Alexander Werth (journalist)

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Alexander Werth (January 22, jul. / 4. February  1901 greg. In St. Petersburg , † 5. March 1969 in Paris ) was a Russian- British journalist and historian. He was best known for his books on the Soviet Union and the fighting of the Red Army in World War II .

Life

Werth fled with his parents - the father was Russian, the mother -Camille Schmidt - was English before the turmoil of the October Revolution of 1917 to England. During the Second World War (he flew to Moscow almost immediately after the start of the war on July 2, 1941) he was a correspondent for the Sunday Times and the BBC in the Soviet Union - he wrote the Russian Commentaries , which were broadcast on Sunday afternoon on the BBC. He spoke Russian like a local.

In his comments and analyzes, Werth defended the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact . He also expressed understanding that the Soviet secret service NKVD deported captured Polish officers deep into the Russian hinterland. He took part in several trips to theaters of war organized by the propaganda department of the Red Army for a small group of selected foreign correspondents, including to the besieged Leningrad , to Stalingrad , to the front during the invasion of Romania and to Majdanek immediately after the liberation of the Concentration camp .

In January 1944 he was one of the journalists who, accompanied by propaganda officers, were allowed to visit the mass graves of murdered Polish officers in the Katyn forest . In his articles about it, he took the official Soviet version that the German occupiers carried out the Katyn massacre . Some of the articles were therefore reprinted or quoted in excerpts in newspapers and books about Katyn that appeared in the Eastern Bloc .

In 1945 Werth participated alongside Jerome Davis , John Hersey , Richard Lauterbach , Edgar Snow and Edmund Stevens in a campaign by pro-Soviet journalists against the publisher and publicist William Lindsay White , who in his book "Report on the Russians" had described the Soviet system as a party dictatorship. in which the masses would be oppressed and exploited. Even after the war he remained in the Soviet Union as a correspondent for the Guardian until 1949. In 1946 he was allowed to conduct one of the few interviews with Stalin .

In his book Russia at War , published in 1964, he deviated from his previous assessment of the Katyn case. He juxtaposed arguments for a German and a Soviet perpetrator. He gave a detailed presentation of the volume of documents, also in English, which General Władysław Anders had published in 1949 on behalf of the Polish government- in- exile in London . But he also saw inconsistencies in the arguments of the Poles in exile, who accused the Soviet side of mass murder. He also stated: "The technique of these mass murders was more German than Russian." However, a final clarification could only be achieved by opening the Soviet archives.

Russia at War (German Russia in War 1941–1945 ) is based on his own experiences and numerous interviews. In his own words, it was less about military details than about the human and political aspects. The war is portrayed from the perspective of the Russian people. In the sections called close - ups , he lets his interlocutors speak directly, including the Soviet marshals Zhukov , Rokossovsky , Sokolovsky , Malinovsky , Tschuikov and the war correspondents and writers Ilya Ehrenburg and Konstantin Simonow . He also described his encounters with the director Sergej Eisenstein and the composers Sergej Prokofjew and Dmitri Shostakovich .

Critics accused him of being too close to the Soviet point of view. By his own admission, he was proud that the writer Boris Pasternak had called him "the most eloquent Soviet propagandist".

This was followed by other books on the Soviet Union ( Russia: Hopes and Fears , Russia: The Post War Years , Russia under Khrushchev ), the Russian War ( Moscow 1941 , Leningrad , The Year of Stalingrad ). After moving to Paris, he wrote books on contemporary French history (e.g. The Twilight of France 1933–1940 ) and biographies on Subhash Chandra Bose and Charles de Gaulle .

In the last years of his life Werth was increasingly exposed to the accusation that he had played down the Stalinist purges in his works , ignored Nikita Khrushchev's anti-Semitism and wrote condescendingly about dissidents . After an attack by Literaturnaja Gazeta on him, he had to publicly admit that he had put Soviet-critical statements in the mouth of the Russian writer Valentin Katajew that did not come from him.

According to his son, the French historian Nicolas Werth , Werth was hoping for a liberalization of the Soviet regime. The invasion of the Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in 1968 destroyed all his hopes for it and had a part in the fact that he committed suicide.

Publications

  • Russia at War 1941-1945. Basic Books, ISBN 0-7867-0722-4 .
    • German edition: Russia at war. Knaur 1965.
  • France 1940–1955: The De Gaulle Revolution. New York 1956.
  • The reluctant neighbor. Droste Verlag 1957.
  • The Strange History of Pierre Mendès France and the Great Conflict over French North Africa. Barrie, London 1957.

literature

  • Leopold Labedz: The Use and Abuse of Sovietology . New Brunswick 1989, ISBN 0-88738-252-5 , pp. 126-134.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ livelib.ru (Russian Internet Encyclopedia)
  2. ↑ Alexander Werth: Moscow 41 . London 1942, p. 316.
  3. ↑ The BBC refused to send his Majdanek report because they initially did not want to believe it and believed it to be Soviet propaganda. Annotated links to Poland-related information ( Memento from March 15, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Reprint z. B. in: Bolesław Wójcicki: Prawda o Katyniu . Warsaw 1953, pp. 208-211.
  5. ↑ William L. Oneill: A Better World: Stalinism and the American Intellectuals . New York 1982, p. 91.
  6. ↑ Edmund Stevens: Russia is no Riddle. New York 1945, p. 295.
  7. ^ The Sunday Times. September 26, 1946.
  8. ↑ Alexander Werth: Russia at War 1941-45. London 1964, pp. 662-666.
  9. ↑ Russia at War , 1965, foreword, p. 16: "It was important to me to record the relationship between the population and the Germans and Western allies."
  10. ^ Stanisław Kot: Rozmowy z Kremlem. London 1959, p. 303.
  11. ↑ See Leopold Labedz: The Use and Abuse of Sovietology . New Brunswick 1989, pp. 129-131.
  12. ↑ Imenem Stalina (In the name of Stalin) , Ekho Moskvy, August 20 of 2010.
personal data
SURNAME Werth, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian-British journalist and historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Petersburg
DATE OF DEATH March 5th 1969
Place of death Paris