Boris Souvarine

Boris Souvarine (* 1895 in Kiev, † November 1, 1984 in Paris, actually Boris Konstantinovich Lifshitz, Russian Борис Константинович Лифшиц ) was a French political activist and writer of Russian-Jewish origin.

Life

The worker's son, whose family immigrated to France in 1897, worked as a goldsmith. Before 1914, he joined the French Socialist Party. From 1920 he was one of the leaders of the French Committee of the Third International (Comité International de la Troisième, with Fernand Loriot and Charles Rappoport ). Souvarine occurred within the French Socialist Party SFIO for a Marxist revolutionary line, so for the emergence of the Second International. At the Congress of Strasbourg in February 1920, the SFIO actually decided to leave the Socialist International. From Souvarine then came essentially the application of accession to the Third International, which was approved by a majority at the SFIO Congress of Tours in December 1920 and led to a split of the French labor movement.

1921, the leading official of being established Communist Party of France was (PCF ) Bureau member of the Communist International ( Comintern ).

Souvarine then lived mainly in Moscow. Within the PCF, he stood in contrast to the " center " to the officials Frossard and Cachin, after 1923 also to Albert Treint. Souvarine Leon Trotsky was close and turned in a text by March 1924 against the " mechanical, bureaucratic and irresponsible centralism " within the French communist movement. As a result, L' Humanité announced on July 19, 1924 Souvarine exclusion from the Third International known.

Souvarine further life was dedicated to the fight against the bureaucratic communism. From 1925 Souvarine magazine Le Bulletin Communiste reappeared. He was a founding member in 1930 of the Cercle Communiste démocratique and the journal La Critique sociale.

In 1935 Souvarine groundbreaking biography of Stalin. She pointed to with significant analytical power myths and realities of Soviet forced system Souvarine took as " negation of socialism and communism." 1936 Souvarine published under the pseudonym " Motus " a travelogue about the Soviet Union.

Souvarine was arrested in Marseille in 1940 by the Vichy government, but was able to emigrate to the USA. After his return to France (1948 ) he had continued to work as an independent journalist left.

Works (selection)

• Stalin, Munich 1980