Source: Adam and Emily per Microsoft Powerpoint
The above lists the progression of Communism from Marx and Engels to both German and Russian philosophers and political leaders. The character descriptions below list their role and influence in the growth of Communism and the Spartacus Revolution within Germany.
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
Source: Wikimedia
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, two German philosophers, are regarded as the founders of the Marxist, revolutionary, socio-economical ideology called “Marxism.” Their intellectual work was geared towards a global understanding of the socio-economic problems which seemed to originate within human nature and organized societies. Such problems were prevalent in most governing systems of their time. The revolutionary aspect of Marx and Engels’ ideology is centered on the notion that people needed to actively change the socio-economic system to a better form, instead of trying to preserve the existing status quo. Together, they wrote the Communist Manifesto to serve as a platform for the Communist League. It became one of the principal programmatic statements of the European socialist and communist parties in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg
Source: Wikimedia
Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were German Social Democrats, who, together along with other radicals, founded the Polish Social Democratic Party and the Spartacus League, which grew into the Communist Party of Germany. The Spartacus League was dedicated to ending the war through revolution and the establishment of a proletarian government. Liebknecht and Luxemburg developed a humanitarian theory of Marxism, stressing democracy and revolutionary mass action to achieve international socialism. In 1912 Liebknecht entered the Reichstag as the chief spokesman against the government and against the growing movement within the Social Democratic Party to revise its Marxist doctrine. During World War I Liebknecht and Luxemburg became leading figures in the development of opposition movements to the wartime government. Like the Bolsheviks, Luxemburg and Liebknecht demanded political power for the workers’ and soldiers’ soviets but were frustrated by the conservative Socialist establishment and the army. In late December 1918, they became founders of the German Communist Party, but Luxemburg attempted to limit Bolshevik influence in this new organization. Because of their role in fomenting a communist uprising known as the Spartacus Revolt, Luxemburg and Liebknecht were arrested and murdered in Berlin on January 15, 1919, by the Freikorps.
Alexander Parvus (Israel Lavarevich Gelfand)
Source: Wikimedia
Russian Jew, Alexander Parvus, born under the name Israel Lavarevich Gelfand, was attracted to revolutionary Socialism at an early age and became a Marxist during his prolonged residence in Germany, where he made a living as a left-wing journalist. He met Lenin and Trotsky and other exiled revolutionaries and returned to Russia to participate in the Revolution of 1905. With the onset of World War I, Gelfand was able to obtain subsidies from the German government in exchange for his advice on ways to subvert Russia’s tsarist regime. He also convinced the German government to provide him with large sums to funnel to the Bolsheviks, though it is unlikely that this service had much impact. Although Gelfand helped negotiate with German authorities Lenin’s passage in the notorious “sealed train” across Germany on the way to Russia in April 1917, Lenin refused to allow the disreputable Gelfand to return to Russia after the October Revolution of 1917. Parvus wrote a 23-page document for the German Reichstag stating how Germany could assist in toppling Russian Tsarism and how Bolshevism could prevail. Gelfand had an enormous responsibility in the creation of a relationship between Germany, its Marxist movement, and the relationship it had with Russia and the creation of the Soviet Union.
Vladimir Lenin
Source: Wikimedia
Vladimir Lenin was a Russian revolutionary leader and theorist, who presided over the first government of Soviet Russia and then that of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Lenin was the leader of the radical socialist Bolshevik Party (later renamed the Communist Party), which seized power in the October phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917. After the revolution, Lenin headed the new Soviet government that formed in Russia. He became the leader of the USSR upon its founding in 1922. Lenin held the highest post in the Soviet government until his death in 1924, when Joseph Stalin assumed power.
Leon Trotsky
Source: Wikimedia
Leon Trotsky embraced Marxism as a teenager and was arrested in 1898 for revolutionary activities. In 1900, he was exiled to Siberia. In 1902, he escaped to England using a forged passport under the name of Leon Trotsky (his original name was Lev Davidovich Bronshtein). In London, he collaborated with Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin but later sided with the Menshevik factions that advocated a democratic approach to socialism. Leon Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks in August 1917 after many years of separation. He was nevertheless a key figure in the establishment and maintenance of Soviet power. It was Trotsky’s strategy by which the Bolsheviks came to power. As Commissar for Foreign Affairs, it was Trotsky’s ‘no peace, no war’ policy that in the debates about whether to sign a separate peace with Germany saved the Bolsheviks from splitting down the middle.
Bolshevism in Germany 