custody" (from which she was later released on account of illness). Becoming a member of the Communist Party In 1916 Zetkin was one of the co-founders of the Spartacist League and the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) which had split off in 1917 from its mother party, the SPD, in protest at its pro-war stance. In January 1919, after the German Revolution in November of the previous year, the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) was founded; Zetkin also joined this and represented the party from 1920 to 1933 in the Reichstag. She and Paul Levi were the first communists to enter the Reichstag. Until 1924 Zetkin was a member of the KPD's central office; from 1927 to 1929 she was a member of the party's central committee. She was also a member of the executive committee of the Communist International (Comintern) from 1921 to 1933. She also presided over an international secretariat for women, which was created by the Communist International in October 1920. In June 1921, the Second International Conference of Communist Women, which was held in Moscow and was chaired by Clara Zetkin changed the date of the International Women's Day to 8 March. This remains the date of the IWD until today. In 1925 she was elected president of the German left-wing solidarity organisation Rote Hilfe. In summer 1922, Zetkin was part of the prosecution team during the Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries in Moscow, but at other times, she was critical of Moscow's influence over the German Communist Party, within which she was part of the right wing. She was removed from the Central Committee of the KPD when the left, led by Ruth Fischer took control. She opposed a policy decision made in Moscow in 1928 to get communist trade unions in Germany to split from the main, socialist dominated federation and form the rival Rote Gewerkschaftsbund. When Joseph Stalin put this to the executive of Comintern, in December 1928, Zetkin was one of only three members of the executive to vote against. The other two, Angelo Tasca and Jules Humbert-Droz), were publicly humiliated the following year, but Zetkin retained her position as a member of the executive, and the Praesidium of Comintern. In August 1932, despite having recently fallen gravely ill in Moscow, she returned to Berlin to preside over the opening of the newly elected Reichstag, as its oldest deputy. She