Ruth Fischer was a German Communist, a co-founder of the Austrian Communist Party in 1918. According to secret information declassified in 2010, she was a key agent of the American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 intelligence service known as "The Pond

The Pond (intelligence organization)

The Pond was a small, secret organization formed by the government of the United States of America which operated between 1942 and 1955. It engaged in espionage...

."

Life and work

Born in Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

, Ruth Fischer was the daughter of the Austrian philosopher, Rudolf Eisler and elder sister to noted film and concert composer Hanns Eisler

Hanns Eisler

Hanns Eisler was an Austrian composer.-Family background:Eisler was born in Leipzig where his Jewish father, Rudolf Eisler, was a professor of philosophy...

 and fellow communist activist Gerhart Eisler

Gerhart Eisler

Gerhart Eisler was a German politician. Along with his sister Ruth Fischer, he was a very early member of the Austrian German Communist Party and then a prominent member of the Communist Party of Germany during the Weimar Republic...

. She studied philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

, 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"...

 and politics

Politics

Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...

 in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

. She moved to Berlin in 1919 and she was a leader of the Communist Party of Germany

Communist Party of Germany

The Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956...

 from 1924 to 1925. Espousing left-wing positions, she was a member of the Reichsrat

Reichsrat

There was a Reichsrat * Reichsrat * Reichsrat , in the Austrian part of Austria-Hungary * Reichsrat -See also:...

 from 1924-1928. She fled to Paris in 1933 and then to the USA in 1941. In the late 1940's, she testified before the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee

House Un-American Activities Committee

The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...

 against her brother, Hanns, resulting in his blacklisting and deportation back to Germany. She also testified that her other brother, Gerhart, was a major Communist agent. The Communist press denounced her as a "German Trotskyite." She propounded critical views of Stalinism

Stalinism

Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...

 and called for a rebirth of Communism after Stalin's death. Before this period of anti-Stalinism, however, she was instrumental in the rise to power of the Triumvirs (Stalin, Zinoviev

Grigory Zinoviev

Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev , born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky Apfelbaum , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician...

, and Kamenev), viciously denouncing Trotsky at the fifth congress of the Communist International. Isaac Deutscher, the noted biographer of Trotsky and Stalin, described her as a "young, trumpet-tongued woman, without any revolutionary experience or merit, yet idolized by the Communists of Berlin." In 1955 she returned to Paris and published her books Stalin and German Communism and Die Umformung der Sowjetgesellschaft.

For eight years, Fischer, code-named "Alice Miller," was a key agent for "The Pond".