Louis fischer biography
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Louis Fischer
American journalist
Louis Fischer (29 February &#; 15 January ) was an American journalist. Among his works were a contribution to the ex-communist treatise The God that Failed (), The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (), basis for the Academy Award-winning film Gandhi (), as well as a Life of Lenin, which won the National Book Awardin History and Biography.[1]
Biography
[edit]Early life
[edit]Louis Fischer, the son of a fish peddler, was born in Philadelphia on 29 February After studying at the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy from to , he became a school teacher.
In , Fischer, a supporter of Zionism when he was younger, joined the Jewish Legion, a military unit based in Palestine.[2] On his return to the United States, Fischer took up work at a news agency in New York City and met Bertha "Markoosha" Mark (). In , when Bertha went to work in Berlin, Fischer joined her a few months later and began contributing to the New York Evening P
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The Life of Lenin
I still don't know how to feel about Lenin, but one thing is for sure: he is undeniable.
Here's what I can say about Lenin, without doubting: he was a tireless zealot in pursuit of what he thought was the greater good, and he meant to achieve it by any means necessary. He was, in the words of Louis Fischer, "the steel that bends", that is, he had an admirable capacity to depart from theory if it did not suit the practice. And when does theory ever do that when thrown into the socioeconomic petri dish?
Louis Fischer does some deep digging not only into Lenin's personality but also into the economic issues during the implementation of the Soviet state. These parts get dense and kinda boring, but they're essential to understand the circumstances that shaped post-revolutionary Russia.
There are a bunch of tidbits in this biography that make it an interesting read: the execution of his older brother Sasha,
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Spartacus Educational
Primary Sources
(1) Louis Fischer resigned from The Nation after a dispute with the editor, Freda Kirchwey, over the reporting of the situation in the Soviet Union. Kirchwey replied to this charge in the journal published on 2nd June
We assume that he is charging The Nation with a bias in favor of Russia and of communism. We suppose he considers that to be our "line." We suppose he is charging us with ignoring, out of "expediency," the bad behavior of the Soviet Union; of failing out of policy to denounce the Soviet power for suppressing "small, weak states". We can only answer quite flatly that he is wrong. We säga what we believe. What we believe is very different from what Mr. Fischer believes. We believe Russian policy is primarily a säkerhet policy, not an imperialist one; it can become dangerous to the world, therefore, only if Russia decides that the other major powers are plotting against it. It would be dishonest to pret