International Workers Relief
Encyclopedia
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , commonly referred to as Soviet Russia, Bolshevik Russia, or simply Russia, was the largest, most populous and economically developed republic in the former Soviet Union....
. The organization, based in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, later produced films and coordinated propaganda efforts on behalf of the USSR.
Formation
The Internationale Arbeiter-Hilfe (IAH), also known as International Workers' Aid or Workers International Relief (WIR) was created in Berlin on September 12, 1921, in response to a call by Lenin, in order to recruit international support in response to a drought and famineRussian famine of 1921
The Russian famine of 1921, also known as Povolzhye famine, which began in the early spring of that year, and lasted through 1922, was a severe famine that occurred in Bolshevik Russia...
in the Volga area, particularly those lands occupied by the Volga Germans. The drought and reduced crop production in the area was turned into a humanitarian disaster when Bolshevik forces known as "The Iron Broom" began a campaign of massive "tax collections" (food requisitions) to seize food supplies and redistribute them to other parts of Soviet Russia. Lenin's call for international support was motivated by a desire to counteract the influence of Herbert Hoover's American Relief Association (ARA) in providing food aid to the people of the Volga as well as in the rest of Eastern Europe, as Soviet troops were in the process of confiscating food supplies in the Volga region. Lenin regarded the ARA as "mercenaries" who were seeking to defeat Bolshevism by alleviating hunger in Soviet Russia, thus embarrassing the Bolshevist government as ineffective and incompetent. This attitude was echoed by left-leaning commentators and editors in the United States, with the Nation speculating that Hoover might "use his food to overturn the Soviet government."
In the view of Marxist historian E.H. Carr, the original purpose of the WIR was both humanitarian
Humanitarianism
In its most general form, humanitarianism is an ethic of kindness, benevolence and sympathy extended universally and impartially to all human beings. Humanitarianism has been an evolving concept historically but universality is a common element in its evolution...
and ideological
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
:
"Its initial function was to provide a Left-wing counterweight to the generous relief supplies sent to Soviet RussiaRussian Soviet Federative Socialist RepublicThe Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , commonly referred to as Soviet Russia, Bolshevik Russia, or simply Russia, was the largest, most populous and economically developed republic in the former Soviet Union....
by the ARAAmerican Relief AdministrationAmerican Relief Administration was an American relief mission to Europe and later Soviet Russia after World War I. Herbert Hoover, future president of the United States, was the program director....
and other bourgeois agencies to mitigate the horrors of the famine. German workers undertook to work overtime and set aside their surplus production of machines or consumption goods for Soviet Russia; later, collections of money were made for Soviet workers and a loan was floated; and [Mezhrabpom] began distributing popular literature and propaganda on behalf of Soviet Russia."
WIR was formed by Willi Münzenberg
Willi Münzenberg
Willi Münzenberg was a communist political activist. Münzenberg was the first head of the Young Communist International in 1919-20 and established the famine-relief and propaganda organization Workers International Relief in 1921...
, a member of the German Communist Party (KPD) and a skilled propagandist. Münzenberg came to Lenin's attention through his activities as leader of the Young Communist International
Young Communist International
The Young Communist International was the parallel international youth organization affiliated with the Communist International .-International socialist youth organization before World War I:...
. With Soviet government funding, Münzenberg promptly set up a series of benignly-titled front organizations such as the Friends of Soviet Russia
Friends of Soviet Russia
The Friends of Soviet Russia was formally established in the United States on August 9, 1921 as an offshoot of the American Labor Alliance for Trade Relations with Soviet Russia...
(FSR). The FSR and similar relief organizations set up by Münzenberg were conceived as a method of raising money from a broad coalition of left-wing groups for famine relief in Soviet Russia while simultaneously concealing the Soviet government's role in organizing such groups (a fact which might have otherwise impeded fundraising efforts). In the FSR, socialist politician and women's rights
Women's rights
Women's rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies.In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behaviour, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed...
campaigner Clara Zetkin
Clara Zetkin
Clara Zetkin was a German Marxist theorist, activist, and fighter for women's rights. In 1910, she organized the first International Women's Day....
served as president until her death in 1933.
In subsequent years WIR supported workers in Germany and other countries suffering from the effects of strikes
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
, armed conflict, and natural catastrophes by distribution of clothes, food, and funds by adding an industrial assistance program. Initial funding of WIR was through secret Soviet funding in the form of ten million paper rubles (sovznaki) issued directly from the Soviet Central Bank. Most of WIR's funding assistance was provided through bank credits backed by the Kremlin; other sources included fund drives and tool/technology donations from other countries, from sales of confiscated assets, and from sales of donated foreign equipment such as tractors to private bidders and enterprises inside the Soviet Union.
Propaganda efforts
Münzenberg recognized the potential for cinematic propagandaPropaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
, and therefore the WIR imported Soviet films as well as producing their own films. In 1922 Münzenberg founded Aufbau Industrie und Handels AG to distribute Soviet films. Hermann Basler led the office for film distribution, which in March 1923 with Polikuschka(director Alexander Sanin, 1922, production of Mezhrabpom-Rus
Gorky Film Studio
Gorky Film Studio is a film studio in Moscow, Russian Federation. By the end of the Soviet Union, Gorky Film Studio had produced more than 1,000 films...
for the first time brought a Soviet film into German cinemas.
As Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
Germany imposed regulations against the importation of foreign films, the WIR moved in 1924 to Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
. WIR at first brought out only one film at its Austrian location however: Kurt Bernhardt's directorial debut Nameless Heroes (1924). Eventually, the Viennese center took over and produced later films like Kuhle Wampe
Kuhle Wampe
Kuhle Wampe is a 1932 German feature film about unemployment and left wing politics in the Weimar Republic. The script was conceived and written by Bertolt Brecht...
(1931/32). In 1928 the WIR began to produce communist documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
s via the specialized film production company World Film.
The WIR was supported by numerous left intellectuals, among them Martin Andersen Nexö, Henri Barbusse
Henri Barbusse
Henri Barbusse was a French novelist and a member of the French Communist Party.-Life:...
, Maxim Gorki, George Grosz
George Grosz
Georg Ehrenfried Groß was a German artist known especially for his savagely caricatural drawings of Berlin life in the 1920s...
, Maximilian Harden
Maximilian Harden
Maximilian Harden was an influential German journalist and editor.- Biography :...
, Arthur Holit, Käthe Kollwitz
Käthe Kollwitz
Käthe Kollwitz was a German painter, printmaker, and sculptor whose work offered an eloquent and often searing account of the human condition in the first half of the 20th century...
, George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...
and Ernst Toller
Ernst Toller
Ernst Toller was a left-wing German playwright, best known for his Expressionist plays and serving as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, for six days.- Biography :...
.
Dissolution
After Nazi takeoverGleichschaltung
Gleichschaltung , meaning "coordination", "making the same", "bringing into line", is a Nazi term for the process by which the Nazi regime successively established a system of totalitarian control and tight coordination over all aspects of society. The historian Richard J...
in 1933 the WIR was severely disrupted.
The Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Communist International
Executive Committee of the Communist International
The Executive Committee of the Communist International, commonly known by its acronym, ECCI, was the governing authority of the Comintern between the World Congresses of that body...
decided to abolish WIR in October 1935, although the decision was not announced publicly. Some of the organization's functions were continued by the International Red Aid
International Red Aid
International Red Aid was an international social service organization established by the Communist International...
.
See also
- International Red AidInternational Red AidInternational Red Aid was an international social service organization established by the Communist International...
(MOPR) - Communist International
- Workers Film and Photo LeagueWorkers Film and Photo LeagueThe Workers Film and Photo League was an organization of filmmakers in the United States initially affiliated with the Workers International Relief...
- Photo League
External links
- Internationale Arbeiterhilfe on German-language Wikipedia
- Filmarchiv Austria website: Prometheus Film 1924-1932
- www.kollwitz.de