Richard Lengyel

Richard Lengyel (* 1902 , † 1940 in Cagnes , France ; used pseudonyms: A. Rudolf, Raoul Laszlo, L. Charles) was a Hungarian communist , journalist and writer .

Life

Growing up in Austria-Hungary , he experienced the First World War and the turmoil of the revolution as a child of wealthy parents. After graduating from high school, he worked in Vienna in 1920 . From 1922 he was a correspondent for a major bank in Berlin. During this time he received a substantial contribution to his salary from his father and thus survived the years of inflation. But he saw the misery of his colleagues and joined the union of bank officials. He also took part in some demonstrations. Lengyel lived carefree, but saw many of his colleagues lose their jobs. During this crisis he joined the Communist Party . In 1930 he moved to Paris , where he continued his political activities. There he was arrested and expelled in 1931. He had been interested in the Soviet Union for a long time, wanted to go there and decided to write a book about it. After a short stay in Switzerland, he embarked on the "Juschar" in Stettin and reached Leningrad on September 15, 1931.

He wrote the booklet 15 Workers' Delegates in the Soviet Union , published in 1932, about his first impressions of his travels through the country . According to him, it was not censored and was very superficial. He then worked in the "Commission for Foreign Relations" of the Central Council of Trade Unions of the USSR. This commission organized delegation trips through the USSR. She also directed the Organization of the Friends of the Soviet Union . Lengyel was entrusted with the French report and published several articles in the “Appel des Soviets”, Paris, in 1933 under the pseudonym L. Charles. His enthusiasm for the Soviet Union continued.

In his booklet Three Years of the Soviet Union , published in Vienna in 1936 , he describes the first disappointments about the Soviet leadership and the working and living conditions in the country from 1931 onwards. He saw the daily deviations from official propaganda in the form of housing shortages, food shortages and from 1932 of mass layoffs. He described the displacement of unemployed urban residents into the countryside. He contrasted this with the new upper class. This consisted of high functionaries of the party and organizations, plant managers, high army officers. These had high salaries, privileges, vacation trips, health cures, specially equipped shops and other advantages. He described the partial incompetence of the leadership, the mismanagement, the mean intrigues and denunciation. At the same time he realized that he had become part of this "new aristocracy" and was taking advantage of it. In contrast to his work colleagues, he was doing relatively well financially. Disgusted by the circumstances and after an argument, he asked for his release in autumn 1933. He decided to renew his passport and go abroad. Months should pass before departure. He bridged the time as a freelance writer and translator. This gave him the time and, thanks to his work, sufficient money to study the New Economic Policy and its effects more closely in Moscow . In December 1933 he was offered a permanent position as deputy editor-in-chief in the German-language Rote Zeitung in Leningrad. He had published articles there for a year and wanted to make one last try. He hoped to find a better atmosphere there than in the capital. He was disappointed. His experiences were repeated. In early 1934 he saw further contradictions between the Soviet government and the Comintern . For him, both were identical, but one side was engaged in gentle diplomacy with foreign capitalist governments and the other wanted to lead fighting communists worldwide. It was in this situation that the assassination attempt on Sergei Mironovich Kirov , at whose funeral he attended, took place. He assessed the assassination attempt as an expression of the deep dissatisfaction of the population with the Soviet government and the excessive terror that followed as an admission of the leadership to have understood it that way.

Richard Lengyel was part of the communist movement. As a functionary he was employed in the USSR for more than three years in the press, in the propaganda apparatus and in the industrial inspection. During this time he also worked for the German-language Rote Zeitung in Leningrad.

His return from the Soviet Union in December 1934 was under the influence of reprisals following the murder of Sergei Mironovich Kirov . From then on he turned away from Stalinism and fought it, among other things, with the publication of books about the Soviet Union and the first Moscow trial . Among other things, he wrote as the author of the exile newspaper “Die Sozialistische Warte - sheets for critically active socialism” (1934-40).

Article by A. Rudolf during this period:

• To the Soviet constitution . In: Sozialistische Warte . 1936, pp. 336-342
• Fighting methods . In: Sozialistische Warte . 1937, p. 69 = Appeal and protest against the Comintern's denunciation against Erich Wollenberg and other emigrants.
• Article in The German Revolution by Otto Strasser , Prague, approx. 1936–1937
• Gide, Feuchtwanger . In: Sozialistische Warte : 1937, pp. 70–72 (in it he defends André Gide's book retouching to my book on Russia and opposes the “yes-psychosis” in Lion Feuchtwanger's book Moscow 1937 )

Together with André Gide , Richard Lengyel was exposed to a defamation campaign by the Comintern because of his books and articles against Stalinism . In this u. a. Jules Humbert-Droz (Secretary of the Communist International Comintern, CP Switzerland) and Theo Pinkus (bookseller and publisher in Switzerland 1909–1991).

The historian Reinhard Müller described in the Netzeitung of 10 July 2007: " In early 1937 pointed Wehner [...] the NKVD in the names of 17 people in the Soviet Union out as they to Raoul Laszlo relations' (a pseudonym Lengyel) talked . The NKVD carried out an operation in Prague against this 'Trotskyist Gestapo agent', who later died under unexplained circumstances in France, which led to his imprisonment. Wehner's personal information not only served the Stalinist enemy image of contact guilt, but was intended to lead to the identification and arrest of these people. "

Examples of the campaign against Lengyel:

• From the witch's kitchen of anti-Bolshevism . Paul Thur (Theodor Pinkus), Basel 1937
• Spies and Conspirators (edited and edited by Karl Kreibich ). Prague 1937
• Fourfold evidence. Trotskyism has nothing to do with the labor movement. The Rudolf Case and the Deep Fall of the Socialist Watchdog . In: Deutsche Volkszeitung . Prague, October 17, 1937
• New documents in the Rudolf case . In: Deutsche Volkszeitung . Prague, October 24, 1937
• The Trotskyist Gestapo spy A. Rudolf confesses and flees Czechoslovakia . In: Rundschau . Basel 1937, p. 1480

Due to the defamation campaign, Lengyel feared his arrest and left Czechoslovakia in 1937.

He was then interned in a camp in France. André Gide successfully campaigned for his release. So far, only the place Cagnes , France is known about his death in 1940 .

Works (under the pseudonym A.Rudolf ; selection)

• Fifteen workers' delegates in the Soviet Union . Publishing cooperative foreign. Workers, Moscow 1932
• Three years of the Soviet Union . Reinhold, Vienna a. a. 1936
• Farewell to Soviet Russia . Factual novel . Schweizer Spiegel Verlag, Zurich 1936
• Farvel! - Sovjetrusland! . Forlaget FREMAD, Kopenhavn 1936 (= farewell to Soviet Russia in Danish)
• The rediscovery of Europe . Self-published, Prague 1936, 150 pages, Snamiia Rossiji, Praha II, Krakovska 8
• The Moscow Trial, its Background and Effects . Printing Buchdruckerei Pokrad, 20 pp. Prague 1936 (October).

Web links

• Literature by and about Richard Lengyel in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Three years of the Soviet Union . Reinhold, Vienna / Leipzig 1936
2. ^ André Gide: Retouching to my Russia book . Jean Christophe, Zurich 1936
3. ↑ Biographical information and works from the DHM
4. ^ David Pike : German writers in Soviet exile . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981
5. ↑ from letter A. Rudolf of December 2, 1936 to André Gide
6. ^ Herbert Wehner Moscow 1937 . Reinhard Müller Hamburg, 2004, page 240 f.
7. ^ Archives de Jules Humbert-Droz, IV - Engagements à travers le monde. Resistances, Conciliations, Defamations. Sous la direction d'André Lasserre édité par Bernhard H. Bayerlein
8. ↑ netzeitung.de ( Memento from January 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
9. ^ Reinhard Müller: Herbert Wehner Moscow 1937 . Hamburg 2004, page 237 f
10. ^ Reinhard Müller: Herbert Wehner Moscow 1937 . Hamburg 2004, page 243
11. ↑ Raoul Laszlo et al. a. on Escape from Prague (1939); (Volume 43, Institute for Contemporary History Munich-Berlin Archive)
12. ↑ From Munich to Monitoire; National Crisis and the Man of Letters / 2006 State University of New York Press, Albany