Luxembourg Rosa - biography, facts from life, photographs, background information. Kollontai, Zetkin, Luxembourg: who were the famous icons of feminism

Comrade Rose

Rosa Lusemburg was born in 1871 near the Polish city of Lublin, which was then part of the Russian Empire, in the town of Zamostye.

Rosa Luxembourg Photo: newspress.co.il

Her family was prosperous and Rosa, the youngest of five children, was loved and spoiled. But her life was thoroughly spoiled by external unattractiveness - short stature, a long nose, short legs and congenital dislocation of the hip. Maybe that's why the girl was ambitious and ambitious, and already in her early youth she became interested in politics.

Due to police persecution, 18-year-old Rosa was forced to leave Poland and emigrate to Switzerland. In Zurich, she fell in love with the socialist Leo Jogiches, known under the pseudonym Jan Tyszka. The novel woke up an ordinary woman in a fiery revolutionary. "If I ever want to take a couple of stars from the sky to give someone for cufflinks, then let cold pedants not interfere with this and let them not say, shaking my finger at me, that I am introducing confusion into all school astronomical atlases," she wrote to Yogiches.

Rosa Luxembourg and Leo Yogiches Screenshot from Red TV video

However, he, responding to Rosa's confessions, was in no hurry to tie the knot. The 16-year-long romance gradually faded away, and Luxembourg again devoted herself to party activities, in which there is no place for the family. The only marriage Luxembourg became a marriage of convenience - in order to move to Germany, she had to marry a German subject, Gustav Lübeck.

In Germany, Rosa became active in the extreme left wing of the Social Democratic Party.

In 1907, her affair began with the son of a party friend, Konstantin Zetkin, who was 14 years younger. Luxembourg, who turned 36, had a long-term correspondence with 22-year-old Zetkin, historians know of more than 600 letters. A five-year romance ended when Konstantin fell in love with a young girl. Since then, Luxembourg has devoted herself entirely to politics.

"Red" Rose at a rally in Germany Photo: taringa.net

Rosa Luxemburg welcomed the revolution of 1917 in Russia, but criticized the Bolsheviks for establishing a one-party system in the country. However, she appreciated the very idea of ​​revolution and joined the Bolsheviks. In 1918, Luxembourg, together with Karl Liebknecht, leads the founding congress of the Communist Party of Germany. A year later, Luxembourg, which party comrades called the "Red" Rose, welcomed the protests of the Berlin workers, which went down in history as the "Spartacist uprising." When the public protest was crushed, Rosa Luxembourg was arrested.

After being interrogated at the Eden Hotel, she was taken, covered in blood, on a boat to transport the arrested. One of the police officers shot her in the head and dumped her body into the Landswehr Canal. The body was found only four months later. Rosa Luxembourg was buried on June 13, 1919 at the Friedrichsfelde Cemetery in Berlin.

"Wild" Clara

Clara Zetkin was born on July 5, 1857 in the Saxon city of Wiederau in the family of a parish teacher rural school and in her maiden name was Eissner. In a private institution where the girl studied, she was read brilliant career teacher. However, in 1878, Clara, who was fond of politics, joined the Social Democratic Party. Then she became interested in a political emigrant from Odessa, Osip Zetkin. Despite the fact that a party ally was not going to start an affair, Clara got her way.

Clara and her sons Photo: monitor.bg

In 1882, Clara Eissner was forced to leave Germany due to political persecution. In Paris, she found Osip and settled with him. Despite the fact that the marriage was not officially registered, Clara took the surname Zetkin. With a difference of two years, she had two sons - Maxim and Kostya. At that time the woman had to throw political career and to earn a living at three jobs at once, Osip Zetkin was interrupted by odd jobs and did not provide for his family. Despite the difficulties, already then Clara Zetkin spoke about the equal rights of husband and wife. "Until this time, women existed under the sign of subordination in the family. A man and a woman should have equal rights that enrich each other mutually. Both husband and wife are responsible for raising children, which should take place regardless of gender stereotypes, "she wrote. Klara was 32 years old when Osip died of tuberculosis, but, according to contemporaries, she looked at all 45.

After the death of Osip, Zetkin moved with her children to Germany, where she continued her party activities. Here she met 18-year-old student Georg Friedrich Zundel. An affair began, which grew into marriage. Party comrade August Babel then wrote to Clara: "This is madness! You will become a laughing stock!" However, the marriage turned out to be happy, they lived together for 20 years, until George fell in love with a young neighbor. Zetkin did not let her husband go, but he left anyway. The official divorce was issued only after 11 years.

Personal life did not prevent Zetkin from engaging in politics and feminist issues. It was she who, on August 27, 1910, at the Second International Socialist Women's Conference, put forward a proposal to celebrate the International women's day. For the indefatigable temper and pressure in the affairs of the revolution, members of the same party called Clara Zetkin - "Wild".

Zetkin spent the last years of her life in the USSR Photo: dw.de

Zetkin headed the International Women's Secretariat of the Comintern and was regularly elected to the Reichstag from the Communist Party. In 1920 she first visited Soviet Union where she met Lenin and Krupskaya.

After left-wing parties were banned in Germany, Zetkin permanently moved to the USSR.

In 1933, Clara Zetkin died in the Moscow region, her ashes were walled up in the Kremlin wall on Red Square in Moscow.

Rosa Luxembourg is a member of the international communist and labor movement, a Russian, Polish and German revolutionary, founder, one of the founders, economist, publicist, philosopher, theorist of Marxism and social democracy.

Biography

Social reforms or revolutions?, .

Capital accumulation. Contribution to the economic explanation of imperialism, .

Militarism, War and the Working Class, .

Speech at the founding congress of the Communist Party of Germany, .

Russian revolution. Critical evaluations, .

Collected Works, 1923-1928

Rosa Luxembourg in prison. Letters and documents from the years 1915-1918, .

Internationalism and class struggle, .

Heritage. Political concepts

Rosa Luxemburg advocated the ideas of Marx and Engels:

"Marxism is a revolutionary worldview that must constantly fight new knowledge that does not tolerate anything like the hardening of time really forms, best preserved in the clash of weapons of self-criticism and intellectual history in the lightning and thunder of their life force."

In 1901, Rosa wrote an essay on Karl Marx in which she said:

the emergence of profits from a labor law that deprives a worker is always part of the bargain of the value of his product. Competition laws in the market, forcing the contractor, his profits turn to "understand" profits, while the credit system, the production process of goods and continues to go. The law of "average rate of profit", which leads to the distribution of socially produced wealth and caused the subsequent inevitable "crisis" in the capitalist economy. These laws are justified for them by the basic class solidarity of capital owners to producers, so that structural exploitation will be overcome only through the abolition of wage labor and class domination.

In 1913, Luxembourg, in her main work, developed the theory of imperialism.

Imperialism is a historical necessity, the final stage of capitalist development.

The modern proletarian class is not their struggle is not final, in a book set in a theoretical scheme, and the struggle of modern workers is part of history, part social development, and against the backdrop of history, in the midst of development, in the middle of the struggle, we learn how we should fight.

The working class in every country learns to fight in the course of their struggle... Social Democracy... is only the vanguard of the proletariat, part of all the working masses, blood from blood and flesh from flesh, these social democracies, seek and find routes and special solutions the struggle of the workers only in the degree of development of this struggle, in which it draws from this battle only evidence for the future.

"Social democracy is nothing but the embodiment of the class struggle of the modern proletariat, which is based on the awareness of its historical consequences. Their real leader, in fact, is the mass itself [...] Especially since social democracy is developing, growing, getting stronger, more enlightened working masses are increasing with each passing day of their destiny, the leadership of their movement as a whole, to determine their policy in their own hands.And since the Social Democracy in everything is only the conscious vanguard of the proletarian class movement, according to the Communist Manifesto in every single the moment the struggle represents the permanent interests of a given resolution and any partial group interests of the working class against the interests of the whole movement, so in social democracy their leaders are increasingly powerful more influential, more clear and conscious they themselves are only the spokesman for the will and aspirations of the enlightened masses, only the bearers objective laws of motion.

"The abolition of the domination of capital, the creation of a socialist social system - this is no less, this is the historical theme of the current revolution. Powerful work, which is not carried out in an instant for several decrees from top to bottom, as a result of which only the own conscious actions of the masses of working people in town and countryside for life only the highest intellectual maturity and the inexhaustible idealism of the masses against all storms can be brought safely into the harbour."

About democracy;

“It is the historical task of the proletariat, when it comes to power, to create socialist democracy instead of bourgeois democracy, and not to abolish any democracy. Socialist democracy begins simultaneously with the abolition of class rule and the building of socialism. It begins with the conquest of power by the socialist party. It is nothing but the dictatorship of the proletariat.

perpetuation of memory

There are 284 Rosa Luxembourg streets in Russia. Also a few villages.

March 5 marks the 146th anniversary of the birth of the famous revolutionary Rosa Luxembourg. Contrary to popular belief, the "Valkyrie of the Revolution" was not a convinced feminist and man-hater. In fact, her personal life was no less turbulent than her political one.

Famous revolutionary

Rosalia Luxenburg was born in the Polish town of Zamostye, which at that time was part of the Russian Empire. Social and political activities fascinated her even when she studied at the women's gymnasium in Warsaw - the girl opposed the Russification of Polish schools. And at the age of 18, Rosalia was forced to leave Poland because of her participation in the revolutionary circle "Proletariat". She fled to Switzerland where she studied philosophy, political economy and law at the University of Zurich and was one of the first women to receive a Ph.D.


Rosa speaking at the Stuttgart Congress of the Second International, 1907

Later, she shortened her name for ease of pronunciation and replaced the letter “n” with “m” in her last name, it turned out “Rosa Luxembourg”. She was an unenviable bride. Due to birth trauma - dislocation hip joint- she remained lame for the rest of her life, her height was 150 cm, which, with a disproportionately large head and short legs, was a significant drawback. Rosa was transformed only when she stood at the podium in front of the people. Detractors explained such excessive political activity of the revolutionary with an inferiority complex. Biographer R. Schneider wrote: "It can be said that fate deprive her three times: as a woman in a society dominated by men, as a Jewess in an anti-Semitic environment, and as a cripple."


Rosa Luxembourg and Leo Jogiches, 1892

Rosa Luxembourg openly lived with men out of wedlock, not because she was a staunch feminist, but because of circumstances. In Switzerland, she met Leo Jogiches, who became not only her colleague, but also her lover. With him, she participated in the creation of the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania. As it turned out, Rosa is not only a brilliant political orator, but also a subtle lyricist. The revolutionary wrote letters full of tenderness to her beloved: “If I ever want to take a couple of stars from the sky to give someone for cufflinks, then don’t let cold pedants interfere with this and don’t say, shaking my finger at me, that I’m bringing confusion in all school astronomical atlases ... ".


Valkyrie of the Revolution

Leo Jogiches and Rosa Luxembourg

Leo was a staunch supporter of free relationships and was not going to marry. And Rosa dreamed of a family and children: “Own a small apartment, her own library, joint walks, every summer - a trip for a month to the village, without any work at all! And maybe even such a small, very tiny baby? Am I never allowed to? Never? Yesterday in the Tiergarten a child spun under my feet three years- four ... Like a thunderbolt, the thought struck me to grab this baby, quickly run home and keep him as my own. Oh dear, will I never have a child? In response to these tirades, Leo wrote: "Your task is not to bear children, you should give yourself to the political struggle!" Rosa found the strength to break up with him only after 16 years.

At 36, she had a stormy romance with the son of a friend and fellow revolutionary Clara Zetkin. He was 14 years younger, but this age difference did not bother anyone. Their relationship lasted 5 years, after which the young man left Rose for another woman. Even after that, she wrote to him: “You are a beloved friend and you will remain so for me as long as you want, as long as I am alive. Everything about you is more important to me than the rest of the world. I only ask you: stay calm and do not torture yourself because of me. Her next chosen one, lawyer Paul Levy, was 12 years younger. This relationship also did not last long. After that, Rosa, in despair, declared: "I have no personal life - only public."


Left - Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg, 1910. Right - Rosa Luxemburg

Rosa Luxembourg was considered one of the most ardent feminists of her time, although she did not have any works on this issue - she considered the problem of gender inequality a component global problem class inequality. But she led the life of a real feminist: she graduated from university, received degree, lived with men out of wedlock, led revolutionary activities. In addition, she supported the idea put forward by Clara Zetkin to establish International Women's Day.


Rosa Luxembourg

Rosa Luxembourg once said that she would like to die "at her post - on the street or in prison." Her words turned out to be prophetic. After her arrest, on the way to the prison, the guards beat her with rifle butts, then shot her in the head and threw her body into a canal.


Famous revolutionary

Luxembourg was born on March 5, 1871 in Poland, in the city of Zamosc, east of Lublin. She was the fifth child in a bourgeois Jewish family (her father was a businessman). She graduated from the women's gymnasium in Warsaw. In the gymnasium, she showed herself as a brilliant student.

In 1889, hiding from police persecution for participating in the Polish revolutionary underground "Proletariat", she emigrated to Switzerland, where she continued her education. She studied political economy, jurisprudence, philosophy at the University of Zurich and conducted revolutionary propaganda among students, participated in the work of a circle of Polish political emigrants, which laid the foundation for the revolutionary social democracy in Poland, fought against the Polish Socialist Party (PSP). Here she met the socialist Leo Jogiches (Tyshka).

In 1893, Roza, together with Tyshka, Markhlevsky, Warsky, and others, participated in the founding of the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) and headed its press organ, Robotnicha's Right. And during the same period, she waged a fierce struggle with the Polish Socialist Party (PSP), although Plekhanov and Engels were far from approving of this struggle.

In 1897 Rose defended PhD thesis"Industrial Development of Poland", then moved to Germany. In order to obtain German citizenship, she had to arrange a fictitious marriage with a German citizen. Rose was not in any other marriages and had no children. She soon became a prominent figure on the extreme left wing of the German Social Democratic Party. Rosa proved herself to be a talented journalist and speaker. Repeatedly and for a long time she was in Polish and German prisons. She communicated with Plekhanov, Bebel, Lenin, Zhores, led a polemic with them.

On behalf of the party, she worked among the Polish miners of Silesia, at the same time fighting theoretically and politically against opportunism within the German and international Social Democracy. She actively opposed ministerialism (milleranism) and opportunistic compromises with bourgeois parties. She devoted a number of articles to the refutation of revisionism, which made up the book " social reform or revolution? (1899, Russian translation 1907). After the outbreak of the Russian revolution in 1905, Luxembourg secretly traveled to Warsaw and took an active part in the revolutionary actions of the Polish proletariat. The tsarist secret police finally catches her and she spends long months in prison under the threat of execution or hard labor. German friends help her out of prison and in 1907 Luxembourg moved to Germany forever.

While in Finland in the summer of 1906, she wrote the pamphlet The Mass Strike, the Party and Trade Unions (1906, in Russian translation - The General Strike and German Social Democracy, 1919), in which she summarized the experience of the Russian revolution and formulated in the light of this experience German tasks. labor movement. The pamphlet was highly appreciated by Lenin.

At the Stuttgart Congress of the Second International (1907), Luxembourg, together with Lenin, introduced amendments to A. Bebel's resolution on the question of attitudes towards imperialist war and militarism. The amendments, in particular, pointed out the need to use, in the event of a war, the crisis generated by it in order to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie.

In the years before the war, Luxemburg finally broke not only with the official center, but also with Kautsky. For a number of years, she has been leading the radical left opposition in the party.

In the years between the First Russian Revolution and the World War, Luxembourg began to focus on the rise of imperialism. For several years she taught courses in economics at the party school of the German Social Democratic Party. Her monumental work "The Accumulation of Capital" (1913) contains a number of erroneous assumptions and conclusions that subsequently laid the foundation for the so-called "Luxembourgianism". Even on the eve of the war, in 1913, Luxembourg was sentenced to a year in prison for her speech against militarism. From the very beginning of the war, she begins her revolutionary agitation against the war, leading the Internationale group. During the war - an internationalist, like-minded K. Liebknecht, with whom she founded the Spartak Union.

In 1916 she was arrested and imprisoned. However, even in prison, she did not stop agitation and propaganda work, secretly sending pamphlets, leaflets and appeals against the war. There, under the pseudonym "Junius", she wrote the famous pamphlet "The Crisis of Social Democracy", in which she theoretically anticipated the complete disintegration of the Second International and the creation of the Third International. In September 1918, she wrote articles published in 1922 in a pamphlet entitled “The Russian Revolution. Critical assessment of weakness".

Upon his release from prison, Luxembourg, together with Liebknecht, leads the founding congress of the Communist Party in December 1918. The central organ of the party, inspired by it, is still a model for the era of rapid pace. political struggle. Being (like Liebknecht) against the overthrow of the Scheidemann government, due to the weakness of the Communist Party, Luxembourg, nevertheless, welcomes the beginning of the action of the Berlin workers in early January 1919. The action was suppressed by the Freikorps under the leadership of G. Noske; arrested Liebknecht and Luxemburg were killed by escorts on the way to the Moabit prison on January 15, 1919. According to Captain Pabst, who interrogated Rosa Luxemburg, she was taken away from the Eden Hotel, where the interrogation was carried out, beaten with rifle butts, shot in the temple and thrown into the Landwehr Canal . The body was found in June, Rosa Luxembourg was buried on June 13, 1919. According to historian Isaac Deutscher, with the assassination of Luxembourg, "Kaiser's Germany celebrated its last triumph, and Nazi Germany's first."

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin highly appreciated the revolutionary merits of Rosa Luxemburg. He called her "an eagle, a great communist, a representative of unfalsified, revolutionary Marxism", emphasizing that her work "... will be a most useful lesson for the education of many generations of communists around the world."

Among the literary heritage of Luxembourg, the works should be noted: "Social Reform or Revolution" (1899), "Mass Strike, Party and Trade Unions" (1906), "Capital Accumulation" (1913), "The Crisis of Social Democracy" (1916), "Anti -criticism" (1916), "Russian Revolution. Critical assessment of weakness "(1922, posthumously).

Quotes

Compositions

Memory

• German non-governmental Rosa Luxembourg Foundation, associated with the Left party.
• Rosa Luxemburg streets are available in the cities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Solikamsk, Saransk, Abakan, Abinsk, Azov, Alexandria, Alupka, Armavir, Arkhangelsk, Balakovo, Berdyansk, Biysk, Borovichi, Brovary, Bryansk, Buinsk, Vitebsk, Velikiye Luki, Vladikavkaz , Volgograd, Voronezh, Grodno, Grozny, Guryevsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Yeysk, Yekaterinburg, Zhizdra, Izobilny, Yoshkar-Ola, Slavyansk, Ivanovo, Irkutsk, Irpen, Kadnikov, Karaganda, Karachev, Kirov, Kurgan, Kyshtym, Lozova, Lokhvitse , Magnitogorsk, Mariupol, Melenki, Minsk, Orel, Orenburg, Pavlodar, Poltava, Pskov, Pyatigorsk, Rostock, Sevastopol, Sevsk, Semenov, Simferopol, Skadovsk, Slavgorod, Stavropol, Mineralnye Vody, Nikolaev, Kislovodsk, Kremenchug, Saratov, Saransk, Taganrog, Tver, Tiraspol, Trubchevsk, Tyumen, Tobolsk, Tomsk, Ulyanovsk, Usolye-Sibirsky (Irkutsk region), Kirovgrad, Marganets, Khimki, Tula, Tutaev, Ufa, Monasteries, Cheboksary , Cherepovets, Chernivtsi, Cherkasy, Chuguev, Kherson, Shadrinsk, Elista Yaroslavl
• There were also streets named after Rosa Luxembourg in the cities of Khmelnitsky (renamed Grushevsky St.), Astrakhan (returned the old name Nikolskaya), Odessa (renamed I. Bunin St.), Azov (returned the old name of Alexander Nevsky), Feodosia (returned the old name Admiral Boulevard).
• Rosa Luxembourg Square is located in Kharkov, Berlin, Lugansk, Roslavl.
• Zabavnoe village (Tabunsky district Altai Territory)
• The village of Luxembourg, Babayurtovsky district, Dagestan.
• Luxembourg village, Kant district, Chui region, Kyrgyzstan.
• The village of Roza Luxemburg, Genichesk district, Kherson region.
• Rosa Luxembourg village, Shirokovsky district, Dnepropetrovsk region.
• Roza Luxembourg village, Novoazovsky district, Donetsk region.
• Roza Luxembourg village, Dobropolsky district, Donetsk region.
• Rosa Luxembourg village, Khokholsky district, Voronezh region.
• Rosa Luxembourg village, Bulandinsky district, Akmola region.
• Roza Luxembourg village, Kvarkensky district, Orenburg region
• Wool-spinning factory named after Rosa Luxembourg (not functioning now), Volga village, Nekouzsky district, Yaroslavl region

Name: Rosa Luxemburg (real name Rosalia Luxenburg)

State: Russian empire, Poland, Austria, Germany

Field of activity: Politics

Greatest Achievement: Fight against World War I, fight to establish communism

Due to her childhood misdiagnosis, the treatment took a toll on her health.

During the revolution in 1905, Jogić and Luxembourg returned to Warsaw, where they were soon arrested.

Rosa Luxembourg announced a campaign against the First World War. In this field, she teamed up with Karl Liebknecht, with whom she worked side by side for the rest of her life.

At the end of her life, Rosa waged an uncompromising struggle against the SDP, for which she eventually paid with her life. The central organ of the SDP demanded the arrest of the leaders of the KKE. 100,000 marks were assigned for the heads of Liebknecht and Luxembourg. As a result of this demand, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were arrested, and on the way to the Moabit prison, Rosa Luxemburg was killed by an escort.

The youngest of five children in a Jewish family, she was born in Zamosc, in the Polish territory of Russia on March 5, 1871. AT early childhood I was very ill and once spent a whole year in bed. The disease was misunderstood as tuberculosis of the bones and its treatment caused serious damage to health. Rose learned to read and write before the age of 5. At school she was the best in the class. At her school in Warsaw, there were strict quotas for Jews, and the use of native Polish among students is strictly prohibited. Rosa developed socialist views. At the age of 16, she was denied a gold medal at school because of her "opposition to the authorities."

At that time, about 500,000 Jews lived in Russia. According to the law introduced, all Jews in Russia were required to live in areas specially designated for this (Jewish settlements). The only exceptions were representatives of the wealthy classes or students of popular professions. For this reason, more Jews began to leave Russia. Of these, over 90% settled in the US

Persecution and humiliation were common things for Rosa. She was a Jewish woman who was under oppression in the time of Alexander. She was a woman fighting for equal rights with men in an absolutely patriarchal society, and she was a cripple: after her childhood illness, one of her legs was twisted, due to which Rose limped and had a short stature all her life. All this served to form in her a protest and a desire to fight against injustice.

In Russia, women were not allowed to study at universities, and in 1889 Rosa Luxemburg emigrated to Zurich to study philosophy, economics, and law. During this period, she first became acquainted with the works of and. Rosa became actively involved in the local labor movement. Rosa even defended her dissertation and received doctoral degree. For a woman at that time, this was almost unattainable.

Rosa Luxembourg and Clara Zetkin

In 1890, Rosa Luxembourg met Leo Jogic, who by that time had already served time in prison for his revolutionary views and activism. Rosa and Leo entered into a relationship without getting married or getting married. Clara Zetkin also became her close friend.

Rosa Luxembourg settled in Berlin, where she joined the Social Democratic Party. In 1900, Rosa publishes the pamphlet Reform or Revolution, in which she makes it clear that she considers herself a Marxist. In 1903 Rosa Luxembourg, Leo Jogich and Julian Marchlewski formed the Social Democratic Party of Poland. Persecuted by law, they go to Paris to publish their newspaper.

Revolution of 1905 and political views

During the revolution in 1905, Jogić and Luxembourg returned to Warsaw, where they were soon arrested. Luxembourg's experience during the failed revolution and arrest changed her political views. Prior to this, Rosa believed that a socialist revolution was more likely to occur in an advanced industrial country such as Germany or France. Now she argued that the revolution must take place in a weak developed country like Russia.

World War I

Karl Liebknecht was the only member of the Reichstag who voted against Germany's participation in. Rosa Luxembourg and Clara Zetkin were very afraid of this war, they sent 300 telegrams to local opposition officials asking them to come to an urgent conference in Berlin. There were almost no results.

Rosa Luxembourg decided to launch a campaign against the war. She convened a group of volunteers, but decided not to create a separate party for this and act as part of the SPD. Initially, Clara Zetkin did not want to join the group, arguing that this protest is more of a personal nature than it can be called a full-fledged political action.

However, by September 1914, Zetkin joined the anti-war movement and began to play a significant role in it. She served as editor-in-chief of Glieichheit and was secretary of the international women's secretariat.

Rosa Luxembourg continued to protest against Germany's participation in the war and on February 19, 1915 she was again arrested. Although she was in the status of a political prisoner, she was allowed to write books and other materials. In April 1915 Mehring published some of the material she had written in prison. Zetkin defended the rights of women in war time, her main purpose, as editor of the magazine, was to criticize the policy of the SDP regarding the war.

Over the next few months, members of the group created by Rosa Luxembourg were arrested for their anti-war activities. In February 1916, they decided to create an underground political organization under the name "Spartacubund" (Spartacus League). They expressed their position with the help of an illegal newspaper - Spartakubrif. Like the Bolsheviks in Russia, they argued that the socialists should turn this ethnic conflict into the revolution.

On May 1, 1916, Rosa Luxembourg organized an anti-war demonstration on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. By eight o'clock in the morning the number of demonstrators had reached 100,000 participants. Karl Liebknecht was blamed for the demonstration, and he was arrested. Two hours after his arrest, demonstrators clashed with the police in the square and in neighboring streets.

Rosa was arrested again on July 10, 1916. While under arrest, she continued to write for Spartakubrif. She also worked on her book "Introduction to Economics"

Russian revolution

From her prison cell, Rosa wrote that the revolution was winning in Russia and that this news greatly eased the hardships of imprisonment for her. She wrote many articles and brochures about, in which she condemned the actions of the Mensheviks, who concluded an agreement with, which could lead to the continuation of the war with Germany.

Luxembourg's fears were confirmed when Kerensky became the new prime minister of the Provisional Government and announced the July offensive. In a long article in Spartakubrif, Rosa denounced Kerensky's actions, arguing that the Mensheviks were promoting the rule of imperialism instead of generating equality and freedom of self-determination for peoples.

German Revolution

The German government of Max von Baden asked the President of the United States for a ceasefire on October 4, 1918. This was not a capitulation or even an offer of a truce, but simply an attempt to end the war without any conditions that could harm Germany or Austria. The request was denied and fighting were continued. On October 6, it was announced that Karl Liebknecht, still in prison, demanded that the monarchy be abandoned and that a Soviet republic be established in Germany.

Although the defeat of Germany looked more than convincing, Admiral Franz von Gipper and Admiral Reinhard Scheer began to plan the exit of the Imperial Navy against the Royal Navy to the south North Sea. The admirals sought to lead this operation and conduct it without obtaining permission to do so, on their own initiative. They hoped to inflict damage on the British fleet in order to gain an advantageous position for Germany.

The order to sail caused a mutiny among the sailors. By the evening of November 4, Kiel was captured by 40,000 rebellious sailors, soldiers and workers. News of the events in Kiel quickly spread to other nearby ports, and over the next 48 hours there were massive strikes and demonstrations in other German ports. Councils of workers and sailors were elected, and their influence began to spread actively.

Karl Liebknecht, released from prison on October 23, went up to the balcony of the Imperial Palace and delivered a speech in which he proclaimed a free socialist republic. He asked the people if they wanted a world socialist revolution and thousands of hands went up.

Release from prison

Rosa Luxembourg was released from prison in Breslau on 8 November. She made her way to Cathedral Square, the center of the city, where she was greeted by a massive demonstration. Her appearance changed a lot and shocked her friends in the Spartacus League. Now they saw what years of imprisonment had done to her. She was very old and sick. Her hair, once a deep black, is now completely gray. However, her eyes still burned with fire and determination.

A serious conflict broke out between the Spartacus League and the SDP. The SDP, seeing that support for the Rosa Luxembourg movement is growing in society, begins to conduct active propaganda against it.

Believing in democracy, Rosa Luxembourg announced that her party, the Spartacus League, would participate in these elections, but other members of the party were doubtful that the democratically elected in Russia was canceled by force of arms. Rosa Luxembourg denounced this action, saying that her party would never come to power in any other way than fair elections and the expression of the will of the majority of the proletarian masses throughout Germany.

Luxembourg understood that her party had only 3,000 members and was not in a position to carry out a successful revolution now. The Spartacus League consisted mainly of small, autonomous groups scattered throughout Germany.

On December 30, a congress of the Spartacus League was held, at which Karl Radek, a member of the Cheka, argued that the Soviet government could help the league in spreading the world revolution. Radek was sent to Germany and at the congress he convinced the delegates to change the name of the party to Communist Party Germany (KPG). Now the question was whether the KKE should take part in the forthcoming elections.

The last days and death of Rosa Luxemburg

The KKE was denied participation in the elections, but their support in society grew more and more. As a result, the popularity of Luxembourg and the ideas of the KKE led to riots and demonstrations of workers throughout the country. When the number of protesters exceeded 100,000, the SDP decides to forcibly suppress these demonstrations.

In 1919, Rosa Luxemburg decides to go out to the striking Berlin workers and support them. The speech was suppressed. SDP feared civil war the situation became more and more tense. There were barricades throughout the city and there were regular skirmishes with the police in the streets.

The central organ of the SDP demanded the arrest of the leaders of the KKE. 100,000 marks were assigned for the heads of Liebknecht and Luxembourg. As a result of this demand, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were arrested, and on the way to the Moabit prison, Rosa Luxemburg was killed by an escort. It happened on January 15, 1919.

As interviews of witnesses later showed, Rosa was tortured by the officers interrogating her before her death. People saw her being taken out of the Hotel Eden, beaten and covered in blood. According to historian Isaac Deutscher, the death of Rosa Luxembourg marked the beginning.