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2020 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

A Young Revolutionary Between Russia and Germany

Author : Mario Kessler

Published in: A Political Biography of Arkadij Maslow, 1891-1941

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Arkadij Maksimovich Maslow was born as Isaac Yefimovich Chemerinsky in 1891 in Yelisavetgrad (today Kropyvnytskyi) in the central part of Ukraine. In 1899, he moved with his mother and sister to Dresden and then to Berlin, where he attended high school and completed studies in piano at a conservatory, starting a successful career as a pianist. In 1912 in Berlin, he began studies in mathematics, but never completed them. World War I intervened and, at its outbreak in 1914, he was interned as a Russian citizen but then voluntarily enlisted in the German army and served in prisoner of war camps as an interpreter. In 1917 he established contact with the radical Spartakus Group and, soon after, became an early member of the Communist Party of Germany, the KPD. In September 1919 he met Ruth Fischer, who became his lifelong partner. It was at this time that he took the name Maslow.

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next chapter The Decisive Moment: The German November Revolution

Maslow’s name, written in Russian: Аркадий Маслов, and in Ukrainian: Аркадій Маслов, was mostly transliterated into German and English as Arkadij Maslow (the form used here throughout), but sometimes also as Arkadi Maslow, Arkadii Maslov or Arcady Maslov.

See the references to Maslow at the beginning of the bibliography in this book.

See Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis (Institute for Social History; IISG), Amsterdam: Ruth Fischer: Memoirs by her son Gerard Friedlander, 1995 (cited henceforth: Friedlander, Memoirs), p. 43.

The first massive wave of pogroms in the Russian Empire started on April 27, 1881 in Yelisavetgrad. See I. Michael Aronson, Troubled Waters: The Origins of the 1881 Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Russia (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990), pp. 44–49.

The family retained its Russian citizenship while living in Germany. Maslow thus became a Soviet citizen in 1917 and remained so even during his years of exile, first in Czechoslovakia, where the Soviet embassy issued him a new passport, as well as in France. See Rüdiger Zimmermann, Der Leninbund: Linke Kommunisten in der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1978), p. 30 (According to information given by Zimmermann’s doctoral thesis advisor Arkadij Gurland).

Ruth Fischer, “Biographie Arkadij Maslow – Arbeitsexemplar [1960/61],” Ruth Fischer and Arkadij Maslow, Abtrünnig wider Willen: Aus Reden und Manuskripten des Exils, ed. by Peter Lübbe (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1990), henceforth cited as: Abtrünnig wider Willen, here p. 545.

Maslow’s teacher in ancient languages was Heinrich Stürenburg, Rector of the Kreuzschule, who also taught physical education, in which the tall Maslow likewise excelled. See the entry on Stürenburg on the webpage of Teuchos Center (Teuchos – Zentrum für Handschriften- und Textforschung), University of Hamburg, http://www.teuchos.uni-hamburg.de/interim/prosop/Stuerenburg.Heinrich.html (teuchos: tool in Ancient Greek).

See Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii (Russian State Archive of Social-Political History; RGASPI), Moscow, Fund 495, Inventory 205, Personal File No. 8651: Arkadij Maslow, Curriculum Vitae (in Russian).

See Werner Korthaase, Dmitriy Chizhevskiy: zhizn velikogo uchyonnogo (Dmitry Chizhevskij: Life of a Great Scholar), ed. by Roman Mnich (Siedlce: Opuscula Slavica Sedlcensia, 2010), p. 21.

A brilliant collective portrait of the intellectual spokesmen of this generation in various countries can be found in Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980). For Germany, see Bernd A. Rusinek, “Der Kult der Jugend und des Krieges: Militärischer Stil als Phänomen der Jugendkultur in der Weimarer Republik,” Jost Dülffer and Gerd Krumeich (eds.), Der verlorene Frieden: Politik und Kriegskultur nach 1918 (Essen: Klartext-Verlag, 2002), pp. 171–197.

See RGASPI, Fund 495, Inventory 205, Personal File 8651: Maslow, Curriculum Vitae.

See Friedlander, Memoirs, p. 43.

Gerard Friedlander, “Interview with Sabine Hering and Kurt Schilde, Cambridge [UK], July 28, 1994,” Sabine Hering and Kurt Schilde, Kampfname Ruth Fischer: Wandlungen einer deutschen Kommunistin (Frankfurt-Main: Dipa, 1995), p. 80. Friedlander does not mention this episode in his memoirs.

These facts are based on a letter by Maslow to the Comintern Chair Grigorij Zinovev, October 23, 1923. The letter can be found in: Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv, Berlin (Foundation of the Archives of Parties and Mass Organizations of the GDR in the Federal Archives; henceforth cited as: SAPMO-BArch), KPD Archives, RY 5/I 6/3/125, p. 19: German Section at the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI), Moscow.

See ibid., RY 1/I 2/3/75, p. 315: KPD, Polburo, Cadre Issues [Kaderfragen]: Beitrittserklärung zum Spartakusbund vom 5. Dezember 1918. He submitted this membership application under the name Maslow. Ruth Fischer told her son that Maslow participated at the KPD founding conference on December 31, 1918 and January 1, 1919 in Berlin. See Friedlander, Memoirs, p. 45. There is no other evidence for Maslow’s participation at the conference.

For the cooperation between Maslow and Levien, who was a central figure in the Bavarian Soviet Republic in spring 1919, see Natalya Zavoyskaya, “Maks Levin: lider Bavarskoi sovetskoi respubliki, emigrant, biolog, kommunist, sovetskii grazhdanin i vrag naroda [Max Levien: Leader of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, emigrant, biologist, communist, Soviet citizen and enemy of the people],” http://www.ruslo.cz/index.php/arkhiv-zhurnala/2018/item/886-maks-levin-iz-ognya-da-v-polymya. In 1919 Fischer and Maslow initiated an amnesty for him and later supported his political career as KPD functionary.

Jung and Maslow became close personal friends at that time. See Fritz Mierau, Das Verschwinden des Franz Jung: Stationen einer Biographie (Hamburg: Edition Nautilus, 1998), p. 127.

See RGASPI, Fund 495, Inventory 205, Personal File 8644: Rut [Ruth] Fischer: Curriculum Vitae, written by others (in Russian).

On Fischer see the references at the beginning of the bibliography in this book.

See Archiv Bibiographica Judaica (ed.), Lexikon deutsch-jüdischer Autoren, Vol. 6 (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1998), pp. 201–208.

There is an abundant literature on Hanns Eisler. See, e.g., Albrecht Betz, Hanns Eisler: Political Musician (Cambridge, UK and London: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Jürgen Schebera, Hanns Eisler: Eine Biographie in Texten, Bildern und Dokumenten (Mainz: Schott, 1998); and Friederike Wissmann, Hanns Eisler: Komponist, Weltbürger, Revolutionär (Munich: Edition Elke Heidenreich bei Bertelsmann, 2012). On Gerhart Eisler see Ronald Friedmann, Ulbrichts Rundfunkmann: Eine Gerhart-Eisler-Biographie (Berlin: Edition Ost, 2007).

Eric J. Hobsbawm, Interesting Times: A Twentieth-Century Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002), p. 148.

On the foundation of the Austrian Communist Party see Hans Hautmann, Die verlorene Räterepublik: Am Beispiel der Kommunistischen Partei Deutschösterreichs, 2nd ed. (Vienna: Europaverlag, 1971). See also idem, Geschichte der Rätebewegung in Österreich 1918–1924 (Vienna and Zurich: Europaverlag, 1987); and Roland Starch, Die KPÖ und die Komintern. Diplomarbeit, Universität Wien (Vienna, 2009), esp. pp. 36–37, http://othes.univie.ac.at/4385.

Pierre Broué’s view that she became a left-wing radical mainly under Maslow’s influence must be contradicted. See Pierre Broué, Histoire de l’Internationale communiste 1919–1943 (Paris: Fayard, 1997), p. 457. On Fischer’s role in the Austrian Communist Party see Mario Kessler, Ruth Fischer: Ein Leben mit und gegen Kommunisten (1895–1961) (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau, 2013), pp. 42–65.

See Ruth Fischer, Sexualethik des Kommunismus (Vienna: Neue Erde, 1920). Here she also justified killing disabled children; an inhumane attitude that also had advocates among Social Democrats at the time but was strictly rejected by the KPD. See also Jost Hermand, “Elfriede Friedländers Sexualethik des Kommunismus (1920): Ein Plädoyer für ‘erotische Freundschaften’,” idem, Freundschaft: Zur Geschichte einer sozialen Bindung (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau, 2006), pp. 106–121; idem, “Ruth Fischer alias Elfriede Friedländer: Sexualwissenschaftlerin, Kommunistin, Antistalinistin,” Heidi Beutin (ed.), Die Frau greift ein in die Politik: Schriftstellerinnen in Opposition, Revolution und Widerstand (Frankfurt-Main: Peter Lang, 2010), pp. 317–332.

According to Levi’s biographer, “Lenin ordered Radek to get close to Levi for the precise purpose of infiltrating Spartakus.” Frédéric Cyr, Paul Levi – rebelle devant les extrêmes: une biographie politique (Paris: Hermann; and Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2013), p. 44.

See Jean-François Fayet, Karl Radek (1885–1939): Biographie politique (Bern: Peter Lang, 2004), p. 291. After her divorce in 1922 Fischer officially married KPD member Gustav Golke a year later in order to obtain German citizenship, but the marriage remained one of convenience.

Ladislaus Singer, Marxisten im Widerstreit: Sechs Porträts (Stuttgart: Seewald, 1979), p. 84.

Title: A Young Revolutionary Between Russia and Germany
Author: Mario Kessler
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: A Political Biography of Arkadij Maslow, 1891-1941
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-43256-0

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-43257-7

Copyright Year: 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43257-7_1