Alexander Trachtenberg
Encyclopedia
Alexander "Alex" Trachtenberg (1884–1966) was an American publisher of radical political books and pamphlets
and activist in the Socialist Party of America
and later the Communist Party USA
. Trachtenberg is best remembered as a founder and manager of International Publishers
of New York
, part of the publishing arm of the American communist movement for over eight decades, as well as member of the CPUSA's Central Control Committee. During the period of McCarthyism
in America, Trachtenberg was twice subject to prosecution under the Smith Act
— convictions which were ultimately overturned by the US Circuit Court of Appeals in 1958.
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 Russio-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 for a year. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, he escaped pogroms in 1905 and 1906. Soon after his release in 1906, he joined many other Jews in political emigration.
Trachtenberg arrived in New York City
on August 6, 1906, on a ship from Hamburg, Germany. From 1908 to 1915, Trachtenberg was a student at three different universities, earning his Bachelors degree from Trinity College
in Hartford, Connecticut
in 1911, followed by a Masters degree in Education from Yale University
in 1912. Although he continued studies in Economics
at Yale through 1915 and even completed a dissertation on safety legislation for the protection of Pennsylvania
coal miners, 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 of Labor ultimately terminated the project. Trachtenberg's manuscript was finally published a quarter of a century later by International Publishers as The History of Legislation for the Protection of Coal Miners in Pennsylvania, 1824-1915.
Trachtenberg was very active in student affairs, serving as president of the Yale chapter of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society
(ISS). During World War I
, Trachtenberg took an anti-militarist stance from a socialist rather than a pacifist perspective. He joined the Collegiate Anti-Militarism League at Columbia University
in 1915, served as treasurer, and contributed to an anti-war petition to President Wilson after the sinking of the Lusitania
.
Trachtenberg left Yale in 1915 to work as an administrator and teacher of Economics and Labor at the Rand School of Social Science
in New York. Trachtenberg directed the school's Department of Labor Research, which conducted studies for other organizations and gathered and published labor statistics. He edited various Rand publications, including the first four volumes of the Rand School's encyclopedic American Labor Year Book as well as a controversial 1917 defense of the Socialist Party's anti-militarist perspective, American Socialists and the War. Trachtenberg continued to oppose the war even after American entry into the conflict in April 1917.
In June 1920, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) hired Trachtenberg as an economist.
(SPA). Trachtenberg embraced the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917, but did not move to bold the Socialist Party in summer of 1919 to join the fledgling Communist movement in America. Instead, he remained inside the SPA along with journalist J. Louis Engdahl
and youth leader William F. Kruse, attempting to align the organization with the Communist International.
Federal investigations into Trachtenberg's activities date back to the time of the so-called "Palmer Raids
" of 1920, when the United States Department of Justice
's Bureau of Investigations (BoI) maintained an informant, Abraham Goodman, the bookkeeper for Trachtenberg's company, Chatham Printing Co. Goodman reported to the BoI that Trachtenberg had printed a leaflet for the Communist Labor Party in the Ukrainian language.
In 1921, Trachtenberg, Kruse, and Engdahl helped form the Committee for the Third International inside the Socialist Party, later splitting as an independent organization known as the Workers' Council. The Workers' Council published a small biweekly magazine, The Workers' Council, starting in April and running to December 1921. Trachtenberg served as the chairman of the Finance Committee of the group. At the end of 1921, with the underground Communist Party pushed steadily towards open activity by the logic of its situation and the pressure of the Communist International, the Worker's Council joined with the Finnish Socialist Federation
and the underground communists to help establish a new so-called "Legal Political Party," the Workers Party of America
.
At the founding convention of the Workers Party of America in December 1921, Trachtenberg was elected to serve on the Central Executive Committee of the new organization. At the 2nd Convention of December 1922, Trachtenberg was re-elected to the same role.
Trachtenberg was chosen as a delegate of the Workers Party of America to the 4th World Congress of the Comintern, held in Moscow in the fall of 1922. With his official enrollment in the communist movement, Trachtenberg resigned from the Rand School of Social Science in 1922.
During the bitter inner-party conflict of the 1920s, Trachtenberg was a supporter of the New York-based faction headed by John Pepper
, C.E. Ruthenberg
, and Jay Lovestone
. He was returned to the governing Central Executive Committee by the 5th Convention of September 1927, at which Jay Lovestone was elected Executive Secretary. At the 6th National Convention of March 1929, when Benjamin Gitlow
became executive secretary, Trachtenberg was elected as an alternate member of the committee.
Throughout the decade of the 1920s, Trachtenberg was frequently a candidate for elective public office. In 1920 he stood as a candidate of the Socialist Party for New York State Assembly
in the state's 12th District. In 1924, he ran for Congress on behalf of the Workers Party in the New York 10th District, running for the same office for the Communist Party in the New York 14th District in 1926, 1928, and 1930.
Trachtenberg founded International Publishers in June 1924. Incorporated on July 17, 1924, the firm was a business enterprise that he co-owned. Financiers included Abraham A. Heller, who invested more than $100,000 for its first 15 years. A third shareholder was Heller's wife Edith, who later sold out to the other two, making them equal shareholders. On December 26, 1924, the firm's name changed from "International Publishers & Booksellers, Inc." to more simply "International Publishers Co., Inc." Trachtenberg was treasurer, manager, editor, and salesman.
International Publishers published Marxist-Leninist teachings. Trachtenberg gained support from Nicholas Dozenberg
, head of the Workers Party's Literature Department. He also contacted Charles Ruthenberg
, then executive secretary of the Party to express his intention not to compete but to support the Party's own publications. To political texts, International Publishers added literary and academic works that appealed not just to the working class but also to progressives.
Researcher David Lincove has characterized books and pamphlets published by International Publishers under Trachtenberg as having a "utilitarian, academic, or inexpensive format" though occasionally "illustrations reinforced proletarian themes." he noted that "color images appeared on book covers, and occasionally the publisher added interior photographs or artistic drawings and illustrationsby artists such as William Siegel, Hugo Gellert
, and Esther Shemitz (future wife of Whittaker Chambers
)." The firm also published hardback series (e.g., 37 volumes of the "Marxist Library") for libraries and schools. He described the publisher's colophon
as a "distinctive logo depicting an upright, shirt-less laborer grasping an oversized book, thus emphasizing the importance ofbooks and ideas in the class struggle."
International Publishers saw gross sales grow from some $10,000 in the mid-1920s to $75,000 in the late 1930s. Pamphlets cost up to $1, books up to $3. Of the firm's own titles, 80% were exported, of which 80% went to the Soviet Union. Inside the U.S, International Publishers sold to bookstores, universities, libraries, and schools. Half or more of domestic sales occurred directly in New York.
The Soviet Union clarified the responsibilities of writers in the communist movement at the Second World Plenum of the International Bureau of Revolutionary Literature held in Kharkov on November 6–15, 1930. The Comintern instructed the CPUSA to enlist writers into their ranks to work for the revolution. John Reed Clubs, initiated in 1929 by editors of the New Masses were redirected to the Black community.
Trachtenberg led the first meeting of the newly formed American Artists' Congress
in the art studio of Eitaro Ishigaki on May 18, 1935. Some 20 artists attended. This group, replacing the John Reed Club
and its many chapters nationwide, operated within the Popular Front
yet organized by the CPUSA. Members included Joseph Freeman
, Mike Gold
, and party secretary Earl Browder
. The Party then organized the League of Ametican Writers, whose members include Nelson Algren
, Langston Hughes
, Kenneth Burke
, and Erskine Caldwell
.
In the fall of 1935, Trachtenberg was instrumental in helping to create the "Book Union" — a radical book-buying circle based upon the model of the Book of the Month Club
. The first offering of the Book Union was an anthology entitled Proletarian Literature in the United States, a thick volume of nearly 400 pages edited by Michael Gold, Granville Hicks
, Joseph North, and others. The Book Union collected a $1 annual fee from its members, who then received a volume in the mail each month priced at a discount, with members obligated to buy 2 of the 12 club's selections during the year. After the purchase of four books in a year, members were to receive a bonus premium. The International Publishers "Book Union" did not prove to be as successful as a similar "Left Book Club" operated by Victor Gollancz Ltd
in England, however, and seems to have been terminated after just a few years.
. Research based on documents in the Russian archives opened after the fall of the Soviet Union showed either direct Soviet funding or indirect funding through the CPUSA.
In addition to discussing the economics of International Publishers, Trachtenberg also told Congress that throughout the decade of the 1930s he had been the Treasurer of World Tourists, Inc., the party-affiliated travel agency which coordinated tours of Americans to the Soviet Union. As part of this job, Trachtenberg countersigned all checks prepared by Jacob Golos
, Trachtenberg noted. Golos is today known to have been an individual closely tied to the secret Soviet foreign intelligence apparatus in America, it should be noted. Trachtenberg told Congress that he only received payment from World Tourists for his services for about one year, either in 1936 or 1937.
During the 1940s, the FBI continued to monitor Trachtenberg and infiltrated International Publishers with informant
s.
years, Trachtenberg faced prosecution in Federal court, based on activities at International Publishers, teachings in communist-led schools, and previous writings supporting communist revolution in the U.S.
International Publishers published two pamphlets in Trachtenberg's support: Books on Trial: The Case of Alexander Trachtenberg and Publisher on Trial:The Case of Alexander Trachtenberg, A Symposium (both 1952). Symposium contributors included Howard Fast
, author of Spartacus (film)
, who said, "The indictment has a singularity as exercised toward him. Both the man and the books he has published are on trial... The books... go beyond the man himself... a body of Marxist-Leninist literature surpassed in few countries indeed... made available to the American people because this man has known neither fear nor pessimism, and has again and again surmounted obstacles almost insurmountable... Some day history will properly weigh and assess the role these books played."
Trachtenberg was convicted for violating the Smith Act
on February 2, 1953. At his sentencing, he criticized the selective examination of his firm's publications, rather than their overall history. He served three months in prison, after which the verdict was overturned when government witness Harvey Matusow
recanted.
In 1956, Trachtenberg was convicted for a second time in Federal court and sentenced to one year in prison. In 1958, the US Circuit Court of Appeals voided the conviction based on Supreme Court
case Yates v. United States
.
, Friedrich Engels
, and Vladimir Lenin
, though over the years books by disfavored politicians stopped, such as Nikolai Bukharin
, Leon Trotsky
, and Joseph Stalin
. In 1975, Lou Diskin took over the firm.
. He was survived by wife Rosalind Kohn Trachtenberg. They had no children.
As of 2010, International Publishers continues in active operation. It remains closely affiliated with the CPUSA and maintains an office in New York City.
Pamphlet
A pamphlet is an unbound booklet . It may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths , or it may consist of a few pages that are folded in half and saddle stapled at the crease to make a simple book...
and activist in the Socialist Party of America
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...
and later the Communist Party USA
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
. Trachtenberg is best remembered as a founder and manager of International Publishers
International Publishers
International Publishers is a book publishing company based in New York City specializing in Marxist works of economics, political science, and history. The company was established in 1924 by A.A. Heller and Alexander Trachtenberg, using funds earned through a lucrative trade concession granted...
of New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, part of the publishing arm of the American communist movement for over eight decades, as well as member of the CPUSA's Central Control Committee. During the period of McCarthyism
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
in America, Trachtenberg was twice subject to prosecution under the Smith Act
Smith Act
The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act of 1940 is a United States federal statute that set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the U.S...
— convictions which were ultimately overturned by the US Circuit Court of Appeals in 1958.
Early years
Alexander Leo Trachtenberg, later known to his friends as "Alex," was born on November 23, 1885, of ethnic Jewish parents in the UkrainianUkraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
city of Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
— part of the Pale of Settlement
Pale of Settlement
The Pale of Settlement was the term given to a region of Imperial Russia, in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed, and beyond which Jewish permanent residency was generally prohibited...
of the Russian empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
.
Trachtenberg joined the radical movement while attending the University of Odessa School of Electrotechnique as an engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
student from 1902 to 1904. During the Russio-Japanese War, he was conscripted into the Russian army. For his service, he earned the Cross of the Order of St. George
Order of St. George
The Military Order of the Holy Great-Martyr and the Triumphant George The Military Order of the Holy Great-Martyr and the Triumphant George The Military Order of the Holy Great-Martyr and the Triumphant George (also known as Order of St. George the Triumphant, Russian: Военный орден Св...
and rose to the rank of captain.
Soon after his return home in the late summer of 1905, Trachtenberg was arrested and imprisoned for a year. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, he escaped pogroms in 1905 and 1906. Soon after his release in 1906, he joined many other Jews in political emigration.
Trachtenberg arrived in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
on August 6, 1906, on a ship from Hamburg, Germany. From 1908 to 1915, Trachtenberg was a student at three different universities, earning his Bachelors degree from Trinity College
Trinity College (Connecticut)
Trinity College is a private, liberal arts college in Hartford, Connecticut. Founded in 1823, it is the second-oldest college in the state of Connecticut after Yale University. The college enrolls 2,300 students and has been coeducational since 1969. Trinity offers 38 majors and 26 minors, and has...
in Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford is the capital of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960, it is the second most populous city on New England's largest river, the Connecticut River. As of the 2010 Census, Hartford's population was 124,775, making...
in 1911, followed by a Masters degree in Education from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
in 1912. Although he continued studies in Economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
at Yale through 1915 and even completed a dissertation on safety legislation for the protection of Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
coal miners, he did not complete his doctorate. Trachtenberg's dissertation was accepted for publication by the United States Department of Labor
United States Department of Labor
The United States Department of Labor is a Cabinet department of the United States government responsible for occupational safety, wage and hour standards, unemployment insurance benefits, re-employment services, and some economic statistics. Many U.S. states also have such departments. The...
in 1917, but delays in preparation of the manuscript and budgetary issues at the Department of Labor ultimately terminated the project. Trachtenberg's manuscript was finally published a quarter of a century later by International Publishers as The History of Legislation for the Protection of Coal Miners in Pennsylvania, 1824-1915.
Trachtenberg was very active in student affairs, serving as president of the Yale chapter of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society
Intercollegiate Socialist Society
The Intercollegiate Socialist Society was the a Socialist student organization from 1905-1921. It attracted many prominent intellectuals and writers and acted as the unofficial Socialist Party of America student wing...
(ISS). During World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Trachtenberg took an anti-militarist stance from a socialist rather than a pacifist perspective. He joined the Collegiate Anti-Militarism League at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in 1915, served as treasurer, and contributed to an anti-war petition to President Wilson after the sinking of the Lusitania
Lusitania
Lusitania or Hispania Lusitania was an ancient Roman province including approximately all of modern Portugal south of the Douro river and part of modern Spain . It was named after the Lusitani or Lusitanian people...
.
Trachtenberg left Yale in 1915 to work as an administrator and teacher of Economics and Labor at the Rand School of Social Science
Rand School of Social Science
The Rand School of Social Science was formed in New York City by adherents of the Socialist Party of America in 1906. The school aimed to provide a broad education to workers, imparting a politicizing class-consciousness, and additionally served as a research bureau, a publisher, and the operator...
in New York. Trachtenberg directed the school's Department of Labor Research, which conducted studies for other organizations and gathered and published labor statistics. He edited various Rand publications, including the first four volumes of the Rand School's encyclopedic American Labor Year Book as well as a controversial 1917 defense of the Socialist Party's anti-militarist perspective, American Socialists and the War. Trachtenberg continued to oppose the war even after American entry into the conflict in April 1917.
In June 1920, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) hired Trachtenberg as an economist.
Political career
Up to the Russian Revolution in 1917, Trachtenberg had adhered to the left wing of the Socialist Party of AmericaSocialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...
(SPA). Trachtenberg embraced the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917, but did not move to bold the Socialist Party in summer of 1919 to join the fledgling Communist movement in America. Instead, he remained inside the SPA along with journalist J. Louis Engdahl
J. Louis Engdahl
John Louis Engdahl was an American socialist journalist and newspaper editor. One of the leading journalists of the Socialist Party of America, Engdahl joined the Communist movement in 1921 and continued to employ his talents in that organization as the first editor of The Daily Worker...
and youth leader William F. Kruse, attempting to align the organization with the Communist International.
Federal investigations into Trachtenberg's activities date back to the time of the so-called "Palmer Raids
Palmer Raids
The Palmer Raids were attempts by the United States Department of Justice to arrest and deport radical leftists, especially anarchists, from the United States. The raids and arrests occurred in November 1919 and January 1920 under the leadership of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer...
" of 1920, when the United States Department of Justice
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
's Bureau of Investigations (BoI) maintained an informant, Abraham Goodman, the bookkeeper for Trachtenberg's company, Chatham Printing Co. Goodman reported to the BoI that Trachtenberg had printed a leaflet for the Communist Labor Party in the Ukrainian language.
In 1921, Trachtenberg, Kruse, and Engdahl helped form the Committee for the Third International inside the Socialist Party, later splitting as an independent organization known as the Workers' Council. The Workers' Council published a small biweekly magazine, The Workers' Council, starting in April and running to December 1921. Trachtenberg served as the chairman of the Finance Committee of the group. At the end of 1921, with the underground Communist Party pushed steadily towards open activity by the logic of its situation and the pressure of the Communist International, the Worker's Council joined with the Finnish Socialist Federation
Finnish Socialist Federation
The Finnish Socialist Federation was a language federation of the Socialist Party of America which united Finnish language-speaking immigrants in the United States in a national organization designed to conduct propaganda and education for socialism among their community.-Early Finnish socialist...
and the underground communists to help establish a new so-called "Legal Political Party," the Workers Party of America
Workers Party of America
The Workers Party of America was the name of the legal party organization used by the Communist Party USA from the last days of 1921 until the middle of 1929. As a legal political party the Workers Party accepted affiliation from independent socialist groups such as the African Blood Brotherhood,...
.
At the founding convention of the Workers Party of America in December 1921, Trachtenberg was elected to serve on the Central Executive Committee of the new organization. At the 2nd Convention of December 1922, Trachtenberg was re-elected to the same role.
Trachtenberg was chosen as a delegate of the Workers Party of America to the 4th World Congress of the Comintern, held in Moscow in the fall of 1922. With his official enrollment in the communist movement, Trachtenberg resigned from the Rand School of Social Science in 1922.
During the bitter inner-party conflict of the 1920s, Trachtenberg was a supporter of the New York-based faction headed by John Pepper
John Pepper
John Pepper, also known as József Pogány, born József Schwartz was a Hungarian-Jewish Communist politician, active in the radical movements of both Hungary and the United States. He later served as a functionary in the Communist International in Moscow, before being cashiered in 1929...
, C.E. Ruthenberg
Charles Ruthenberg
Charles Emil Ruthenberg was an American Marxist politician and a founder and long-time head of the Communist Party USA .-Biography:Charles Emil Ruthenberg was born July 9, 1882 in Cleveland, Ohio...
, and Jay Lovestone
Jay Lovestone
Jay Lovestone was at various times a member of the Socialist Party of America, a leader of the Communist Party USA, leader of a small oppositionist party, an anti-Communist and Central Intelligence Agency helper, and foreign policy advisor to the leadership of the AFL-CIO and various unions...
. He was returned to the governing Central Executive Committee by the 5th Convention of September 1927, at which Jay Lovestone was elected Executive Secretary. At the 6th National Convention of March 1929, when Benjamin Gitlow
Benjamin Gitlow
Benjamin "Ben" Gitlow was a prominent American socialist politician of the early twentieth century and a founding member of the Communist Party USA. From the end of the 1930s, Gitlow turned to conservatism and wrote two sensational exposés of American Communism, books which were very influential...
became executive secretary, Trachtenberg was elected as an alternate member of the committee.
Throughout the decade of the 1920s, Trachtenberg was frequently a candidate for elective public office. In 1920 he stood as a candidate of the Socialist Party for New York State Assembly
New York State Assembly
The New York State Assembly is the lower house of the New York State Legislature. The Assembly is composed of 150 members representing an equal number of districts, with each district having an average population of 128,652...
in the state's 12th District. In 1924, he ran for Congress on behalf of the Workers Party in the New York 10th District, running for the same office for the Communist Party in the New York 14th District in 1926, 1928, and 1930.
International Publishers
Trachtenberg's led the Party's cultural efforts, particularly publication and distribution. In his memoirs, Whittaker Chambers summarized his career by 1952 as follows:Alexander Trachtenberg who, as head of International Publishers, was the party's "cultural commissar" and had the New Masses and the John Reed Clubs under his wing, and, as an old Bolshevik (he was said to be a former Tsarist cavalry officer and a doctor of philosophy from Yale), was a member of the Central Control Commission.
Trachtenberg founded International Publishers in June 1924. Incorporated on July 17, 1924, the firm was a business enterprise that he co-owned. Financiers included Abraham A. Heller, who invested more than $100,000 for its first 15 years. A third shareholder was Heller's wife Edith, who later sold out to the other two, making them equal shareholders. On December 26, 1924, the firm's name changed from "International Publishers & Booksellers, Inc." to more simply "International Publishers Co., Inc." Trachtenberg was treasurer, manager, editor, and salesman.
International Publishers published Marxist-Leninist teachings. Trachtenberg gained support from Nicholas Dozenberg
Nicholas Dozenberg
Nicholas "Nick" Dozenberg was an American political functionary with the Communist Party USA in the 1920s. Late in 1927 Dozenberg was recruited into the underground Soviet military intelligence network, for which he worked for more than a decade under the pseudonym "Nicholas Ludwig Dallant."...
, head of the Workers Party's Literature Department. He also contacted Charles Ruthenberg
Charles Ruthenberg
Charles Emil Ruthenberg was an American Marxist politician and a founder and long-time head of the Communist Party USA .-Biography:Charles Emil Ruthenberg was born July 9, 1882 in Cleveland, Ohio...
, then executive secretary of the Party to express his intention not to compete but to support the Party's own publications. To political texts, International Publishers added literary and academic works that appealed not just to the working class but also to progressives.
Researcher David Lincove has characterized books and pamphlets published by International Publishers under Trachtenberg as having a "utilitarian, academic, or inexpensive format" though occasionally "illustrations reinforced proletarian themes." he noted that "color images appeared on book covers, and occasionally the publisher added interior photographs or artistic drawings and illustrationsby artists such as William Siegel, Hugo Gellert
Hugo Gellert
Hugo Gellert was a Hungarian-American illustrator and muralist. A committed radical, much of Gellert's work is agitational in nature and distinctive in style, considered by some art critics as among the best political work of the first half of the 20th Century.-Early years:Hugo Gellert was born...
, and Esther Shemitz (future wife of Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers was born Jay Vivian Chambers and also known as David Whittaker Chambers , was an American writer and editor. After being a Communist Party USA member and Soviet spy, he later renounced communism and became an outspoken opponent later testifying in the perjury and espionage trial...
)." The firm also published hardback series (e.g., 37 volumes of the "Marxist Library") for libraries and schools. He described the publisher's colophon
Colophon
Colophon was a city in the region of Lydia in antiquity dating from about the turn of the first millennium-BC. It was likely one the oldest of the twelve Ionian League cities, between Lebedos and Ephesus and its ruins are in the eponymously named modern region of Ionia.The city's name comes from...
as a "distinctive logo depicting an upright, shirt-less laborer grasping an oversized book, thus emphasizing the importance ofbooks and ideas in the class struggle."
International Publishers saw gross sales grow from some $10,000 in the mid-1920s to $75,000 in the late 1930s. Pamphlets cost up to $1, books up to $3. Of the firm's own titles, 80% were exported, of which 80% went to the Soviet Union. Inside the U.S, International Publishers sold to bookstores, universities, libraries, and schools. Half or more of domestic sales occurred directly in New York.
The Soviet Union clarified the responsibilities of writers in the communist movement at the Second World Plenum of the International Bureau of Revolutionary Literature held in Kharkov on November 6–15, 1930. The Comintern instructed the CPUSA to enlist writers into their ranks to work for the revolution. John Reed Clubs, initiated in 1929 by editors of the New Masses were redirected to the Black community.
Trachtenberg led the first meeting of the newly formed American Artists' Congress
American Artists' Congress
The American Artists’ Congress was an organization founded in February 1936 as part of the popular front of the Communist Party USA as a vehicle for uniting graphic artists in projects helping to combat the spread of fascism...
in the art studio of Eitaro Ishigaki on May 18, 1935. Some 20 artists attended. This group, replacing the John Reed Club
John Reed Club
The John Reed Club was an American, semi-national, Marxist club for writers, artists, and intellectuals, named after the American journalist, activist, and poet, John Reed.-Founding:...
and its many chapters nationwide, operated within the Popular Front
Popular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
yet organized by the CPUSA. Members included Joseph Freeman
Joseph Freeman (writer)
Joseph "Joe" Freeman was an American writer and magazine editor. He is best remembered as a contributor and editor to The New Masses, a literary and artistic magazine closely associated with the Communist Party USA, and as a founding editor of the magazine Partisan Review.-Early years:Joseph...
, Mike Gold
Mike Gold
Michael "Mike" Gold is the pen-name of Jewish American writer Itzok Isaac Granich. A lifelong communist, Gold was a novelist and literary critic, his semi-autobiographical novel Jews Without Money from 1930 was a bestseller.- Biography :Gold was born Itzok Isaac Granich on April 12, 1894 on the...
, and party secretary Earl Browder
Earl Browder
Earl Russell Browder was an American communist and General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1934 to 1945. He was expelled from the party in 1946.- Early years :...
. The Party then organized the League of Ametican Writers, whose members include Nelson Algren
Nelson Algren
Nelson Algren was an American writer.-Early life:Algren was born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Goldie and Gerson Abraham. At the age of three he moved with his parents to Chicago, Illinois where they lived in a working-class, immigrant neighborhood on the South Side...
, Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
, Kenneth Burke
Kenneth Burke
Kenneth Duva Burke was a major American literary theorist and philosopher. Burke's primary interests were in rhetoric and aesthetics.-Personal history:...
, and Erskine Caldwell
Erskine Caldwell
Erskine Preston Caldwell was an American author. His writings about poverty, racism and social problems in his native South like the novels Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre won him critical acclaim, but they also made him controversial among fellow Southerners of the time who felt he was...
.
In the fall of 1935, Trachtenberg was instrumental in helping to create the "Book Union" — a radical book-buying circle based upon the model of the Book of the Month Club
Book of the Month Club
The Book of the Month Club is a United States mail-order book sales club that offers a new book each month to customers.The Book of the Month Club is part of a larger company that runs many book clubs in the United States and Canada. It was formerly the flagship club of Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc...
. The first offering of the Book Union was an anthology entitled Proletarian Literature in the United States, a thick volume of nearly 400 pages edited by Michael Gold, Granville Hicks
Granville Hicks
Granville Hicks was an American Marxist as well as an anti-Marxist novelist, literary critic, educator, and editor.-Life:...
, Joseph North, and others. The Book Union collected a $1 annual fee from its members, who then received a volume in the mail each month priced at a discount, with members obligated to buy 2 of the 12 club's selections during the year. After the purchase of four books in a year, members were to receive a bonus premium. The International Publishers "Book Union" did not prove to be as successful as a similar "Left Book Club" operated by Victor Gollancz Ltd
Victor Gollancz Ltd
Victor Gollancz Ltd was a major British book publishing house of the twentieth century. It was founded in 1927 by Victor Gollancz and specialised in the publication of high quality literature, nonfiction and popular fiction, including science fiction. Upon Gollancz's death in 1967, ownership...
in England, however, and seems to have been terminated after just a few years.
Dies Committee testimony
Trachtenberg was subpoenaed and appeared before the Dies Committee on September 13, 1939. Proclaiming his support for Communism, he described the revenues, production, and sales (see previous section, above). He described his firm's relationship between with the CPUSA as "business." However, Trachtenberg also served on the board of "Workers Library Publishers" (1928–1945, replaced by New Century Publishers), which published CPUSA literature. Perhaps the most famous publication by the Workers Library Publishers was The Communist Party: Manual of Organization (1935) by J. PetersJ. Peters
J. Peters was the most commonly known pseudonym of a man who last went by the name "Alexander Stevens" in 1949. Peters was an ethnic Jewish journalist and political activist who was a leading figure of the Hungarian language section of the Communist Party USA in the 1920s and 1930s...
. Research based on documents in the Russian archives opened after the fall of the Soviet Union showed either direct Soviet funding or indirect funding through the CPUSA.
In addition to discussing the economics of International Publishers, Trachtenberg also told Congress that throughout the decade of the 1930s he had been the Treasurer of World Tourists, Inc., the party-affiliated travel agency which coordinated tours of Americans to the Soviet Union. As part of this job, Trachtenberg countersigned all checks prepared by Jacob Golos
Jacob Golos
Jacob Golos, , was a Ukrainian-born Bolshevik revolutionary of ethnic Jewish heritage who became a secret police operative on behalf of the USSR in the United States...
, Trachtenberg noted. Golos is today known to have been an individual closely tied to the secret Soviet foreign intelligence apparatus in America, it should be noted. Trachtenberg told Congress that he only received payment from World Tourists for his services for about one year, either in 1936 or 1937.
During the 1940s, the FBI continued to monitor Trachtenberg and infiltrated International Publishers with informant
Informant
An informant is a person who provides privileged information about a person or organization to an agency. The term is usually used within the law enforcement world, where they are officially known as confidential or criminal informants , and can often refer pejoratively to the supply of information...
s.
McCarthy period prosecutions
In 1952, during the McCarthyMcCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
years, Trachtenberg faced prosecution in Federal court, based on activities at International Publishers, teachings in communist-led schools, and previous writings supporting communist revolution in the U.S.
International Publishers published two pamphlets in Trachtenberg's support: Books on Trial: The Case of Alexander Trachtenberg and Publisher on Trial:The Case of Alexander Trachtenberg, A Symposium (both 1952). Symposium contributors included Howard Fast
Howard Fast
Howard Melvin Fast was an American novelist and television writer. Fast also wrote under the pen names E. V. Cunningham and Walter Ericson.-Early life:Fast was born in New York City...
, author of Spartacus (film)
Spartacus (film)
Spartacus is a 1960 American epic historical drama film directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on the novel of the same name by Howard Fast...
, who said, "The indictment has a singularity as exercised toward him. Both the man and the books he has published are on trial... The books... go beyond the man himself... a body of Marxist-Leninist literature surpassed in few countries indeed... made available to the American people because this man has known neither fear nor pessimism, and has again and again surmounted obstacles almost insurmountable... Some day history will properly weigh and assess the role these books played."
Trachtenberg was convicted for violating the Smith Act
Smith Act
The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act of 1940 is a United States federal statute that set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the U.S...
on February 2, 1953. At his sentencing, he criticized the selective examination of his firm's publications, rather than their overall history. He served three months in prison, after which the verdict was overturned when government witness Harvey Matusow
Harvey Matusow
Harvey Matusow was a U.S. Communist who protected himself from HUAC by providing evidence against his former left-wing colleagues. His false accusations led to his own perjury conviction and to being blacklisted...
recanted.
In 1956, Trachtenberg was convicted for a second time in Federal court and sentenced to one year in prison. In 1958, the US Circuit Court of Appeals voided the conviction based on Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
case Yates v. United States
Yates v. United States
Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298 , was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States involving free speech and congressional power...
.
Later years
Trachtenberg retired from International Publishers in 1962. His successor, James Allen, continued to reprint classics (e.g., three volumes of Lenin's Selected Works in 1967 in a "New World Paperbacks" series). The firm continued to publish the works of Karl MarxKarl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
, and Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
, though over the years books by disfavored politicians stopped, such as Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin , was a Russian Marxist, Bolshevik revolutionary, and Soviet politician. He was a member of the Politburo and Central Committee , chairman of the Communist International , and the editor in chief of Pravda , the journal Bolshevik , Izvestia , and the Great Soviet...
, Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
, and Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
. In 1975, Lou Diskin took over the firm.
Death and legacy
Trachtenberg died on December 16, 1966, in New York of a strokeStroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
. He was survived by wife Rosalind Kohn Trachtenberg. They had no children.
As of 2010, International Publishers continues in active operation. It remains closely affiliated with the CPUSA and maintains an office in New York City.
Books and pamphlets
- American Socialists and the War: A Documentary History of the Attitude of the Socialist Party toward War and Militarism since the Outbreak of the Great War. New York: Rand School of Social Science, 1917.
- The American Labor Year Book, 1919-1920. Editor. New York: Rand School of Social Science, 1920.
- The American Labor Year Book, 1921-1922. Editor. New York: Rand School of Social Science, 1922.
- The heritage of Gene Debs, selections New York: International Publishers, 1930. (intro.)
- History of May Day. New York: International Pamphlets, 1932. (International Pamphlets #14; many editions)
- The History of Legislation for the Protection of Coal Miners in Pennsylvania, 1824-1915. New York: International Publishers, 1942.
Articles
- "The Marx-Engels Institute" in The LiberatorLiberator (magazine)Liberator is a radical liberal United Kingdom magazine associated with but not officially connected to the Liberal Democrats. Founded in 1970 as the magazine of the then Young Liberals, it has often published articles critical of the party leadership, in particular over the Liberal Party's debacle...
, Issue 13: November 1924, v. 5, no. 1 (1924) - "1905 — The Rehearsal for 1917 in The LiberatorLiberator (magazine)Liberator is a radical liberal United Kingdom magazine associated with but not officially connected to the Liberal Democrats. Founded in 1970 as the magazine of the then Young Liberals, it has often published articles critical of the party leadership, in particular over the Liberal Party's debacle...
, Issue 14: December 1925, v. 5, no. 2 (1925) - "Marx, Engels and Lenin on the Paris Commune," in The LiberatorLiberator (magazine)Liberator is a radical liberal United Kingdom magazine associated with but not officially connected to the Liberal Democrats. Founded in 1970 as the magazine of the then Young Liberals, it has often published articles critical of the party leadership, in particular over the Liberal Party's debacle...
, Issue 17: March 1926, v. 5, no. 5 (1926) - "Marx, Lenin and the Commune" in Theoretical Magazine for the Discussion of Revolutionary Problems (Workers Party of AmericaWorkers Party of AmericaThe Workers Party of America was the name of the legal party organization used by the Communist Party USA from the last days of 1921 until the middle of 1929. As a legal political party the Workers Party accepted affiliation from independent socialist groups such as the African Blood Brotherhood,...
1928, volume vii, March 1928, number 3, edited by Bertram WolfeBertram WolfeBertram David "Bert" Wolfe was an American scholar and former communist best known for biographical studies of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, and Diego Rivera.-Early life:...
) - "Publishing Revolutionary Literature" in American writers’ congress, edited by Henry Hart (1935)
Further reading
- Books on Trial: The Case of Alexander Trachtenberg, Director, International Publishers. New York: International Publishers, 1952.
- Publisher on Trial: The Case of Alexander Trachtenberg, A Symposium. New York: International Publishers, 1952.
See also
- International PublishersInternational PublishersInternational Publishers is a book publishing company based in New York City specializing in Marxist works of economics, political science, and history. The company was established in 1924 by A.A. Heller and Alexander Trachtenberg, using funds earned through a lucrative trade concession granted...
- Communist Party USACommunist Party USAThe Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
- Rand School of Social ScienceRand School of Social ScienceThe Rand School of Social Science was formed in New York City by adherents of the Socialist Party of America in 1906. The school aimed to provide a broad education to workers, imparting a politicizing class-consciousness, and additionally served as a research bureau, a publisher, and the operator...
- Tamiment Library
External links
- International Publishers website, Intpubnyc.com, New York.
- David A. Lincove, "Radical Publishing to 'Reach the Million Masses': Alexander L. Trachtenberg and International Publishers, 1906-1966," Left History, vol. 10, no. 1 (Fall/Winter 2004), pp 85–124.