International Socialist Commission - The Third Zimmerwald Conference

The Third Zimmerwald Conference

Meanwhile, the ISC in Stockholm held a meeting at the office of the Stormklocken newspaper on July 3, with representatives of the Soviets to attempt to clarify the situation. Present at this meeting were Linstrom, Lindhagen and Hoglund for Sweden; Olausen for Norway; Otto Lang for Switzerland; Karl Kautsky, Hugo Haase, Lousie Zeitz, and Oskar Cohn for Germany; Sirola for Finland; Orlovsky, Radek and Hanecki for the Bolsheviks; Boris Reinstein for the US Socialist Labor Party; Kirkov for Bulgaria and Balabanoff in her capacity as secretary of the ISC. The representatives of the Soviet were Goldenberg, Vladimir Rozanov and "Smirnov". At this meeting Balabanoff, Orlavsky and Reinstien stated their objections to the invitation of the majority Socialist parties to the proposed Stockholm conference. Goldberg replied that the proposed conference was open to socialist parties without conditions, and would include minorities as well as majorities. Radek re-emphasized the Bolshevik party's disapproval of the Stockholm Conference and the Party's determination to quit the Zimmerwald movement if the Third Zimmerwald Conference chose to participate. Haase, of the Independent Socialist Party of Germany, however, was for the Conference and stated that his party would attend. Again, Balabanoff reminded everybody that no single party could dictate the ISCs position, which would be decided by the third Zimmerwald Conference. On the next day the conclave resumed, this time without the Soviet delegates. A statement was adopted in the name of the "Bureau of the International Socialist Commission" to the effect that the Third Zimmerwald Conference would take place five days before the proposed general Stockholm Conference, but should the conference not meet by September 15, 1917 the commission was empowered to call a conference of affiliates anyway.

On July 9, once their meetings with the Dutch-Scandinavian Committee (the organization planning the Stockholm conference) were finished, the Soviet delegation tried once again to enlist the ISC in the preparation work for the Stockholm Conference. This meeting, held at the ISCs "quarters" was between Balabanoff, Hoglund and Carlson for the ISC and Hendrik Ehrlich and another representative The Soviet delegation did not get a formal answer until July 11, when the ISC sent them a formal letter stating that they would not be able to participate in the preparations because the Stockholm Conference invitations had been "altered" to include the pro-war socialist parties and that the breaking of the "civil peace" was not a requirement of the parties to the conference

On July 13, according to Fainsod, there was another meeting of the ISC with Zimmerwaldists in Stockholm. Participants reported included Radek, Alexandra Kollontai, Orowski, Martinov and Jermanski of Russia, "Mohr of Switzerland", Sirola of Finland, Storm and Kilborn of Sweden. Radek and Kollantai are supposed to have argued against going to the proposed Stockholm Conference while it was still reiterated that only the Third Zimmerwald Conference could decide that.

On July 18 Balabanoff did issue a revised invitation to the Third Zimmerwald Conference. The invitation gave the date as August 10, 1917 and included a provisional agenda, stated that the condition for participation were the same as those published in Bulletin #3 and also included an invitation to a socialist women's conference to be held in connection with the Zimmerwald conference

On August 1 another meeting of the ISC with Zimmerwald adherents in Stockholm decided to call the Third Zimmerwald Conference and meet in Stockholm on September 5 regardless of what happened to the movement for the proposed general Conference. The participants at this meeting included Lindhagen, Lindstorm, and Otto Strom of Sweden; Osip Arkadievich Ermanski of the Menshiviks; Yrjo Sirola of Finland; J. Eads How of the United States; Ledebour of Germany; and Radek and Hanecki "representing both the Bolsheviks and the Social Democracy of Poland and Lithuania"

Finally, the Third Zimmerwald Conference met at Stockholm on September 5–12, 1917. It had a smaller number of participants than any of the previous Zimmerwaldist Conferences, with only about thirty delegates from Russia, Germany, Poland, Finland, Rumania, Switzerland, the United States, Sweden and Norway, as well as the members of the ISC itself. By this point the question of attending the proposed general Stockholm Conference had been rendered practically moot because of the inability of the organizers to realize the project. The question was discussed anyway because some delegates felt that the issues raised by the movement for the Stockholm Congress were of a "fundamental" nature and the proletarians needed to be educated as to why the proposal foundered. No resolution was passed on the issue, though the movement for the Stockholm Conference is condemned, in passing, in the Conferences manifesto.