Karl Kautsky Papers

Period 1881-1938
Total size  3 microfilms
Consultation Not restricted
User restriction  Permission required for publication. Please contact RGASPI (formerly RCChIDNI).

Biography

Born in Prague 1854, died in Amsterdam 1938; social democratic writer and Marxist theorist; joined Austrian social democracy in 1874 and worked as a journalist within the Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (SAPD, from 1890 SPD) from 1879; in 1883 founder and editor of Die Neue Zeit, leading theoretical organ of the German and international labour movement; leading Marxist theorist in the period of the Second International; his main goal was to popularize Marxism; resisted the war policy of the majority of the party in 1915; the party dismissed him as editor of Die Neue Zeit in 1917; left the SPD to join the Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (USPD); minor role during the German revolution in 1918/19 as an assistant Secretary of State of Foreign Affairs and chairman of the Sozialisierungskommission; left the USPD in 1921 and joined the reunited SPD in 1922 but had lost most of his enormous influence on German and international social democracy; returned to Vienna in 1924 and published voluminous theoretical and historical studies including `Die materialistische Geschichtsauffassung' 1933 and `Sozialisten und Krieg' 1937.

Content

Draft articles; printed material, partly with marginal notes by Kautsky; proofs; letters by Kautsky (including many copies of originals in other archives), to Friedrich Adler, Petr Garvi, Paul and Laura Lafargue, David Rjazanov, Henriette Roland Holst and others.

Location of originals

Originals at the Rossiskij Centr Chranenija i Izucenija Dokumentov Novejsej (RCChIDNI fonds 213)

Other finding aids

Inventory available in IISH-reading room.