The International Rosa Luxemburg Society was established in 1980, when the "Cold War" between East and West, Soviet Union and USA was still very hot -- in December 1979 Soviet Troop invaded Afghanistan, in November 1980 Mr. Reagan was elected as the President of the USA.
In such atomosphere, in the winter of 1980, somespecilialists on Rosa Luxemburg (Narihiko Ito, Irene Petit, Claudie Weill, Michael Lowy and Feliks Tych) met at Prof. Gilbert Badia's home in Paris in order to talk about the establishment of an International Society for the study of Rosa Luxemburg.
Why did we establish the Society? We wished, first of all, to make an international network among the Rosa Luxemburg specialists in the world in order to exchange freely the studies and views on Rosa Luxemburg. At the same time we wished to stimulate the democratization of the "existing socialism" and to overcome the Cold War.
We had the first conference on September 1980 in Zurich where Rosa Luxemburg lived in exile since 18 years-old and studied natural and social sciences at the Zurich university.
The 1. Conference in Zurich, Swizterland (Sept.1980) The 2. Conference in Linz, Austria (Sept.1981) The 3. Conference in Paris, France (May, 1983) The 4. Conference in Hamburg, Germany (Sept.1985) The 5. Conference in West Berlin, West Germany (Jan.1989) The 6. Conference in Tokyo, Japan (Nov. 1991) The 7. Conference in Beijing, China (Nov. 1994) The 8. Conference in Warsaw, Poland (Sept.1996) The 9. Special Conference in Chicago, USA (May, 1998) The 10. Conference in Tampere, Finland (Sept. 1998) The 11. Conference in Berlin, Germany (Jan, 1999) The 12. Conference in Zurich, Swizterland (Sept. 2000) The 13. Conference in Bochum, Germany (Sept. 2002) The 14 Conference in Guangzhou, China (Nov. 2004) The 15 Conference in Tokyo, Japan (April 2007)