Rose Cohen

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Rose Gollup Cohen, before 1925

Rose Cohen (born June 30, 1894 in London ; died November 28, 1937 in Moscow , Russia) was a British feminist and suffragette . She was a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and worked for the Communist International from 1920 to 1929 . Between 1931 and 1937, Cohen was an editor at The Moscow News . It was during the Great Purge by Stalin executed and 1956 posthumously rehabilitated.

Life

Early years

Rose Cohen was born in London's East End in 1894 to a family of Jewish immigrants from Lodz , Poland. Her father Maurice Cohen was a tailor and ran his own successful company. Cohen received training in economics and politics through the Workers' Education Association; she spoke three languages. For the daughter of immigrants, this was considered an unusual achievement at the time. Cohen joined a suffragette movement in Great Britain in the 1910s and campaigned for the expansion of women's rights and the right to vote. The British secret service kept them under surveillance until 1916. Copies of intercepted letters and telephone calls were made publicly available in 2003.

Her education enabled Cohen to get a job with London County Council , where she worked until 1917, and later in the Labor Research Department, which she left in 1920. Towards the end of the First World War , the department became the center of young left intellectuals. In his memoir, the English socialist and Christian Maurice Reckitt wrote that Cohen "had a lot of liveliness and charm ... and was probably the most popular individual in our little movement ...". In 1920 she became a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain .

Contemporaries described Cohen as lively, intelligent, educated, and beautiful. All the men she knew spoke of her smile, but said that "she was unaware of her magical quality".

Work for the Comintern

In the early 1920s, Cohen toured the world as a member of the Comintern . She was assigned secret missions that included sending messages and transferring money to communist parties. In the years 1922–1923 she spent a long time in the Soviet Union and also traveled to Finland , Germany , Lithuania , Estonia , Latvia , Turkey , France , Norway , Sweden and Denmark . As a Comintern courier, Cohen transferred large sums of money to the communist parties in these countries.

In 1925 Cohen worked in the Soviet embassy in London and also spent several months in Paris on a secret mission for the Comintern and administered large sums of money for the French Communist Party. That year she met David Petrovsky, whom she later married.

Life in Moscow

In 1927, Cohen came to Moscow on the instructions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain. In the same year she joined the Communist Party of Russia . In early 1929 Cohen married David Petrovsky and their son Alexey (Alyosha) was born in December. In the same year she had previously traveled to China, Japan, Poland and Germany to work for the Comintern. In 1930 Cohen enrolled at the Comintern International Lenin School. From 1931 she was an employee and later head of the international department and editor of The Moscow News .

Cohen and Petrovsky were known as the “golden expatriate couple in Moscow”, and their apartment became a salon for the foreign community.

Victims of Stalin's terror

David Petrovsky was aware of the danger that emerged in the Soviet Union after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in 1934, the assassination attempt that served as a catalyst for the Great Purification.

In the summer of 1936 Cohen went to London, but was not allowed to travel with her son, so he stayed behind in Moscow. At that time David Petrovsky was planning a business trip to America and received a permit. It appears that the family hoped to use their trip as an opportunity to leave the country and escape repression. However, they had failed to get an exit visa for their son, and because they were not ready to leave without him, they stayed in the Soviet Union.

In March 1937 David Petrovsky was arrested and Rose Cohen was expelled from the Russian Communist Party. On August 13, she was arrested in Moscow and accused of being a British spy .

She denied all allegations until October 29, 1937. A closed trial began on November 28th. Cohen was not given access to defense lawyers or witnesses "under the December 1, 1934 law". In her final declaration, she pleaded not guilty. However, the verdict came twenty minutes after the trial began, and found Cohen guilty. She was shot dead the same day.

David Petrovsky was shot dead on September 10, 1937.

Britain's reaction

After learning of Cohen's arrest, British Communist leaders Harry Pollitt and Willie Gallacher appealed to the General Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, Georgi Dimitrov , but were signaled not to interfere. As a result, the British Communist Party has not filed a protest and has not supported the left socialist protest, which was initiated via a letter from Maurice Reckitt.

The British government did not deny the rumors that Cohen had acquired Soviet citizenship and was a citizen of the Soviet Union at the time of her arrest. Records show that Cohen was not naturalized and remained a British citizen until her death. The protest by the British Embassy was delayed and was not officially pronounced until April 1938.

Political Rehabilitation and Family

After the XX. Cohen's son Alexey D. Petrovsky appealed to the CPSU Congress to have her case reviewed. On August 8, 1956 , the Military College of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union overturned the November 28, 1937 judgment against Cohen. All charges were dropped. Rose Cohen was posthumously rehabilitated as a victim of political repression.

Cohen and David Petrovsky had a son Alexey D. Petrovsky (1929-2010), who had a PhD in geology and mineralogy and was a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Her grandson, Michael A. Petrovsky, has a doctorate in physics and a mathematician. Her great-grandchildren are Maria Petrovskaya (an artist, USA) and Alexey M. Petrovsky.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Francis Beckett : Stalin's British victims , United Kingdom, 2004, p. 18
  2. ^ Francis Beckett : Stalin's British victims , United Kingdom, 2004, p. 17
  3. ^ A b Francis Beckett : Stalin's British victims , United Kingdom, 2004, p. 21
  4. ^ Maurice Reckitt : As it happened , London, 1941
  5. ^ A b Francis Beckett : Stalin's British victims , United Kingdom, 2004, p. 19
  6. ^ PRO KV2 / 1397, file references from the Public Record Office , London, England
  7. ^ Francis Beckett : Stalin's British victims , United Kingdom, 2004, p. 22
  8. ^ A b Joshua Meyers, "A Portrait of Transition: From the Bund to Bolshevism in the Russian Revolution," Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society ns 24, no. 2 (Winter 2019): 107-134. doi: 10.2979 / jewisocistud.24.2.09 .
  9. ^ Investigation materials. The Central Archive. Federal Security Service, Russia
  10. ↑ Rose Cohen. Retrieved January 25, 2019 .
  11. ^ Francis Beckett : Rose between thorns , The Guardian , United Kingdom, June 24, 2004
  12. ^ The Guardian , United Kingdom, April 26, 1938
  13. ^ The Tribune , United Kingdom, April 26, 1938
  14. ^ The Determination of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union number 4N-012577/56. The Central Archive. Federal Security Service , Russia
  15. ^ Francis Beckett : Stalin's British victims , United Kingdom, 2004, p. 184
  16. ^ Francis Beckett : Stalin's British victims , United Kingdom, 2004, p. 185
personal data
SURNAME Cohen, Rose
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British feminist and suffragette
DATE OF BIRTH June 30, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH November 28, 1937
Place of death Moscow , Russia