Fyodor Aronowitsch Rotstein

Theodore Rothstein.

Fyodor Aronowitsch Rotstein ( Russian Фёдор Аронович Ротштейн , often in the English form of the name Theodore Rothstein; * 1871 in Kovno , Russian Empire ; † August 30, 1953 in Moscow ) was a Russian journalist , writer , communist and Soviet ambassador to Iran .

Life

Fjodor Aronowitsch Rotstein was born in Kowno (today Kaunas in today's Lithuania ) in 1871 as the son of a Jewish family. Nothing is known about his parents and his childhood and youth.

In 1890 he had to leave his country for political reasons and traveled to England. He worked there as a journalist in the field of foreign policy for The Tribune , for The Daily News , The Manchester Guardian, founded by Charles Dickens (1812-1870) in 1847, and at the same time became a member of the National Union of Journalists . He also worked as a correspondent from London for some radical Russian newspapers . Rothstein also wrote for Die Neue Zeit , the organ of the Social Democratic Party of Germany , which represented the direction of consistent Marxism and in which all important debates on the subject of Marxism and socialism of the time took place.

In 1895 he became a member of the Social Democratic Federation founded by Henry Hyndman (1842-1921) in 1884 . As a prominent theorist and thought leader, he occupied the left wing of the party and worked on the board for some time from 1900. He also made the move to Hyndman's British Socialist Party , newly founded in 1911 , but left the party in 1914 after Hyndman supported the British government when it entered the First World War (1914-1918) and the party became increasingly nationalist and chauvinist .

In 1901 he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party as a British member . After the party split in November 1903 into the faction of the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks , Rothstein supported the Lenin faction of the Bolsheviks. Lenin (1870–1924) himself sought close contact with Rothstein on his visit to England in 1905 and visited him regularly.

In 1910 he caused a sensation, in which he demonstrated with " Egypt's Ruin " a careful analysis based on correspondent reports of London newspapers about Egypt and British government documents, how Egypt was systematically exploited after the occupation by the British. Although Rothstein was a staunch opponent of World War I, he worked for the Foreign Ministry and the War Ministry as a Russian translator and interpreter .

In 1920, following an invitation to Moscow , he was unable to return to England due to the Russian civil war (1917–1923) and its political entanglements. He stayed in Russia, became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , took over the chairmanship of the University Reform Commission (1920–1921), was Soviet Ambassador to Iran from 1921 to 1922 and was a member of the College of the Commissariat for Foreign Policy from 1922 . Rothstein was appointed director of the Institute for World Economy and World Politics in Moscow and became a member of the Academy in 1939.

Works

• The Decline of British Industry . Twentieth Century Press , London 1903 (English).
• The Russian Revolution . Twentieth Century Press , London 1907 (English).
• Egypt's Ruin, A Financial and Administrative Record . AC Fifield , London 1910 (English).
• Essays in the History of the British Labor Movement . (English).
• From Chartism to Laborism - Historical Sketches of the English Working Class Movement . Dorrot Press , London 1929 (English).
• Under the name FA Rotstein: From the history of the Prussian-German Empire. Two Prussian Wars . People and Knowledge, Berlin 1952

Web links

• Theodore Rothstein . Marxist Internet Archive,accessed May 25, 2016.