Charles Ruthenberg

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Charles Ruthenberg 1924
Ruthenberg's first political writing, 1917

Charles Emil Ruthenberg (born July 9, 1882 in Cleveland , Ohio , USA , † March 2, 1927 in Chicago , Illinois ) was known as the founder of the Communist Party of the USA .

Life

Ruthenberg was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He was the son of a German immigrant from Prussia who was hired as a dock worker in America. He enrolled at Columbia University in 1903 , where he came into contact with anarchist groups and became a member of a radical wing of the American Socialist Party . During this time, Ruthenberg became a very avid pamphlet writer and chaired a group of students who actively supported the election of Eugene Debs as president in 1904. In 1909 Ruthenberg graduated from Columbia Law School and was active as a pamphlet writer and an activist in the Socialist Party. Between 1910 and 1919 he stayed in many cities in the northeast and midwest of the United States, where he came into contact with workers' unions, union officials and pacifist groups. In 1916 he stood as a Socialist Party candidate for the Ohio Senate and in 1917 as Mayor of Cleveland.

He was sentenced to one year in prison in 1917 with Alfred Wagenknecht and Charles Baker for obstructing registration for calling a general strike against the USA's entry into World War I. Debs' speech at a mass event in Canton , Ohio condemning the war and the persecution of Ruthenberg, Wagenknecht, and Baker eventually led to his re-conviction for violating the Espionage Act . Ruthenberg was arrested in 1919 during the Cleveland May riot on suspicion of an "attack with the intention of killing".

He headed one of the two groups that split off from the Socialist Party of America in 1919 and later, on the orders of the Comintern, participated in the merger to form the Communist Party of the United States . The group he chaired was known as the Communist Party of America before the merger and was dominated by the foreign associations, which at the time made up the largest number of members in the US Communist Party. The forced merger, however, did not end the rivalries between the two groups. Ruthenberg and his supporter Jay Lovestone were at odds with the rival group led by William Z. Foster , who had good connections with organized workers and who wanted to lead the party's work for the American working class, and James P. Cannon , who ran the International Labor Defense headed.

Ruthenberg, his wife and their son Daniel traveled to the Soviet Union from 1921 to 1924 , where he worked in a factory for tractors and agricultural equipment in Moscow . He also studied Russian at the Moscow State University . After returning to the United States, he tried unsuccessfully to win a seat in the United States House of Representatives for Ohio as a candidate for the Labor Party . In 1925, the representative of the Comintern, Sergei Gussew , ordered that the strong party group around Foster should submit to the control of the Ruthenberg party group; Foster finally gave in. The internal party struggles in the Communist Party of the USA did not stop. The communist leadership of the New York International Ladies' Garment Worker's Union lost the packaging industry strike in New York City in 1926 largely because of the rivalries within the party groups within the party.

Ruthenberg's remains, like those of his former rival John Reed, were buried on the Kremlin wall in Moscow.

literature

  • Oakley C. Johnson: The Day is Coming: The Life & Work of Charles E. Ruthenberg. International Publishers, 1957.

Web links

Commons : Charles Emil Ruthenberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Brief Biography of Ruthenberg" in Cleveland Historical
personal data
SURNAME Ruthenberg, Charles
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ruthenberg, Charles Emil (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Founder of the United States Communist Party
DATE OF BIRTH July 9, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Cleveland , Ohio
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1927
Place of death Chicago , Illinois