Alexander Trachtenberg

Alexander Trachtenberg
Alexander Trachtenberg at 4th World Congress of Communist International in Moscow (1922)
Born	Alexander Leo Trachtenberg November 23, 1885
Died	December 16, 1966(1966-12-16) (aged 81)
Alma mater	Yale University
Years active	1902-1966
Employer	Rand School of Social Science, International Ladies Garment Workers Union, International Publishers
Notable work	founding of International Publishers
Political party	Communist Party of the United States of America
Movement	Communist
Spouse(s)	Rosalind Kohn Trachtenberg
Children	(no children)

Alexander "Alex" Trachtenberg (1884–1966) was an American publisher of radical political books and pamphlets, founder and manager of International Publishers of New York. He was a longtime activist in the Socialist Party of America and later in the Communist Party USA. For more than eight decades, his International Publishers was a part of the publishing arm of the American communist movement. He served as a member of the CPUSA's Central Control Committee. During the period of McCarthyism in America, Trachtenberg was twice subject to prosecution and convicted under the Smith Act; the convictions were overturned, the first by recanting of a government witness and the second by a US Circuit Court of Appeals decision in 1958.

Alexander Leo Trachtenberg, later known to his friends as "Alex" or "Trachty," was born on November 23, 1885, of ethnic Jewish parents in the Ukrainian city of Odessa, part of the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire.

Trachtenberg joined the radical movement while attending the University of Odessa School of Electrotechnique as an engineering student from 1902 to 1904. During the Russo-Japanese War, he was conscripted into the Russian army. For his service, he earned the Cross of the Order of St. George and rose to the rank of captain.

Soon after his return home in the late summer of 1905, Trachtenberg was arrested and imprisoned by the government for a year, during a period of political dissidents suppression. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, Trachtenberg escaped pogroms against the Jews in 1905 and 1906. Soon after his release in 1906, he joined many other Jews in political emigration to the United States.

Trachtenberg arrived in New York City on August 6, 1906, on a ship from Hamburg, Germany, a major port of departure to the US. From 1908 to 1915, Trachtenberg was a student at three different universities, earning his Bachelor's degree from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in 1911, followed by a master's degree in education from Yale University in 1912. He continued studies in Economics at Yale through 1915 and completed a dissertation on safety legislation for the protection of Pennsylvania coal miners, but he did not complete his doctorate. Trachtenberg's dissertation was accepted for publication by the United States Department of Labor in 1917, but delays in preparation of the manuscript and budgetary issues at the Department ultimately ended the project. Trachtenberg finally published his manuscript a quarter of a century later through International Publishers, which he co-founded, as The History of Legislation for the Protection of Coal Miners in Pennsylvania, 1824–1915.