Boris Souvarine
| Boris Souvarine | |
|---|---|
_(14369834947).jpg) |
|
| Born |
Борис Константинович Лифшиц (Boris Konstantinovich Lifschitz) 1895 Kiev |
| Died | 1 November 1984 Paris |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | activist and journalist |
| Political party | French Communist Party, Democratic Communist Circle |
| Partner(s) | Colette Peignot |
Boris Souvarine also known as Varine (born Boris Konstantinovich Lifschitz, Russian: Бори́с Константи́нович Ли́фшиц; 1895 in Kiev – 1 November 1984 in Paris) was a French Marxist, communist activist, essayist, and journalist.
Souvarine was a founding member of the French Communist Party and is noted for being the only non-Russian communist to have been a member of the Comintern for three years in succession. He famously authored the first biography of Joseph Stalin, published in 1935 as Staline, Aperçu Historique du Bolchévisme (Stalin, Historic Overview of Bolshevism) and kept close correspondence with Lenin and Trotsky until their deaths.
Due to his anti-conformism and early criticism of Stalin, Souvarine broke away from the Communist Party in 1924, and in the decades that followed the war Souvarine continued publishing as a leading Sovietologist and anti-Stalinist, founder of L'institut d'Histoire Sociale (Paris), as well as an author, historian, publisher and journalist.
Souvarine was born Boris Konstantinovich Lifschits in Kiev to a Jewish family. Souvarine's family moved to Paris in 1897, where he became a socialist activist from a young age. He trained as a jewelry designer. And at the age of fourteen came into contact with the French Socialist movement while working as an apprentice in an aviation factory. During this time he began attending meetings held by Jean Jaurès.
Souvarine experienced his first trauma with the outbreak of the First World War. Mobilised as part of the French army in 1914, he quickly discovered the horrors of Trench warfare and in March 1915, lost his older brother who died fighting on the front-line.
War pushed Souvarine into politics and the antimilitarist movement. He joined the Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO) in 1916 and begins contributing to publications of the anti-war socialist minority like Le Populaire, signing articles with the pseudonym he held onto for the rest of his life: Souvarine, patronym borrowed from a character in Émile Zola's Germinal.
...
Wikipedia