Rosa Luxemburg’s Symphony on the Russian Revolution

Abstract

Let us go back to the summer of 1918. Rosa Luxemburg was moved to the prison in Wrocław one year before. She has to put up with fresh maltreatment. Her health is ruined. One of her closest friends, Hans Diefenbach, falls at the front. The world is in commotion, in the East more than anywhere else, but she remains imprisoned. In Germany, resistance against the war is growing but there is no mass refusal to obey orders yet, and no councils and no revolution yet either. In Russia, her closest political allies, the Bolsheviks, have taken power and are struggling to impose socialism. Nevertheless, if we look at the articles written by Rosa Luxemburg at this time, the socialism she so yearned for appears to be distorting the ideals she is committed to. She deeply fears a new disappointment.