Luxemburg drafts The Russian Revolution in prison

Printed in Switzerland as The Crisis of Social Democracy, the work circulates despite wartime censorship. The pseudonym “Junius” protects its author while placing the pamphlet in an international...

Lenin welcomes the pamphlet’s anti-war force but criticizes its analysis of national liberation and some political conclusions. The exchange demonstrates that opposition to imperialist war did not...

She is held in Berlin, later transferred to Wronki and Breslau, remaining imprisoned until the revolution in November 1918. Her imprisonment removes a leading voice from public organizing but...

From prison, Luxemburg welcomes the Russian Revolution and analyzes its international consequences. She views the overthrow of the tsar as a world-historical opening while fearing isolation if...

Luxemburg supports the revolution’s challenge to war and landlord power, while warning that restrictions on political freedoms threaten socialist self-government. Her criticism is later published...

Her analysis of the Russian Revolution supports the overthrow of landlordism and the end of the war while warning that suppressing political freedoms can undermine socialist democracy. Because the...

The German Revolution ends her detention and brings workers’ and soldiers’ councils into public political life. Luxemburg returns to Berlin and commits herself to a socialist transformation led by...

Within a day of her release she helps edit the revolutionary newspaper Die Rote Fahne. The paper becomes a platform for debate over the revolution’s direction, the councils, the SPD-led government and...

In “What Does the Spartacus League Want?” she calls for socialization of major industries, workers’ power through councils and international revolution. The programme treats emancipation as a task for...

She urges the councils’ congress to make the councils the basis of national authority rather than transfer power to a National Assembly. Delegates vote for elections, demonstrating that...