“Freedom is always the freedom of the one who thinks differently”
On 14 January 1919, the day after the Spartacist uprising fell, Luxemburg's final article appeared in Die Rote Fahne. To the victors' cry of 'Order prevails in Berlin!' she answered: 'I was, I am, I shall be!' Arrested that night, murdered the next day.
Polish-born German revolutionary, and the Bolsheviks' sharpest comradely critic. From prison she defended the Russian Revolution while warning against the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and the suppression of the press. Murdered by Freikorps troops during the January 1919 Berlin rising.
Career timeline
- 1893Co-founds the Polish social democracy
- 1898–1914Theorist of the SPD left; the revisionism dispute
- 1899Published Reform or Revolution
- 1906The Mass Strike
- 1913Published The Accumulation of Capital
- 1915–1918Jailed for anti-war work; writes on the Russian Revolution from prison
- 1918.12Co-founds the German Communist Party
- 1919.01Murdered by Freikorps troops in the January rising
The polemicist who survived trial only to die in prison
"Do you know the difference between Stalin and Moses? Moses led the Jews out of Egypt, but Comrade Stalin led them out of the Politburo." — Radek to Boris Bazhanov, after Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled from the Politburo.
A Polish-born Jewish journalist and diplomat who moved between the international social-democratic and communist movements. A close associate of Lenin, he participated in the Brest-Litovsk negotiations and the founding of the Comintern, serving on the Bolshevik Central Committee and as Comintern secretary. Renowned for his sharp polemics and biting wit, he led the Left Opposition before recanting publicly in 1930 and rejoining the Party. During the Great Purge he became the central defendant at the Second Moscow Trial, delivering theatrical confessions that earned him a 10-year sentence; in 1939 he was killed in prison on Stalin's orders.
Career timeline
- 1917–1923International communist and diplomatic work
- 1923–1927Left Opposition leadership
- 1937–1939Trial, imprisonment and killing
