Theodor Bergmann 1916-2017
I received word this morning that Theodor Bergmann has died, just a month before his 101st birthday.
I am sad to inform you that Theo has passed away.
Hinrich
13. Juni 2017
Mario Kessler / Redaktion Sozialismus
Die Stärksten kämpfen ein Leben lang: Theodor Bergmann (7.3.1916 – 12.6.2017)
http://www.sozialismus.de/kommentare_analysen/
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Bergmann_(Agrarwissenschaftler)
I met Bergmann in New York, when he was in town to speak at the Brecht Forum (see below). He was the long-time editor of Sozialismus, a German magazine that published a couple of my articles in the early 90s. I have vivid memories of his recounting the divisions in the German left and his support for the right opposition in the CP. Back then, this meant being aligned with Bukharin, a Marxist whose ideas Bergmann defended in many venues, including a book titled Bukharin in Retrospect (Socialism and Social Movements) that was co-edited by Moshe Lewin, another heterodox Marxist I respect highly. The collection was the product of an international conference held in the autumn of 1988, around the time Nikolai Bukharin was officially rehabilitated during glasnost.
Theodor Bergmann speaks on Rosa Luxemburg
Last night I heard a lecture at the Brecht Forum in NYC on “Rosa Luxemburg and the Russian Revolution” by Theodor Bergmann, the co-editor of the journal Sozialismus. He was a member, along with Brandler and Thalheimer, of the German Communist Party Opposition during the Weimar Republic.. He has written a history of this organization and also has written a number of books on agrarian questions. His introduction to farming matters came about in a most unusual manner. He went into exile in Sweden after the rise of Hitler and became a farm laborer. Hence his interest in agrarian questions! The lecture was an analysis of an unfinished article by Rosa Luxemburg on the Russian revolution. Bergmann argued that many of Luxemburg’s criticisms of Bolshevik rule anticipated the subsequent rise of Stalinism and the recent collapse of the Soviet Union. What he was also anxious to make clear was that Luxemburg’s criticisms were offered in the context of support for the revolution and in solidarity with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself. Bergmann cites Leo Jogiches, a German Communist leader and close ally to Luxemburg, as having even more sympathy for the Bolshevik project than was indicated by this late article. If she had lived, there is little doubt that she would continued to deepen her understanding of the Soviet experiment and play a critical role in the fight against Stalin. Bergmann stated that Luxemburg resisted Kremlin control when the Communist Party of Germany was formed.
Now this was in the period that Trotsky was barking orders to the infant French Communist Party from his desk in the Comintern. It would have been interesting to see what Luxemburg would have told the Comintern brass around the time Zinoviev put through his “Bolshevization” measures at the 5th Congress.
This was the question I in fact put to him. I asked if there had ever been a critique of the “organization” question within the ranks of the German Communist Party Opposition. Since the Opposition was strongly influenced by Luxemburg’s ideas, wasn’t there resistance to the super-centralist model put forward by Zinoviev? He replied that indeed there was and that Thalheimer had written a lengthy criticism of the “Boshevization” turn. This is just the item I was looking for to complete my research on how Lenin’s free-wheeling Bolshevik party became turned into the grotesque “Marxist-Leninist” model adopted by Stalinist, Maoist and Trotskyist alike.
Louis Proyect
An interview with Bergmann can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZs25lO_lVQ
I think Jacobin had been planning on publishing an interview with him.
Comment by Alan Ginsberg — June 13, 2017 @ 3:18 pm