User:Bs092356/Fritz Platten
Fritz Platten
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| Fritz Platten | |
|---|---|
| Fritz Platten, approx. 1930. | |
| Born | July 8, 1883 |
| Died | April 22, 1942 (aged 58) |
| Occupation | Communist, politician |
| Political party | Swiss Communist Party |
Fritz Platten (8 July 1883 – 22 April 1942) was a Swiss Communist and one of the founders of the Communist International, born in the Canton of St. Gallen to an Old Catholic family [1].
Fritz was known for his extreme leftist-views and being one the founders of the Comintern. Fritz is mainly known for his friendship with Lenin as they were very close. he arranged Lenin's trip back home to Russia and also saved his life from asassination in 1917.
Contents
[edit]Career[edit]
[edit]After the collapse of the Second International, Platten joined the Zimmerwald Movement and became a Communist.
Fritz Platten is mostly known for having been the main organizer of Lenin’s return trip from the exile in Switzerland back home to Russia after the February Revolution. Due to the First World War, the trip was not easily arranged, but Lenin and his company traveled through Germany in a sealed train car. They then took the ferry to Sweden and were greeted in Stockholm by the Swedish communist leaders Otto Grimlund, Ture Nerman, Carl Lindhagen and Fredrik Ström, who together with Platten had helped plan the trip. The train journey then continued through northern Sweden and Finland back to Russia and St Petersburg.
Years before the First World War, since the beginning of his political career in the Zurich and Swiss labor movements, Platten has been in constant conflict with the political establishment, which is holding down the labor movement and blocking its demands.
After the general strike, Platten felt that his radical section of the labor movement was in a losing position and would hardly get away with his demands in Switzerland. The unconditional termination of the general strike of 1918 appears to him as betrayal and surrender to the bourgeoisie; Platten feels alienated from his own movement and sees the role model in the Russian revolutionaries with their October revolution of 1917. Years before the start of the First World War and the general strike of 1918, he moved to Zurich among Russian emigrant circles who fled tsarism and who in Zurich are dreaming of the overthrow of the tsarist regime and who are working towards it.
Platten's course was also controversial in its own ranks, especially among the unions. In the labor movement itself, Platten experiences how his brisk course does not meet with approval from the national trade union apparatus and is slowed down. The feeling that the Swiss worker is being denied a proper place in the country is something that Platten and the broader labor movement have in common.
To put it somewhat exaggeratedly and casually, He regards it as a moral imperative to work towards the overthrow of the Russian Empire, a huge empire that at the time was considered the "peoples' prison of Europe" - especially for a Swiss who lives in this small and manageable country and despite poverty and social injustice is privileged.
Platten participated in the foundation of the Communist International, and, as a representative of the Swiss Communist Party, spent much time in the Soviet Union.
Platten was present when Lenin’s car was attacked in Petrograd on January 14, 1918 (Jan 1 O.S.). The two were riding in the back of the car after having given a public speech at Mikhailovsky Manege. When the shooting started "Platten grabbed Lenin by the head and pushed him down. ... Platten’s hand was covered in blood, having been grazed by a bullet as he was shielding Lenin."
Platten has been arrested plenty of times throughout his career. One being on April 10th of 1919, members of the National council including Platten and other members were sentenced six months inlight of the rebellion in Switzerland.
Platten also supported other socialist figures such as Angelica Balabanova, who was apart of the Democratic party of Geschaftsleitung. Fritz frequently bonded with other German communists in hopes that communism would spread throughout Europe and around the world.
Personal life[edit]
[edit]Platten was married to Bertha Zimmermann (1902-1937), also of Switzerland. In 1935, she was a top functionary fot the OMS in Moscow as head of the courier section at the OMS headquarters of the OMS or International Liaison Department, the most secret section of the Comintern.
Death[edit]
[edit]Platten became a victim of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. He was arrested in 1938 and moved to a prison camp near Nyandoma in 1939, where he was shot on 22 April 1942. He was rehabilitated after Stalin's death.
Among the other that died with him in the prison camp was German communists Hugo Eberlein, who like Platten was a good friend of Lenins. Eberlein and Platten both helped to form the Communist International with Lenin.