ROSA LUXEMBURG: LETTERS FROM PRISON
ROSA
LUXEMBURG was born in 1870 at Zamosc, in Russian Poland,
the daughter of a well-to-do Jewish merchant. Her revolutionary career
began with the organization of a secret Socialist discussion group among
her schoolmates at the Warsaw gymnasium and a flight across the border
into Switzerland to escape the Czar's police: It ended in 1919 with her
murder by Guards officers in Berlin. Rosa Luxemburg is known to his–
tory in many roles: as the greatest political intelligence in the old Ger–
man social democracy; as the author of
Die Akkumulation des K apitals,
a ·major contribution to the Marxist theory of this century; as the op–
ponent of the reformist perversion of Marxism advanced by Edouard
Bernstein and his followers before the war; as one of the few leaders of
the Second International who opposed the war after it began-as well
as before-and who went to prison 'rather than remain silent; as the
leader, with Karl Liebknecht, of the heroic and tragic attempt of the
Spartacists to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat in Germany;
as a formidable agitator, a pamphleteer of the utmost brilliance, and a
great revolutionary. But there is also the Rosa Luxemburg of
the letters we print here, the Luxemburg whose human relation–
ships are so warm, whose sympathy for animals, birds, even plants
and insects, is so acute as to cause her constant pain. The
letters were all written from one or another prison cell during the war.
They were addressed to her intimate friend, the wife of Karl Liebknecht.
Another friend, Luise Kautsky, wrote in the introduction to a collection
of letters written by Luxemburg to the Kautskys: "As compared with the
prison letters to Sonia Liebknecht, which resemble a delicate picture
in
subdued colors projected against a background of grey, these letters
give the effect of a painting of many colors, with virile red predomina–
ting." It is true that "virile red" was dominant, but the quiet, reflective
greys also had their place in Luxemburg's personality. The letters to
Sonia Liebknecht supply a needed corrective to the usual impression. The
present translation, so far as we know, is the first rendering in English.
The "Newsreel" was compiled by Dwight Macdonald.
In July, 1918, Sonia Liebknecht received a letter from prison which
is not in this collection. It was from her husband: "I hear that my
friend, Rosa Luxemburg, was arrested on July tenth. She is delivered up
to her enemies and her frail health will suffer terribly in the bad air,
as she can have no exercise out of doors. Last time, she was dragged off
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