Troelstra, Piter Jelles

Born Apr. 20, 1860, in Leeu-warden; died May 12, 1930, in Scheveningen, near The Hague. Dutch political figure.

Troelstra was educated as a lawyer. In 1893 he joined the Social Democratic Union of the Netherlands, within which he headed the group of parliamentarians that founded the Social Democratic Labor Party of the Netherlands (SDLPN) in 1894. For most of the period between 1897 and 1925 he was chairman of the parliamentary faction of the SDLPN and was on the editorial staff of the central organ of the party, the newspaper Het volk. In 1909 he succeeded in having the Tribunists expelled from the party.

During World War I, Troelstra called for “civil peace” within the country. In November 1918, during an upsurge in the Dutch working-class movement, he demanded that power be transferred to the Socialists, but the next day he retracted his demand. V. I. Lenin described Troelstra as “a typical specimen of the venal, opportunist leader” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 39, p. 193).

Troelstra played a significant role in the development of Frisian literature. He compiled the collection A Frisian Songbook (1885), to which he contributed some of his own works. His poems were collected in the book Harvest (1909).