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Louis Fischer (29 February 1896 – 15 January 1970) was a Jewish-American journalist. Among his works were a contribution to the ex-Communist
Communism

Communism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarianism, classlessness, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general....
 treatise The God that Failed
The God that Failed

The God That Failed is a 1949 book which collects together six essays with the testimonies of a number of famous ex-Communism, who were writers and journalists....
, as well as a biography of Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a major political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian independence movement. He was the pioneer of satyagraha?resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, firmly founded upon ahimsa or total non-violence?which led India to Indian independence movement and inspired movements for civi...
 entitled The Life of Mahatma Gandhi. This book was used as the basis for the Academy Award-winning film Gandhi
Gandhi (film)

Gandhi is a film about Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who was a leader of the nonviolent resistance movement against British Raj in India during the first half of the 20th century....
. Fischer's wife, Markoosha Fischer, was also a writer.

s Fischer, the son of a fish peddler, was born in Philadelphia on 29 February, 1896.






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Louis Fischer (29 February 1896 – 15 January 1970) was a Jewish-American journalist. Among his works were a contribution to the ex-Communist
Communism

Communism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarianism, classlessness, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general....
 treatise The God that Failed
The God that Failed

The God That Failed is a 1949 book which collects together six essays with the testimonies of a number of famous ex-Communism, who were writers and journalists....
, as well as a biography of Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a major political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian independence movement. He was the pioneer of satyagraha?resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, firmly founded upon ahimsa or total non-violence?which led India to Indian independence movement and inspired movements for civi...
 entitled The Life of Mahatma Gandhi. This book was used as the basis for the Academy Award-winning film Gandhi
Gandhi (film)

Gandhi is a film about Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who was a leader of the nonviolent resistance movement against British Raj in India during the first half of the 20th century....
. Fischer's wife, Markoosha Fischer, was also a writer.

Early life

Louis Fischer, the son of a fish peddler, was born in Philadelphia on 29 February, 1896. After studying at the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy from 1914 to 1916, he became a school teacher
Teacher

In education, a teacher is a person who teaches. A teacher who teaches an individual student may also be described as a personal tutor.The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out by way of Occupation or Profession at a school or other place of formal education....
.

In 1917, Fischer joined the Jewish Legion
Jewish Legion

The Jewish Legion was the name for five battalions of Jewish volunteers established as the British Army's 38th through 42nd Battalions of the Royal Fusiliers....
, a military unit based in Palestine
Palestine

Palestine is a name which has been widely used since Roman times to refer to the region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. It is derived from a name used already much earlier for a narrower geographical region, mainly along the coastal region....
. On his return to the United States
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
, Fischer took up work at a news agency in New York City
New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
. In 1921, Fischer went to Germany
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
 and began contributing to the New York Evening Post as a Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
an correspondent. The following year, he moved to Moscow
Moscow

Moscow is the capital and the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia of the Russian Federation. It is also the largest European cities and metropolitan areas, with the Moscow metropolitan area ranking among the largest urban areas in the world....
, and in 1923 began working for The Nation
The Nation

The Nation is a weekly United States periodical devoted to politics and culture, self-described as "the flagship of the left-wing politics." Founded on July 6, 1865 at the start of Reconstruction era of the United States as a supporter of the victorious North in the American Civil War, it is the oldest continuously published weekly magaz...
.

While in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
, Fischer published several books including Oil Imperialism: The International Struggle for Petroleum (1926) and The Soviets in World Affairs (1930). When Fischer traveled to Ukraine
Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south....
 in October and November 1932, for The Nation, he was alarmed at what he saw. "In the Poltava
Poltava

File:Poltava 1850 Main Square.PNGFile:October Parc Poltava 1550.JPGPoltava is a city in central Ukraine. It is the Capital city of the Poltava Oblast , as well as the administrative center of the surrounding Poltavskyi Raion within the oblast....
, Vinnitsa, Podolsk
Podolsk

Podolsk is an industrial types of settlements in Russia and the administrative center of Podolsky District of Moscow Oblast, Russia. It is located on the Pakhra River ....
 and Kiev
Kiev

Kiev, also known as Kyiv , is the Capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River....
 regions, conditions will be hard," he wrote, "I think there is no starvation anywhere in Ukraine now - after all they have just gathered in the harvest but it was a bad harvest." Initially critical of the Soviet grain procurement program because it created the food problem, Fischer by February 1933 adopted the official Soviet government view, which blamed the problem on Ukrainian counter-revolutionary nationalist
Nationalism

Nationalism refers to an ideology, a feeling, a form of culture, or a social movement that focuses on the nation. While there is significant debate over the historical origins of nations, nearly all Expert accept that nationalism, at least as an ideology and social movement, is a Modernity phenomenon originating in Europe....
 "wreckers
Wrecking (Soviet crime)

Wrecking , was a crime specified in the criminal code of the Soviet Union in the Joseph Stalin era.It is often translated as "sabotage"; however "wrecking" and "diversionist acts" and "counter-revolutionary sabotage" were distinct sub-articles of Article 58 , and the meaning of "wrecking" is closer to "undermining"....
." It seemed "whole villages" had been "contaminated" by such men, who had to be deported to "lumbering camps and mining areas in distant agricultural areas which are now just entering upon their pioneering stage." These steps were forced upon the Kremlin
Kremlin

Kremlin is the Russian word for "fortress", "citadel" or "castle" and refers to any major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities....
, Fischer wrote, but the Soviets were, nevertheless, learning how to rule wisely.

Fischer was on a lecture tour in the United States when Gareth Jones'
Gareth Jones (journalist)

Gareth Richard Vaughan Jones , was a Wales journalist who first publicised the existence of the Holodomor, the Holodomor, in the Western world. His mother had spent the period 1889-1892 as tutor to the children of Arthur Hughes, the son of Welsh steel industrialist John Hughes , who had founded the town of Yuzovka, modern day Donetsk, in Ukra...
 story about the Holodomor
Holodomor

The Holodomor refers to the famine of 1932?1933 in the Ukrainian SSR during which millions of people were starved to death because of the Soviet policies that forced farmers into Collectivization in the Soviet Unions....
 broke. Speaking to a college audience in Oakland, California
Oakland, California

Oakland , founded in 1852, is the eighth-largest city in the U.S. state of California and the county seat of Alameda County, California. Oakland is approximately 8 miles east of San Francisco and the cities are separated by San Francisco Bay....
, a week later, Fischer stated emphatically: "There is no starvation in Russia." He spent the spring of 1933 campaigning for American diplomatic recognition of the USSR. As rumors of a famine in the USSR reached American shores, Fischer vociferously denied the reports.

Fischer also covered the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil War was a major conflict in Spain that started after an attempted coup d'?tat by a group of Spanish Army generals, supported by the conservative Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right , Carlist groups and the fascistic Falange, against the government of the Second Spanish Republic, then under the leadership of pr...
 and for a time was a member of the International Brigade fighting General Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco

Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Te?dulo Franco y Bahamonde, Salgado y Pardo de Andrade , commonly known as Francisco Franco or Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was the dictator and Head of State of Spain from October 1936, and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in 1975....
. In 1938, he returned to the United States and settled in New York. He continued to work for The Nation and wrote his autobiography
Autobiography

An autobiography is a biography written by its subject . The term was first used by the poet Robert Southey in 1809 in the English language Periodical publication Quarterly Review, but the form goes back to antiquity....
, Men and Politics (1941).

Fischer left The Nation in 1945 after a dispute with the editor, Freda Kirchway, over the journal's sympathetic reporting of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953....
. His disillusionment with Communism, although he had never been a member of the Communist Party USA
Communist Party USA

The Communist Party of the United States of America is a Marxist-Leninist political party in the United States.The CPUSA is based in New York City, its newspaper, originally The Daily Worker, is today the People's Weekly World, and its monthly magazine is Political Affairs Magazine....
, was reflected in his contribution to The God That Failed (1949). Fischer began writing for anti-Communist
Anti-communism

Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Historically, the word communism has been used to refer to several types of communal social organization and their supporters, but, since the mid-19th century, the dominant school of communism in the world has been Marxism....
 liberal magazines such as The Progressive
The Progressive

The Progressive is an United States monthly magazine of politics and culture with a pronounced left-wing politics perspective. Known for its pacifism, it has strongly opposed military interventions, such as the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq in 2003....
. Louis Fischer taught about the Soviet Union at Princeton University
Princeton University

Princeton University is a private university university located in Princeton, New Jersey, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League and has the largest per-student Financial endowment in the world....
 until his death on January 15, 1970.

Works


  • Oil Imperialism: The International Struggle for Petroleum (1926)
  • The Soviets in World Affairs (1930)
  • Men and Politics (autobiography) (1941)
  • The God that Failed
    The God that Failed

    The God That Failed is a 1949 book which collects together six essays with the testimonies of a number of famous ex-Communism, who were writers and journalists....
     (contribution) (1949)
  • The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (1950)
  • Stalin (1952)
  • Lenin (1964).
  • The Essential Gandhi
    The Essential Gandhi

    The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas is a collection of Gandhi's writings edited by Louis Fischer. The book outlines how Gandhi became the Mahatma and introduces Gandhi's opinions on various subjects....
     (editor) (1962).
  • Gandhi & Stalin. (1947)
  • Russia's Road from Peace to War (1969)


See also

  • Denial of the Holodomor
    Denial of the Holodomor

    Denial of the Holodomor is the assertion that the 1932-1933 Holodomor in Soviet Ukraine, recognized as a crime against humanity by the European Parliament, did not occur....