The Kienthal Conference¶
Core Argument¶
The Kienthal Conference chapter documents the intensifying revolutionary crisis across Europe in 1915-16 and Lenin’s strategic response to the shifting mood of the proletariat. The core argument is that objective conditions—mass strikes, social ferment, and the collapse of the Second International’s authority—were forcing a polarisation within the socialist movement that made centrist positions untenable. The chapter opens with striking statistical evidence: German strikes rose from 137 involving 14,000 workers in 1915 to 240 involving 129,000 in 1916; French strikes tripled; Russian strikes surged from 928 to 1,410, with strikers doubling to over a million. These figures are drawn from Soviet historical sources and serve to ground Lenin’s perspective that the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia must “kindle the socialist revolution in Europe.”
The narrative traces the belated manoeuvre by the old International’s leaders to revive the International Socialist Bureau, with Camille Huysmans declaring the International “not dead” at a Dutch party congress in January 1916. In response, a ‘Broad Commission’ met at Berne in February 1916, exposing Huysmans’ initiative as a “conspiracy against socialism” and agreeing to convene a second left conference. The Kienthal conference in early May 1916 assembled 43 delegates from nine countries, including Lenin, Zinoviev, Radek, Fritz Platten, Paul Fröhlich, and Willi Münzenberg. The chapter notes that while the left was stronger than at Zimmerwald, their peace resolution was rejected by a centrist majority; the resulting compromise was an advance but insufficient.
The chapter’s polemical thrust is directed against centrism—those “revolutionary in phrases, but bourgeois-reformist in deeds.” Lenin is portrayed as the only figure who understood that a de facto international split already existed and that ambiguity was intolerable in a revolutionary moment. Robert Grimm is identified as the first centrist to move rightwards by summer 1916, followed by Turati, Merrheim, and Bourderon. The chapter argues that centrists “hated” Lenin precisely because he insisted on clarity. The Zimmerwald Left itself is acknowledged as heterogeneous, with figures like Radek, Bukharin, and Pyatakov lacking a clear Bolshevik-Leninist position. Nevertheless, the chapter presents Zimmerwald as a necessary stepping stone to the new International, providing Lenin with invaluable contacts across Europe.
The chapter concludes with a striking personal note: Lenin’s Christmas 1916 letter to Inessa Armand expressing doubt that he would live to see the revolution, and his January 1917 speech to Swiss young socialists predicting he would not see “the decisive battles.” One month later, the Tsar was overthrown. The irony is left to speak for itself.