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Louis Fischer

January 30, 2023

Louis Fischer (29 February 1896 – 15 January 1970) was an American journalist. Among his works were a contribution to the ex-communist treatise The God that Failed (1949), The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (1950), basis for the Academy Award-winning film Gandhi (1982), as well as a Life of Lenin, which won the 1965 National Book Award in History and Biography.[1]

Louis Fischer
Born(1896-02-29)February 29, 1896
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
DiedJanuary 15, 1970(1970-01-15) (aged 73)
Princeton, New Jersey

Biography

Early life

Louis Fischer, the son of a fish peddler, was born in Philadelphia on 29 February 1896. After studying at the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy from 1914 to 1916, he became a school teacher.

In 1917, Fischer joined the Jewish Legion, a military unit based in Palestine.[citation needed] On his return to the United States, Fischer took up work at a news agency in New York City and met Bertha "Markoosha" Mark (1890-1977). In 1921, when Bertha went to work in Berlin, Fischer joined her a few months later and began contributing to the New York Evening Post as a European correspondent. The following year, he moved to Moscow and married Bertha. In 1923 their first son George was born (followed by Victor a year later) and Fischer began working for The Nation. He also served as a volunteer in the British Army between 1918 and 1920.

While in the Soviet Union, Fischer published several books including Oil Imperialism: The International Struggle for Petroleum (1926) and The Soviets in World Affairs (1930).

In 1934, American Max Eastman criticized Fischer for Stalinism in a chapter called "The 'Revolution' of April 23, 1932" in his book Artists in Uniform.[2] In 1938, Leon Trotsky described Fischer as a "merchant of lies" and "direct literary agent of Stalin".[3]

Fischer also covered the Spanish Civil War and for a time was a member of the International Brigade fighting General Francisco Franco. In 1938, he returned to the United States and settled in New York. He continued to work for The Nation and wrote his autobiography, Men and Politics (1941). Viktor Fischer, Louis Fischer's son, was a close friend of Lothar Wloch (1923–1976), the son of Wilhelm Wloch [de] and "Koni" Konrad Wolf who was the Stasi spy master Markus Wolf's brother and uncle of Franz Wolf, who is very close to Vladimir Putin.[4] In 1989, Markus Wolf wrote about the three friends Koni, Vik, and Lothar in The Troika.[5]

Fischer left The Nation in 1945 after a dispute with the editor, Freda Kirchwey, over the journal's sympathetic reporting of Joseph Stalin. His disillusionment with communism, although he had never been a member of the Communist Party USA, was reflected in his contribution to The God That Failed (1949). Fischer began writing for anti-communist liberal magazines such as The Progressive. Louis Fischer taught about the Soviet Union at Princeton University until his death on January 15, 1970.

Denial of the Soviet famine of 1932–33

Fischer travelled to Ukraine in October and November 1932, for The Nation, and was alarmed at what he saw. "In the Poltava, Vinnitsa, Podolia and Kiev regions, conditions will be hard," he wrote, "I think there is no starvation anywhere in Ukraine now — after all they have just gathered in the harvest, but it was a bad harvest."

Initially critical of the Soviet grain procurement program because it created the food problem, Fischer by February 1933 adopted the official Soviet government view, which blamed the problem on Ukrainian counter-revolutionary nationalist "wreckers." It seemed "whole villages" had been "contaminated" by such men, who had to be deported to "lumbering camps and mining areas in distant agricultural areas which are now just entering upon their pioneering stage." These steps were forced upon the Kremlin, Fischer wrote, but the Soviets were, nevertheless, learning how to rule wisely.[6]

1934 Fischer accused the Hearst press of attempting to "spoil Soviet-American relations" by running "an anti-red campaign".[7] The Hearst titles had been citing the eyewitness reports of famine[8] by the "Red" labor organizer Fred Beal,[9][10] and the Welsh freelancer Gareth Jones,[11][12] both recently returned from Soviet Ukraine.To make the reports of what has been since referred to as the Holodomor better serve their editorial line against Roosevelt's recognition of the Soviet Union (for which Fischer had campaigned), the Hearst writer, Thomas Walker, brought the famine forward from 1932–1933 into the current year. Having been to the Ukraine in the spring of 1934, in The Nation Fisher could confidently report that he saw no famine and he accused Walker of pure invention.[7]

When asked on a lecture tour of the United States about earlier reports of a million having died in Khazakstan he said:

Who counted them? How could anyone march through a country and count a million people? Of course people are hungry--desperately hungry. Russia is tunring over from agriculture to industrialism. It is like a man going into business on small capital.[13][6]

Myra Page was clear that Fischer knew that, in the wake of Stalin's collectivization and grain seizures, there had been mass starvation. He had discussed the famine with her in Moscow in 1933, and indeed tried to persuade her "to go down to the Ukraine" and see for herself. She and her husband, John Markey, refused to believe him. "We didn't know about the horrors of collectivization because we chose not to know."[14]

Gandhi and Stalin (1947)

In Gandhi and Stalin, Fischer relates Mahatma Gandhi's response to the question of how pacifists should respond to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. Fischer describes Gandhi as arguing in 1938 that German Jews ought to commit collective suicide in order to raise awareness of Nazi abuses, and continuing to believe after the Second World War that this would have been the right path. George Orwell described Fischer as a "warm ... admirer" of Gandhi, but suggested Fischer was nonetheless "staggered" by Gandhi's argument in this case.[15]

Fischer's note about Subhas Chandra Bose

In January 2009, on the occasion of the 112th birth anniversary of Subhas Chandra Bose, Italian ambassador to India Alessandro Quaroni stated that there was no point in continuing research on whether Bose died in a plane crash or not in August 1945.[16] In a statement issued against this remark, Mission Netaji, a Delhi based non-profit trust stated that there was evidence which held that Bose did not die in any plane crash.[17] Mission Netaji cited reference to a note by Louis Fischer, which is preserved in the Princeton University Library. The note quotes the former Italian ambassador Pietro Quaroni, father of Alessandro Quaroni, as saying that he did not think the news of Bose's accidental death was true. Fischer had met Pietro Quaroni in Moscow in November 1946 and quoted him saying it was possible "that Bose is still alive". Quaroni had told Fischer that Bose did not want the British to look for him, so the false rumor of his death was circulated.[18]

Personal life

George Fischer and Viktor Fischer were his sons. Louis Fischer, the son of a fish peddler, was born in Philadelphia on 29 February 1896. After studying at the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy from 1914 to 1916, he became a school teacher. In 1917, Fischer joined the Jewish Legion, a military unit based in Palestine.

Works

  • Oil Imperialism: The International Struggle for Petroleum (1926)
  • The Soviets in World Affairs Volume I Volume II (1930)
  • The War in Spain (1937)
  • Men and Politics (autobiography) (1941)
  • Gandhi & Stalin (1947)
  • The God that Failed (contribution) (1949)
  • The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (1950)
  • The Life and Death of Stalin (1952)
  • The Story of Indonesia (1959)
  • The Essential Gandhi (editor) (1962)
  • The Life of Lenin (1964)
  • Russia's Road from Peace to War (1969)

References

  1. ^ "National Book Awards – 1965". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-17.
  2. ^ Max Eastman, Artists in Uniform: A Study of Literature and Bureaucratism, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1934) pp. 161-165
  3. ^ Writings of Leon Trotsky [Volume 10] (1937-1938) - Léon Trotsky, p.266
  4. ^ Sylvester, Regine (18 February 2016). [Wolfgang Jacobsen and Rolf Aurich present a biography of the film director Konrad Wolf: A picture of a man]. Berliner Zeitung (in German). Archived from the original on 18 February 2016. Retrieved 9 February 2021.
  5. ^ "Ex-Spymaster Has Germans Curious". New York Times. 18 October 1991. Archived from the original on 10 February 2021. Retrieved 9 February 2021.
  6. ^ a b Famine, United States Commission on the Ukraine (1988). Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, 1932-1933: Report to Congress, Interim Report of Meetings and Hearings of and Before the Commission on the Ukraine Famine, Held in 1988. U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 170.
  7. ^ a b Mace, James E. (1988). "The Politics of Famine: American Government and Press Response to the Unkrainian Famine, 1932-33" (PDF). Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 3:1 (1): (75-94) 81. doi:10.1093/hgs/3.1.75. PMID 20684118.
  8. ^ Commentary Bk (1983). "The Famine the "Times" Couldn't Find". Commentary. November: n. 3.
  9. ^ Beal, Fred Erwin (1937). Proletarian journey: New England, Gastonia, Moscow. New York: Hillman-Curl. p. 350.
  10. ^ Disler, Mathew (2018). "This Crusading Socialist Taught America's Workers to Fight—in 1929". Narratively. Retrieved 2022-01-02.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  11. ^ "Welsh journalist who exposed a Soviet tragedy". Wales Online, Western Mail and the South Wales Echo. 13 November 2009.
  12. ^ "Famine Exposure: Newspaper Articles relating to Gareth Jones' trips to The Soviet Union (1930–35)". garethjones.org. Retrieved 7 April 2016.
  13. ^ "New Deal needed for the entire world says visiting author". Denver Post. 1 April 1933. p. 3.
  14. ^ Page, Myra; Baker, Christina Looper (1996). In a Generous Spirit: A First-Person Biography of Myra Page. University of Illinois Press. p. 124. ISBN 9780252065439. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
  15. ^ Orwell, George (1968) [1949]. "Reflections on Gandhi". In Orwell, Sonia; Angus, Ian (eds.). The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 4: In Front of Your Nose 1945–1950. Penguin. p. 529.
  16. ^ TNN, 24 January 2009, 03:25AM IST (2009-01-24). "No point researching Bose death: Envoy - Kolkata - City - The Times of India". Timesofindia.indiatimes.com. Retrieved 2012-07-26.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  17. ^ "The Hindu News Update Service". Hindu.com. Retrieved 2012-07-26.
  18. ^ . Ibnlive.in.com. 2009-03-19. Archived from the original on 2009-04-17. Retrieved 2012-07-26.

External links

  • Louis Fischer Papers at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University
  • Biography at princeton.edu

January 30, 2023
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The neutrality of this article is disputed Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met January 2023 Learn how and when to remove this template message Louis Fischer 29 February 1896 15 January 1970 was an American journalist Among his works were a contribution to the ex communist treatise The God that Failed 1949 The Life of Mahatma Gandhi 1950 basis for the Academy Award winning film Gandhi 1982 as well as a Life of Lenin which won the 1965 National Book Award in History and Biography 1 Louis FischerBorn 1896 02 29 February 29 1896Philadelphia Pennsylvania U S DiedJanuary 15 1970 1970 01 15 aged 73 Princeton New Jersey Contents 1 Biography 1 1 Early life 1 2 Denial of the Soviet famine of 1932 33 1 3 Gandhi and Stalin 1947 1 4 Fischer s note about Subhas Chandra Bose 2 Personal life 3 Works 4 References 5 External linksBiography EditEarly life Edit Louis Fischer the son of a fish peddler was born in Philadelphia on 29 February 1896 After studying at the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy from 1914 to 1916 he became a school teacher In 1917 Fischer joined the Jewish Legion a military unit based in Palestine citation needed On his return to the United States Fischer took up work at a news agency in New York City and met Bertha Markoosha Mark 1890 1977 In 1921 when Bertha went to work in Berlin Fischer joined her a few months later and began contributing to the New York Evening Post as a European correspondent The following year he moved to Moscow and married Bertha In 1923 their first son George was born followed by Victor a year later and Fischer began working for The Nation He also served as a volunteer in the British Army between 1918 and 1920 While in the Soviet Union Fischer published several books including Oil Imperialism The International Struggle for Petroleum 1926 and The Soviets in World Affairs 1930 In 1934 American Max Eastman criticized Fischer for Stalinism in a chapter called The Revolution of April 23 1932 in his book Artists in Uniform 2 In 1938 Leon Trotsky described Fischer as a merchant of lies and direct literary agent of Stalin 3 Fischer also covered the Spanish Civil War and for a time was a member of the International Brigade fighting General Francisco Franco In 1938 he returned to the United States and settled in New York He continued to work for The Nation and wrote his autobiography Men and Politics 1941 Viktor Fischer Louis Fischer s son was a close friend of Lothar Wloch 1923 1976 the son of Wilhelm Wloch de and Koni Konrad Wolf who was the Stasi spy master Markus Wolf s brother and uncle of Franz Wolf who is very close to Vladimir Putin 4 In 1989 Markus Wolf wrote about the three friends Koni Vik and Lothar in The Troika 5 Fischer left The Nation in 1945 after a dispute with the editor Freda Kirchwey over the journal s sympathetic reporting of Joseph Stalin His disillusionment with communism although he had never been a member of the Communist Party USA was reflected in his contribution to The God That Failed 1949 Fischer began writing for anti communist liberal magazines such as The Progressive Louis Fischer taught about the Soviet Union at Princeton University until his death on January 15 1970 Denial of the Soviet famine of 1932 33 Edit Fischer travelled to Ukraine in October and November 1932 for The Nation and was alarmed at what he saw In the Poltava Vinnitsa Podolia and Kiev regions conditions will be hard he wrote I think there is no starvation anywhere in Ukraine now after all they have just gathered in the harvest but it was a bad harvest Initially critical of the Soviet grain procurement program because it created the food problem Fischer by February 1933 adopted the official Soviet government view which blamed the problem on Ukrainian counter revolutionary nationalist wreckers It seemed whole villages had been contaminated by such men who had to be deported to lumbering camps and mining areas in distant agricultural areas which are now just entering upon their pioneering stage These steps were forced upon the Kremlin Fischer wrote but the Soviets were nevertheless learning how to rule wisely 6 1934 Fischer accused the Hearst press of attempting to spoil Soviet American relations by running an anti red campaign 7 The Hearst titles had been citing the eyewitness reports of famine 8 by the Red labor organizer Fred Beal 9 10 and the Welsh freelancer Gareth Jones 11 12 both recently returned from Soviet Ukraine To make the reports of what has been since referred to as the Holodomor better serve their editorial line against Roosevelt s recognition of the Soviet Union for which Fischer had campaigned the Hearst writer Thomas Walker brought the famine forward from 1932 1933 into the current year Having been to the Ukraine in the spring of 1934 in The Nation Fisher could confidently report that he saw no famine and he accused Walker of pure invention 7 When asked on a lecture tour of the United States about earlier reports of a million having died in Khazakstan he said Who counted them How could anyone march through a country and count a million people Of course people are hungry desperately hungry Russia is tunring over from agriculture to industrialism It is like a man going into business on small capital 13 6 Myra Page was clear that Fischer knew that in the wake of Stalin s collectivization and grain seizures there had been mass starvation He had discussed the famine with her in Moscow in 1933 and indeed tried to persuade her to go down to the Ukraine and see for herself She and her husband John Markey refused to believe him We didn t know about the horrors of collectivization because we chose not to know 14 Gandhi and Stalin 1947 Edit This section needs expansion with An overview of the book s contents and argument You can help by adding to it October 2021 In Gandhi and Stalin Fischer relates Mahatma Gandhi s response to the question of how pacifists should respond to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany Fischer describes Gandhi as arguing in 1938 that German Jews ought to commit collective suicide in order to raise awareness of Nazi abuses and continuing to believe after the Second World War that this would have been the right path George Orwell described Fischer as a warm admirer of Gandhi but suggested Fischer was nonetheless staggered by Gandhi s argument in this case 15 Fischer s note about Subhas Chandra Bose Edit In January 2009 on the occasion of the 112th birth anniversary of Subhas Chandra Bose Italian ambassador to India Alessandro Quaroni stated that there was no point in continuing research on whether Bose died in a plane crash or not in August 1945 16 In a statement issued against this remark Mission Netaji a Delhi based non profit trust stated that there was evidence which held that Bose did not die in any plane crash 17 Mission Netaji cited reference to a note by Louis Fischer which is preserved in the Princeton University Library The note quotes the former Italian ambassador Pietro Quaroni father of Alessandro Quaroni as saying that he did not think the news of Bose s accidental death was true Fischer had met Pietro Quaroni in Moscow in November 1946 and quoted him saying it was possible that Bose is still alive Quaroni had told Fischer that Bose did not want the British to look for him so the false rumor of his death was circulated 18 Personal life EditGeorge Fischer and Viktor Fischer were his sons Louis Fischer the son of a fish peddler was born in Philadelphia on 29 February 1896 After studying at the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy from 1914 to 1916 he became a school teacher In 1917 Fischer joined the Jewish Legion a military unit based in Palestine Works EditOil Imperialism The International Struggle for Petroleum 1926 The Soviets in World Affairs Volume I Volume II 1930 The War in Spain 1937 Men and Politics autobiography 1941 Gandhi amp Stalin 1947 The God that Failed contribution 1949 The Life of Mahatma Gandhi 1950 The Life and Death of Stalin 1952 The Story of Indonesia 1959 The Essential Gandhi editor 1962 The Life of Lenin 1964 Russia s Road from Peace to War 1969 References Edit National Book Awards 1965 National Book Foundation Retrieved 2012 03 17 Max Eastman Artists in Uniform A Study of Literature and Bureaucratism New York Alfred A Knopf 1934 pp 161 165 Writings of Leon Trotsky Volume 10 1937 1938 Leon Trotsky p 266 Sylvester Regine 18 February 2016 Wolfgang Jacobsen und Rolf Aurich legen eine Biografie des Filmregisseurs Konrad Wolf vor Ein Bild von einem Mann Wolfgang Jacobsen and Rolf Aurich present a biography of the film director Konrad Wolf A picture of a man Berliner Zeitung in German Archived from the original on 18 February 2016 Retrieved 9 February 2021 Ex Spymaster Has Germans Curious New York Times 18 October 1991 Archived from the original on 10 February 2021 Retrieved 9 February 2021 a b Famine United States Commission on the Ukraine 1988 Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine 1932 1933 Report to Congress Interim Report of Meetings and Hearings of and Before the Commission on the Ukraine Famine Held in 1988 U S Government Printing Office p 170 a b Mace James E 1988 The Politics of Famine American Government and Press Response to the Unkrainian Famine 1932 33 PDF Holocaust and Genocide Studies 3 1 1 75 94 81 doi 10 1093 hgs 3 1 75 PMID 20684118 Commentary Bk 1983 The Famine the Times Couldn t Find Commentary November n 3 Beal Fred Erwin 1937 Proletarian journey New England Gastonia Moscow New York Hillman Curl p 350 Disler Mathew 2018 This Crusading Socialist Taught America s Workers to Fight in 1929 Narratively Retrieved 2022 01 02 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint url status link Welsh journalist who exposed a Soviet tragedy Wales Online Western Mail and the South Wales Echo 13 November 2009 Famine Exposure Newspaper Articles relating to Gareth Jones trips to The Soviet Union 1930 35 garethjones org Retrieved 7 April 2016 New Deal needed for the entire world says visiting author Denver Post 1 April 1933 p 3 Page Myra Baker Christina Looper 1996 In a Generous Spirit A First Person Biography of Myra Page University of Illinois Press p 124 ISBN 9780252065439 Retrieved 8 January 2022 Orwell George 1968 1949 Reflections on Gandhi In Orwell Sonia Angus Ian eds The Collected Essays Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 4 In Front of Your Nose 1945 1950 Penguin p 529 TNN 24 January 2009 03 25AM IST 2009 01 24 No point researching Bose death Envoy Kolkata City The Times of India Timesofindia indiatimes com Retrieved 2012 07 26 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link The Hindu News Update Service Hindu com Retrieved 2012 07 26 US record contests Italian envoy s views on Netaji s death India News IBNLive Ibnlive in com 2009 03 19 Archived from the original on 2009 04 17 Retrieved 2012 07 26 Wolf Markus January 1 1989 Die Troika Geschichte eines Nichtgedrehten Films The Troika The Story of a Non Made Film in German Aufbau Verlag ISBN 978 3546498395 External links EditLouis Fischer Papers at the Seeley G Mudd Manuscript Library Princeton University Biography at princeton edu Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Louis Fischer amp oldid 1133260638, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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