Brian Pearce
Encyclopedia
Brian Leonard Pearce was a British
Marxist
politician, historian, and translator.
extraction. Brian was their only child, a shy and precocious boy, poor at athletics and not popular among his peers. His father's growing prosperity allowed the young Brian the freedom to travel. In 1931 he went to Germany and in 1933 to France, where he further developed the language skills which he had learned in school.
Although his parents were Tories
, Brian's father investigated a few early issues of the Communist Party of Great Britain's
organ, The Daily Worker, which Brian read thoroughly. He was also greatly influenced by an uncle who worked as a railwayman and who was a partisan of the socialist Independent Labour Party
. Brian also read various books and pamphlets which he purchased on his own from a radical bookseller located on Charing Cross Road.
Brian briefly worked for a company which produced trade journals before going away to University College London
in 1934. It was there as a history student that Pearce joined the Communist Party.
While he had been expected to get a first in History and to win a scholarship to further pursue his own research in the Tudor period
, en route to a career in academia, he instead received an upper second on his last exam. His only choice if he was to proceed on a PhD program would be to work under the close direction of a supervisor on a topic not of his own choosing. He labored at that unpleasant task for two years before discovering that another person was almost finished plowing the same research ground, making award of a PhD unlikely. Pearce henceforth chose to follow a different path.
Pearce married for the first time in 1939 to a party comrade, Lilla Fox. The pair had 3 children before separating in the late 1940s.
Pearce was drafted into the military early in 1940 and was stationed in the north of England. His wartime experiences were uneventful.
After being demobilized, Pearce went to work in the civil service, where he learned Russian. He subsequently left the civil service to work in various Communist Party-related capacities, including as a member of the staff of The Daily Worker, for the Anglo-Soviet Friendship Society, and as a teacher of English at various East European embassies in London.
In 1953, Brian joined a delegation of the British-Soviet Friendship Society and traveled to the Soviet Union
. He was also an important member of the Communist Party Historians Group
, a group of party members which conducted serious historical research into various questions of the British labor movement.
Pearce's world was rocked by the so-called Secret Speech delivered by Soviet leader N.S. Khrushchev
in 1956. These revelations about the violent and criminal behavior of the regime of Joseph Stalin
had the effect of dividing the CPGB between those who favored becoming truly independent and thoroughly democratised and others who disregarded Khrushchev's revelations as hysterical and overblown and having no real relationship to the situation facing the Communist Party in the UK. Pearce began contributing to an opposition journal called The Reasoner, a publication which was terminated just as the Soviet invasion of Hungary was taking place. This event created an even wider fissure in the British Communist Party, ultimately ending in September 1957 with Brian's expulsion from the CPGB.
After being expelled from the Communist Party in 1957, Pearce turned to Trotskyism
. His stint in the Socialist Labour League proved to be a short one, however, and Pearce became a professional translator to make ends meet. He was skilled at his craft, combining accuracy with a highly readable style, and was a three time winner of the prestigious Scott Moncrieff Prize
for his translating work.
Brian Pearce died on 25 November 2008. He was 93 years old.
At the time of his death, he was described as "one of the most acute scholars of Russian history and British communism never to have held an academic post." His papers are in the process of being catalogued at Aberdeen University, which will hold the Brian Pearce Archive.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
politician, historian, and translator.
Biography
Brian Pearce was born in Weymouth, Dorset on 9 May 1915. His father was an upwardly mobile engineer, his mother a domestic servant of IrishIrish people
The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...
extraction. Brian was their only child, a shy and precocious boy, poor at athletics and not popular among his peers. His father's growing prosperity allowed the young Brian the freedom to travel. In 1931 he went to Germany and in 1933 to France, where he further developed the language skills which he had learned in school.
Although his parents were Tories
Tory
Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...
, Brian's father investigated a few early issues of the Communist Party of Great Britain's
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
organ, The Daily Worker, which Brian read thoroughly. He was also greatly influenced by an uncle who worked as a railwayman and who was a partisan of the socialist Independent Labour Party
Independent Labour Party
The Independent Labour Party was a socialist political party in Britain established in 1893. The ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party from 1906 to 1932, when it voted to leave...
. Brian also read various books and pamphlets which he purchased on his own from a radical bookseller located on Charing Cross Road.
Brian briefly worked for a company which produced trade journals before going away to University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
in 1934. It was there as a history student that Pearce joined the Communist Party.
While he had been expected to get a first in History and to win a scholarship to further pursue his own research in the Tudor period
Tudor period
The Tudor period usually refers to the period between 1485 and 1603, specifically in relation to the history of England. This coincides with the rule of the Tudor dynasty in England whose first monarch was Henry VII...
, en route to a career in academia, he instead received an upper second on his last exam. His only choice if he was to proceed on a PhD program would be to work under the close direction of a supervisor on a topic not of his own choosing. He labored at that unpleasant task for two years before discovering that another person was almost finished plowing the same research ground, making award of a PhD unlikely. Pearce henceforth chose to follow a different path.
Pearce married for the first time in 1939 to a party comrade, Lilla Fox. The pair had 3 children before separating in the late 1940s.
Pearce was drafted into the military early in 1940 and was stationed in the north of England. His wartime experiences were uneventful.
After being demobilized, Pearce went to work in the civil service, where he learned Russian. He subsequently left the civil service to work in various Communist Party-related capacities, including as a member of the staff of The Daily Worker, for the Anglo-Soviet Friendship Society, and as a teacher of English at various East European embassies in London.
In 1953, Brian joined a delegation of the British-Soviet Friendship Society and traveled to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. He was also an important member of the Communist Party Historians Group
Communist Party Historians Group
A subdivision of the Communist Party of Great Britain , from 1946-1956 the Communist Party Historians Group formed a highly influential cluster of British Marxist historians, who contributed to "history from below." Famous members included such leading lights of 20th-century British history as...
, a group of party members which conducted serious historical research into various questions of the British labor movement.
Pearce's world was rocked by the so-called Secret Speech delivered by Soviet leader N.S. Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
in 1956. These revelations about the violent and criminal behavior of the regime of 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...
had the effect of dividing the CPGB between those who favored becoming truly independent and thoroughly democratised and others who disregarded Khrushchev's revelations as hysterical and overblown and having no real relationship to the situation facing the Communist Party in the UK. Pearce began contributing to an opposition journal called The Reasoner, a publication which was terminated just as the Soviet invasion of Hungary was taking place. This event created an even wider fissure in the British Communist Party, ultimately ending in September 1957 with Brian's expulsion from the CPGB.
After being expelled from the Communist Party in 1957, Pearce turned to Trotskyism
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
. His stint in the Socialist Labour League proved to be a short one, however, and Pearce became a professional translator to make ends meet. He was skilled at his craft, combining accuracy with a highly readable style, and was a three time winner of the prestigious Scott Moncrieff Prize
Scott Moncrieff Prize
The Scott Moncrieff Prize, named after the translator C. K. Scott Moncrieff, is an annual £2,000 literary prize for French to English translation, awarded to one or more translators every year for a full-length work deemed by the Translators Association to have "literary merit"...
for his translating work.
Brian Pearce died on 25 November 2008. He was 93 years old.
At the time of his death, he was described as "one of the most acute scholars of Russian history and British communism never to have held an academic post." His papers are in the process of being catalogued at Aberdeen University, which will hold the Brian Pearce Archive.
Writings
- Early History of the Communist Party of Great Britain. (London: Socialist Labour League, 1966).
- Essays on the History of Communism in Britain. With Michael Woodhouse. (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1975).
- How Haig Saved Lenin. (London: Macmillan, 1987).
- The Staroselsky Problem, 1918–20: An Episode in British-Russian Relations in Persia. (London: University of London, 1994).
Translations (partial list)
- E. Preobrazhensky, The New Economics. (London: Oxford University Press, 1965).
- Leon Trotsky, The Intelligentsia and Socialism. (London: Fourth International, 1966).
- Nikolai Valentinov, Encounters with Lenin. With Paul Rosta. (London: Oxford University Press, 1968).
- A. D. Lublinskaya, French Absolutism: The Crucial Phase, 1620–1629, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968).
- Ernest Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory. In two volumes. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970).
- Ernest Mandel, The Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx: 1843 to Capital. (London: New Left Books, 1971).
- E.A. Preobrazhensky, From NEP to Socialism: A Glance into the Future of Russia and Europe. (London: New Park Publications, 1973).
- Samir Amin, Accumulation on a world scale (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974).
- Maxime Rodinson, Islam and Capitalism (London: Allen Lane, 1974, and Penguin, 1977)
- Marcel Liebman, Leninism Under Lenin. (London: Jonathan Cape, 1975).
- Fernando Claudín, The Communist Movement from Comintern to Cominform. In two volumes. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975).
- Leon Trotsky, Tasks Before the Twelfth Congress of the Russian Communist Party. (London: New Park Publications, 1975).
- Samir Amin, Unequal Development, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976).
- Charles Bettelheim, Class Struggles in the USSR. Volumes 1 and 2. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976–78).
- Carmen Claudín-Urondo, Lenin and the Cultural Revolution. (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1977).
- Communist International, Baku: Congress of the Peoples of the East. (London: New Park Publications, 1977).
- Roland MousnierRoland MousnierRoland Émile Mousnier was a French historian of the early modern period in France and of the comparative studies of different civilizations.-Life:...
, The Institutions of France under the Absolute Monarchy, 1598–1789. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979). - Leon TrotskyLeon TrotskyLeon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
, How the Revolution Armed." In five volumes. (London: New Park Publications, 1979–82). - Leon Trotsky, The War Correspondence of Leon Trotsky: The Balkan Wars, 1912–13. (New York: Monad Press, 1980).
- F.F. RaskolnikovFedor RaskolnikovFyodor Fyodorovich Raskolnikov , real name Fyodor Ilyin , was a Bolshevik, participant in the October Revolution, commander of Red fleets on the Caspian and the Baltic during the Russian Civil War, and later a Soviet diplomat...
, Kronstadt and Petrograd in 1917. (London: New Park Publications, 1982). - Maxime Rodinson, Israel and the Arabs (Penguin, 1982).
- Roy Medvedev, Khrushchev. (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1983).
- Boris Kagarlitsky, The Thinking Reed: Intellectuals and the Soviet State from 1917 to the Present. (London: Verso, 1988).
- Paul Veyne, Bread and Circuses. (London: Allen Lane, 1990).
- Marc Ferro, Nicholas II: The Last of the Tsars. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
- Daniel Roche, A History of Everyday Things: The Birth of Consumption in France, 1600–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
- Sergo Beria, Beria, My Father: Inside Stalin's Kremlin. (London: Gerald Duckworth and Co., 2001).
External links/references
- Profile at the Marxists Internet Archive Includes a very extensive collection of Pearce's journalism and political commentary, much pseudonymous.
- Obituary in the Guardian by Terry Brotherstone
- Brian Pearce: Historian of the rank and file by Ian BirchallIan BirchallIan Birchall is a British Marxist historian and translator, a member of the Socialist Workers Party and author of numerous articles and books, particularly relating to the French Left...
- Terry Brotherstone, "In Memoriam: Brian Pearce (8 May 1915 – 25 November 2008): Personal and Political Reflections," Revolutionary Russia, v. 22, no. 1 (June 2009).
- Terry Brotherstone, 'History, Truth, Context and Meaning: Two Memories of the 1956–57 Crisis in the Communist Party of Great Britain' in Keith FlettKeith FlettKeith Flett is a socialist historian and a prolific letter writer in the British press.-Activities:Letters from "Keith Flett, London N17" are regularly published in the press, literary and political journals, advancing his favoured causes of socialism and the Beard Liberation Front...
, (ed) 1956 and All That, (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007) ISBN 1847181848 - Bob Gould 'Introduction' to Brian Pearce on 'The British Communist Party and the Labour Left 1925–1929' (1957 article).
- Christian Hogsbjerg, 'Obituary', History Workshop JournalHistory Workshop JournalThe History Workshop is a movement founded by Raphael Samuel. Its main role was to promote the historiographical tradition known variously as History from below, the history of everyday life, or simply the people's history...
, 69, (Spring 2010). - John McIlroy, 'A Communist Historian in 1956: Brian Pearce and the Crisis of British Stalinism', Revolutionary HistoryRevolutionary HistoryRevolutionary History is a British journal dedicated to the history of the far left. It was founded in 1988 by Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson and has maintained an editorial board representing many strands of British Trotskyism. In its articles, it also covers other anti-Stalinist communist...
, vol. 9., no. 3, (2006) - Brian Pearce on Simon Pirani's 'The Russian Revolution in Retreat 1920–1924: the Soviet workers and the new Communist elite' (2008)