Noa Rodman
11th December 2014, 08:01
Boris Nicolaevsky compiled the lines below from his conversations with Jakob Reich. https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol5/no2/reich.html
In the midst of the preparations for the [first comintern] conference, a rumour spread that a delegation of Western Socialists, led by Karl Kautsky was coming to Russia. This created a sensation. Lenin had just completed his book The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, and had handed me the manuscript for translation into German. I passed this job on to Frida Rubiner. As soon as he heard of Kautsky’s imminent arrival, Lenin hurried things along. He insisted that as soon as Kautsky crossed the frontier a copy of the pamphlet should be handed to him. Lenin was also concerned about the reception and lodging of this delegation, and he put Karakhan in charge of all the arrangements. Lenin insisted that they should receive the best possible welcome. In the conditions existing at the time this was no easy task. Karakhan found a suitable house, the former town house of a wealthy sugar merchant on Sophia Quay (I think it was Tereshchenko’s). The catering was even more difficult. I remember that Karakhan was congratulating himself on having been able to procure a bag of rice and some chickens … [27] As we know, Kautsky’s delegation never came. The rice and chickens went to the ‘delegates’ of the future Communist International. "
[27:] The decision to send a Socialist delegation to Moscow was taken at the international conference in Bern (9–10 February 1919). The matter was raised by P.B. Axelrod. Karl Kautsky, Jean Longuet, Ramsay MacDonald, etc. – that is, the most representative Socialist leaders – were named as members of this delegation, but it never went to Russia. When asked by the author of these lines why this trip was cancelled, Kautsky replied: ‘I can’t exactly recall the pretext, but the real reason was that a Western Socialist did not want to know the truth about the events in Russia.’ (I quote from memory, Kautsky’s letter having, no doubt, been lost.)
Here is more about the “International Labor and Socialist Conference” that met at Berne: http://search.socialhistory.org/Record/S0020859000004272
Eisner proposed sending a study commission to Russia and urged that the subject of Bolshevism be placed on the agenda of the next International Congress. Throughout the proposal he scrupulously avoided anything that might be construed as an attack on, or an endorsement of, Bolshevism. By contrast three of the other four resolutions submitted to the commission — those of Branting, Renaudel and Wels - were hostile to Soviet Russia although only Wels criticized the Bolsheviks by name. The one other proposal, that of Ramsay MacDonald, welcomed the Russian as well as the Austrian and German revolutions, condemned military intervention in Russia, and, like Eisner's, urged that a study commission go to Russia and report back to the next International Congress.
etcetera
(the stenographic record wasn't published, Kautsky himself sat on this Berne commission)
By the way, Nicolaevsky's letters to the Kautskys indeed show that he asked about this planned trip to Moscow.
hdl.handle.net/10622/ARCH00712.D%20XVIII%20149-176?locatt=view%3Apdf (http://hdl.handle.net/10622/ARCH00712.D%20XVIII%20149-176?locatt=view%3Apdf)
hdl.handle.net/10622/ARCH00712.505?locatt=view%3Apdf (http://hdl.handle.net/10622/ARCH00712.505?locatt=view%3Apdf)
In response to a question by Luise Kautsky if he read the newly launched KPD journal Unter dem Banner des Marxismus (http://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/d-man/4374/literature-random-comments#comment-3143), Nicolaevsky said he was familiar with its contents since many articles had already appeared in Russian. He writes to be on guard for the friendlier tone of the polemics in the journal; it is a communist Trojan horse to appeal to a wider audience.
Another subject in the letters is Kautsky's stance one some pre-war Russian party matters. Nicolaevsky mentions the (1931) debate in the SU (https://libcom.org/library/kautskys-theory-proletarian-revolution-isaak-alter) about Lenin's stance in the Kautsky-Luxemburg dispute. Also, as a great archivist, Nicolaevsky provides a lot of research materials. He devotes a whole letter to the subject of 1840s socialists' stance on war (apropos Kautsky's 1932 book Krieg und Demokratie. Erste Revolutionkriege bis 1848).
In the midst of the preparations for the [first comintern] conference, a rumour spread that a delegation of Western Socialists, led by Karl Kautsky was coming to Russia. This created a sensation. Lenin had just completed his book The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, and had handed me the manuscript for translation into German. I passed this job on to Frida Rubiner. As soon as he heard of Kautsky’s imminent arrival, Lenin hurried things along. He insisted that as soon as Kautsky crossed the frontier a copy of the pamphlet should be handed to him. Lenin was also concerned about the reception and lodging of this delegation, and he put Karakhan in charge of all the arrangements. Lenin insisted that they should receive the best possible welcome. In the conditions existing at the time this was no easy task. Karakhan found a suitable house, the former town house of a wealthy sugar merchant on Sophia Quay (I think it was Tereshchenko’s). The catering was even more difficult. I remember that Karakhan was congratulating himself on having been able to procure a bag of rice and some chickens … [27] As we know, Kautsky’s delegation never came. The rice and chickens went to the ‘delegates’ of the future Communist International. "
[27:] The decision to send a Socialist delegation to Moscow was taken at the international conference in Bern (9–10 February 1919). The matter was raised by P.B. Axelrod. Karl Kautsky, Jean Longuet, Ramsay MacDonald, etc. – that is, the most representative Socialist leaders – were named as members of this delegation, but it never went to Russia. When asked by the author of these lines why this trip was cancelled, Kautsky replied: ‘I can’t exactly recall the pretext, but the real reason was that a Western Socialist did not want to know the truth about the events in Russia.’ (I quote from memory, Kautsky’s letter having, no doubt, been lost.)
Here is more about the “International Labor and Socialist Conference” that met at Berne: http://search.socialhistory.org/Record/S0020859000004272
Eisner proposed sending a study commission to Russia and urged that the subject of Bolshevism be placed on the agenda of the next International Congress. Throughout the proposal he scrupulously avoided anything that might be construed as an attack on, or an endorsement of, Bolshevism. By contrast three of the other four resolutions submitted to the commission — those of Branting, Renaudel and Wels - were hostile to Soviet Russia although only Wels criticized the Bolsheviks by name. The one other proposal, that of Ramsay MacDonald, welcomed the Russian as well as the Austrian and German revolutions, condemned military intervention in Russia, and, like Eisner's, urged that a study commission go to Russia and report back to the next International Congress.
etcetera
(the stenographic record wasn't published, Kautsky himself sat on this Berne commission)
By the way, Nicolaevsky's letters to the Kautskys indeed show that he asked about this planned trip to Moscow.
hdl.handle.net/10622/ARCH00712.D%20XVIII%20149-176?locatt=view%3Apdf (http://hdl.handle.net/10622/ARCH00712.D%20XVIII%20149-176?locatt=view%3Apdf)
hdl.handle.net/10622/ARCH00712.505?locatt=view%3Apdf (http://hdl.handle.net/10622/ARCH00712.505?locatt=view%3Apdf)
In response to a question by Luise Kautsky if he read the newly launched KPD journal Unter dem Banner des Marxismus (http://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/d-man/4374/literature-random-comments#comment-3143), Nicolaevsky said he was familiar with its contents since many articles had already appeared in Russian. He writes to be on guard for the friendlier tone of the polemics in the journal; it is a communist Trojan horse to appeal to a wider audience.
Another subject in the letters is Kautsky's stance one some pre-war Russian party matters. Nicolaevsky mentions the (1931) debate in the SU (https://libcom.org/library/kautskys-theory-proletarian-revolution-isaak-alter) about Lenin's stance in the Kautsky-Luxemburg dispute. Also, as a great archivist, Nicolaevsky provides a lot of research materials. He devotes a whole letter to the subject of 1840s socialists' stance on war (apropos Kautsky's 1932 book Krieg und Demokratie. Erste Revolutionkriege bis 1848).