the power of her sarcasm she silenced her most inveterate enemies. Rosa knew how to hate the enemies of the proletariat and for that very reason she could arouse their hatred of her. She was marked out by them beforehand.

From the first day, no, from the first hour of the war, Rosa Luxemburg started a campaign against chauvinism, against the orgy of patriotism, against the vacillation of Kautsky and Haase, against the centrist avoidance of any clear position, for the revolutionary independence of the proletariat, for internationalism, for the proletarian revolution.

Yes, they complemented one another!

In the force of her theoretical thinking and in her capacity for generalization, Rosa Luxemburg was head and shoulders above not only her enemies, but also her comrades. She was a genius. Her style — terse, exact, brilliant, merciless — was, and will ever remain, a true mirror to her thought.

Liebknecht was not a theoretician. He was a man of direct action. Impulsive and passionate by nature, he possessed exceptional political intuition, a sense of the masses and of circumstance, and finally, an incomparably courageous revolutionary initiative.

An analysis of the internal and international situation in which Germany found herself after November 9, 1918, and also a revolutionary prognosis, one could have, indeed should have, expected first of all from Rosa Luxemburg. A summons to direct action, and — at a certain moment — to armed uprising, would probably have come first from Liebknecht. These two fighters complemented each other in a way that could not be bettered.

Luxemburg and Liebknecht were scarcely out of prison when they took each other’s hand, that indefatigable revolutionary man and that unyielding revolutionary woman, and went together, at the head of the best elements of the German working class — to meet the new battles and trials of the proletarian revolution. And on the first steps of this path a treacherous blow has cut them down on one and the same day.

Indeed, reaction could have chosen no worthier victims. What a well-aimed blow! And no wonder: reaction and revolution knew each other well, for reaction this time was embodied in the persons of the former leaders of the former party of the working class, Scheidemann and Ebert, whose names will forever be inscribed in the black book of history as the shameful names of the organizers responsible for this treacherous murder.

True, we have received the official German communication which describes the murder of Liebknecht and Luxemburg as a chance incident, as a street “misunderstanding,” due, perhaps, to the insufficient watchfulness of the guard in the face of the enraged crowd. A court of inquiry has even been set up to investigate. But you and I know only too well how these “spontaneous” onslaughts against revolutionary leaders are arranged by reaction; we well remember the July days, experienced by us here, within the walls of Petrograd; we remember only too well how the Black Hundreds, summoned by Kerensky and Tsereteli to fight against the Bolsheviks, systematically annihilated the workers and slaughtered their leaders, making short work of individual workers in the streets. The name of the worker Voinov, murdered by way of a “misunderstanding,” is remembered by most of us. We managed to save Lenin then, but only because he did not fall into the hands of the enraged Black Hundreds. There were at that time among the Mensheviks and the SRs some pious people indignant because Lenin and Zinoviev, who had been accused of being German spies, were not going to appear in court to refute the slander. They were especially reproached for this. But what court was this? A court, on the road to which they would have arranged for Lenin to “flee,” as Liebknecht did? And if Lenin had been shot or stabbed, the official communication of Kerensky and Tsereteli would have said that the Bolshevik leader had been killed by the guard while trying to escape. No, now, after the terrible Berlin experience, we have tenfold grounds for being pleased that Lenin did not then appear in that kangaroo court, and, still more, that he did not risk punishment without trial.

But Rosa and Karl did not go into hiding. The enemy hand held them firm. And this hand strangled them! What a blow! What a misfortune! And what treachery! The best leaders of the German Communist Party are no more — our great comrades are no more among the living. And their murderers stand under the banner of the Social Democratic Party, and have the effrontery to trace their descent from none other than Karl Marx! What a perversion! What mockery! Just think of it, comrades: this “Marxist” Social Democracy, leader of the Second International, is the same party that betrayed the interests of the working class from the first days of the war, that supported unbridled German militarism during the rout of Belgium and the seizure of the northern provinces of France; the same party that betrayed the October revolution to German militarism after the Brest truce; the party whose leaders, Scheidemann and Ebert, are now organizing gangs of thugs to murder the heroes of the International, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg!

What a monstrous historical perversion! Looking far back through the centuries, you can see a certain parallel with the historical fate of Christianity. The evangelical teaching of slaves, fishermen, toilers, the oppressed, everyone on earth crushed by slave society — this teaching of the poor, which had its roots in their history — was later taken over by the monopolizers of riches, kings, aristocrats, metropolitans, moneylenders, patriarchs, bankers, and the Roman pope, and became an ideological cover for their crimes. However, there can be no doubt that between the teachings of original Christianity, as it took shape from the consciousness of the lower classes, and official Catholicism or Orthodoxy, there is nothing like the gap that exists between the teachings of Marx, which are the kernel of revolutionary thought and revolutionary will, and those despicable offshoots of bourgeois ideas on which the Scheidemanns and Eberts of all countries live and prosper. Through the Social Democratic leaders, the bourgeoisie has made an attempt to rob the proletariat of its spiritual property, and to conceal its brigandage under the banner of Marxism. But it is to be hoped, comrades, that this foul crime will be the last for which the Scheidemanns and Eberts will be responsible. The German proletariat has suffered much from those who were placed at its head; but this will not pass unnoticed. The blood of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg will cry out. This blood will cause the pavements of Berlin to speak, and the bricks of that same Potsdam Square on which Liebknecht first raised the banner of insurrection against the war and capital. And one day sooner or later on Berlin’s streets, barricades will be raised from those bricks against the real grovellers and chained dogs of bourgeois society, against the Scheidemanns and the Eberts!

In Berlin now the butchers have crushed the Spartacist movement, the German Communists. They have killed the two best inspirers of that movement, and perhaps today they are even celebrating victory. But there has been no real victory there, for there has not yet been a direct, open, all-out fight; there has not yet been an uprising of the German proletariat in the name of the conquest of political power. This was only a big reconnaissance operation, a deep reconnoitering of the opponent’s encampment. Reconnaissance precedes battle, but it is not yet battle. The German proletariat needed this reconnaissance in depth, just as we needed it in our July days. The unfortunate thing is that in the reconnaissance two of the best commanders fell. It is a cruel loss, but it is not a defeat. The fight is still to come.

We shall understand what is going on in Germany better if we take a look at our own situation of yesterday. You remember the course of events and its inner logic. At the end of February, Old Style, the masses threw the throne of the tsars off their backs. For the first few weeks there was a feeling that the main thing had already been accomplished. The new people coming forward from the opposition parties, which had never been in power in our country, enjoyed for the first period the trust or partial trust of the popular masses. But this trust quickly began to develop cracks in it. Petrograd was in the lead at the second stage of the revolution too, as was to be expected. In July, just as in February, it was the vanguard of the revolution and had gone far ahead of the rest. This vanguard, which summoned the popular masses to open warfare against the bourgeoisie and the conciliators, paid heavily for the deep reconnaissance which it carried out.

In the July days the Petrograd vanguard came into collision with the Kerensky government. This was not yet the insurrection we went through in October. It was a skirmish by the vanguard, the historical significance of which the broad masses in the provinces did not yet fully realize. In this clash the Petrograd workers showed the popular masses not only of Russia, but of all countries, that behind Kerensky there was no independent army; that the forces supporting him were the forces of the bourgeoisie, the White Guard, the counterrevolution.

At that time, in July, we suffered a defeat. Comrade Lenin had to go into hiding. Some of us were in prison. Our newspapers were silenced. There was a clampdown on the Petrograd Soviet. The presses of the party and the Soviet were broken up, the working-class buildings and rooms were sealed. Everywhere the violence of the Black Hundreds was raging. In other words, what was happening was what is happening now on the streets of Berlin. And nonetheless, not one of the real revolutionaries then had a shadow of doubt about the fact that the July days were only a prelude to our triumph.

A similar situation has arisen in the last few days in Germany. Like Petrograd here, Berlin has gone out ahead of the rest of the popular masses; as they did here, all the enemies of the German proletariat have been howling that the dictatorship of Berlin cannot be tolerated; that Spartacist Berlin is isolated; that a constituent assembly must be called and moved from Red Berlin, corrupted by the propaganda of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, to a more healthy provincial town of Germany! Everything the enemy did here, all the malicious agitation, all the base slanders we heard here, all this — in German translation — has been fabricated by the Scheidemanns and Eberts and spread around Germany, against the Berlin proletariat and its leaders, Liebknecht and Luxemburg. True, the German proletariat’s reconnaissance developed wider and deeper than ours in July, and there are more victims there, and more important ones — all that is true. But this is explained by the fact that the Germans are going through an episode which we have already gone through once; their bourgeoisie and military have learned from our July and October experiences. But the main thing is that the class relations there are incomparably more clearly defined than ours; the possessing classes are incomparably more tightly knit, cleverer, more active — and that also means more ruthless.

In our country, comrades, there were four months between the February revolution and the July days; the Petrograd proletariat needed a quarter of a year to feel the incontrovertible necessity of coming out onto the streets and attempting to shake the pillars on which the Kerensky-Tsereteli temple of state rested. After the defeat of the July days it took another four months for the heavy reserves of the provinces to support Petrograd, and it was with confidence of victory that we were able to declare a direct attack on the bastions of private property in October 1917.

In Germany, where the first revolution, which overthrew the monarchy, broke out only at the beginning of November, our July days are already taking place at the beginning of January. Does this not indicate that in its revolution the German proletariat is following an abbreviated calendar? Where we needed four months, they need only two. And one may hope that this scale will be kept up. It may be that from the German July days to the German October not four months will pass, as here, but less. Perhaps two months will be enough, or even less. But however events proceed, one thing is certain: those shots fired into Karl Liebknecht’s back have echoed powerfully throughout Germany. And that echo sounded a death knell in the ears of the Scheidemanns and Eberts, German and otherwise.

And so a requiem has been sung here for Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, leaders who have perished, We shall never again see them alive. But how many of you comrades ever saw them when they were alive? A tiny minority. Nevertheless, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg have lived among you constantly for the past several months and years. At meetings and congresses you have elected Karl Liebknecht honorary chairman. He himself has not been here (he never managed to get to Russia), but he was still in your midst, sitting as a guest of honor at your table, as one of you, as your own kith and kin. For his name has become not just the name of an individual man. No, it has become for us a word for all that is good, brave, noble, in the working class. If any one 'of us had to imagine a man wholeheartedly devoted to the downtrodden, tempered like steel from head to foot, a man who never dipped his standard before the enemy, the name of Karl Liebknecht would immediately come to mind. He has entered the consciousness and memory of the peoples forever by the heroism of his actions. In the frenzied camp of the enemy, when triumphant militarism was sweeping all before it and crushing everything, when all those who should have been protesting were silent, when there seemed to be no fresh-air vent anywhere — he, Liebknecht, raised his fighter’s voice. He said: You, you reigning tyrants, martial butchers, aggressors; you, you servile lackeys, conciliators, you are trampling Belgium, you are threatening France, you want to crush the whole world, you think you can evade justice — but I say to you: we, the few, are not afraid of you; we are declaring war on you, and we shall arouse the masses and fight this war to the end!

It is that kind of bold decisiveness, that heroism of action, that makes the figure of Karl Liebknecht unforgettable for the world proletariat.

And at his side stands Rosa, a warrior of the world proletariat equal to him in spirit. Their tragic death — at their combat posts — joins their names with a special link, unbreakable forever. From now on they will always be named together: Karl and Rosa, Liebknecht and Luxemburg!

Do you know the basis for the legends about the eternal life of saints? It is the need of people to preserve the memory of those who stood at their heads, who in one way or another led them; the striving to eternalize the personality of the leaders in an aura of sanctity. We, comrades, have no need of legends, have no need to transform our heroes into saints. For us the reality in which we are living now is enough, for that reality is itself legendary. It is awakening miraculous forces in the spirit of the masses and of their leaders, it is creating magnificent figures which tower over the whole of humanity.

Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg are such eternal figures. We sense their presence among us with a striking, almost physical, immediacy. In this tragic hour we are one in spirit with the best workers of Germany and the whole world, thrown into sorrow and mourning by the terrible news. We here feel the sharpness and bitterness of the blow just as much as our German brothers. We are just as much internationalists in our sorrow and mourning as we are in all our struggles.

Liebknecht for us is not only a German leader. Rosa Luxemburg for us is not only a Polish socialist who stood at the head of the German workers. No, for the world proletariat they are both our own, our kin, we are all linked with them by a spiritual, indissoluble bond. To their last breath they belonged not to a nation, but to the International!

For the information of Russian working men and women, it must be said that Liebknecht and Luxemburg were especially close to the Russian revolutionary proletariat, and in the most difficult times too. Liebknecht’s flat was the headquarters for the Russian exiles in Berlin. When a voice of protest had to be raised in the German parliament against the services the German rulers were rendering to the Russian reaction, we turned first of all to Karl Liebknecht, and he knocked on every door and on every skull, including the skulls of Scheidemann and Ebert, to make them protest against the crimes of the German government. And we invariably turned to Liebknecht when it was necessary to give some comrade material aid. Liebknecht was tireless in the service of the “Red Cross” of the Russian revolution.

At the German Social Democratic congress in Jena already mentioned, which I attended as a guest, the presidium, on Liebknecht’s initiative, proposed that I speak on the resolution, likewise proposed by Liebknecht, denouncing the violence of the tsarist government in Finland. Liebknecht prepared himself with the greatest care for his own speech, collected figures and facts, questioned me in detail on the customs relations between tsarist Russia and Finland. But before it was time for him to speak (I was to speak after Liebknecht) the news came by telegraph of the assassination of Stolypin in Kiev. This wire message produced a great effect on the congress.

The first question which occurred to the leaders was whether it was proper for a Russian revolutionary to speak at a German congress at a time when some other Russian revolutionary had just assassinated the Russian prime minister. This thought swayed even Bebel. The old man, although he stood three heads taller than the other members of the Vorstand [central committee], nevertheless did not like “unnecessary” difficulties. He immediately sought me out and put me through an interrogation: What was the meaning of the assassination. What party could be responsible for it? Did I not think that under the circumstances my speaking would merely draw the attention of the German police to me? “You are afraid," I asked the old man carefully, “that my speech might produce certain difficulties?” “Yes,” replied Bebel, “I admit I would prefer you not to speak.” “In that case,” I replied, “there can of course be no question of my speaking.” On that we parted.

A minute later Liebknecht literally came running over to me. He was extremely agitated. “Is it true that they suggested you shouldn’t speak?” he asked me. “Yes,” I replied, “I’ve just settled the matter with Bebel.” “And you agreed?” “How could I not agree?" I answered, trying to justify myself, “I’m not the host here, I’m a guest.” “It’s an outrageous thing for our presidium to do, it’s a disgrace, it’s an unheard-of scandal, it’s contemptible cowardice!” etc., etc. Liebknecht gave vent to his indignation in his speech, in which he mercilessly attacked the tsarist government, despite behind-the-scenes warnings from the presidium, which tried to persuade him not to cause “unnecessary” difficulties in the form of insults to His Majesty the tsar.

From the years of her youth Rosa Luxemburg stood at the head of the Polish Social Democratic Party, which has now joined together with the so-called Lewica, i.e., the revolutionary section of the Polish Socialist Party, in founding the Communist Party. Rosa Luxemburg spoke excellent Russian, had a profound knowledge of Russian literature, followed Russian political life day by day, was connected by the closest bonds to the Russian revolutionaries, and lovingly explained in the German press the revolutionary steps of the Russian proletariat. In her second homeland, Germany, Rosa Luxemburg, with her special talent, acquired not only a perfect command of the German language, but also a full knowledge of German political life, and she took up one of the most prominent places in the old Social Democracy of Bebel’s time. There she invariably remained in the extreme left wing.

In 1905 Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg lived through the events of the Russian revolution, in the real sense of the word, Rosa Luxemburg left Berlin for Warsaw in 1905 — not as a Pole, but as a revolutionary. Freed on bail from the citadel of Warsaw, she came illegally to Petrograd in 1906, and there under a false name she visited several of her friends in prison. Back in Berlin, she redoubled the fight against opportunism, opposing to it the methods and techniques of the Russian revolution.

Together with Rosa we went through the greatest misfortune ever to fall upon the working class. I am speaking of the shameful bankruptcy of the Second International in August 1914. Together with her we raised the banner of the Third International. And now, comrades, in our day-to-day work we shall remain faithful to the legacy of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg; if today in a Petrograd still cold and starving we are raising the edifice of a socialist state, we are acting in the spirit of Liebknecht and Luxemburg; if our army advances on the fronts, it is defending with its blood the legacy of Liebknecht and Luxemburg. What a bitter thing it is that it was unable to defend them too!

In Germany there is no Red Army, for power there is still in the hands of the enemy. We already have an army; it is growing and becoming stronger. And in expectation of the day when the army of the German proletariat will rally around the banner of Karl and Rosa, all of us will consider it our duty to bring to the awareness of the Red Army who Liebknecht and Luxemburg were, what they died for, and why their memory must be held sacred by every Red Army soldier, by every worker and peasant.

It is an unbearably hard blow that has been struck against us. Still we look forward, not only with hope, but with confidence. Despite the fact that today in Germany there is a flood of reaction, we do not for a minute lose confidence in the fact that there a Red October will soon be at hand. The great fighters have not perished in vain. Their deaths will be avenged. Their spirits will get satisfaction. Turning to those dear spirits, we may say, “Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, you are no longer in the land of the living; but you are present among us; we can sense your powerful spirit; we shall fight under your banner; our fighting ranks will be inspired by your moral grandeur! And each of us swears — if the time comes and the revolution demands it — to die without flinching, under the same banner you died under, friends and comrades-in-arms, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht!”