Louis
Fischer, the son of a fish peddler, was born in Philadelphia
on 29th February, 1896. After studying at the Philadelphia School
of Pedagogy (1914 to 1916) he became a school teacher.
In 1917
Fischer joined the Jewish Legion, a military unit in Palestine. On
his return to the United States Fischer worked
for a news agency in New York. In 1921
Fischer went to Germany and began contributing
to the New
York Evening Post as
a European correspondent. The following year he moved to Moscow and
in 1923 began working for The
Nation.
While in the Soviet
Union Fischer
published several books including Oil Imperialism:
The International Struggle for Petroleum (1926) and The
Soviets in World Affairs (1930). He also covered the Spanish
Civil War and for a time was a member of the International Brigade
fighting General Francisco
Franco.
In 1938 Fischer returned
to the United States and settled in New
York. He continued to work for The
Nation and
wrote his autobiography, 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. His disillusionment with Communism, although he was never
a member of the Communist Party, was
reflected in his contribution to The God
That Failed (1949). Fischer now wrote for anti-Communist
liberal magazines such as The Progressive.
Other books by Fischer
include The Life of Mahatma Gandhi
(1950) Stalin (1952) and Lenin
(1964). Louis Fischer also taught about
the Soviet Union at Princeton University
until his death on January 15, 1970.
(1)
Louis Fischer resigned from The
Nation after a
dispute with the editor,
Freda
Kirchwey,
over the reporting of the situation in the Soviet
Union. Kirchwey replied to this charge in the journal published
on 2nd June 1945.
We assume that he is charging The Nation with a bias in favor of Russia
and of communism. We suppose he considers that to be our "line."
We suppose he is charging us with ignoring, out of "expediency,"
the bad behavior of the Soviet Union; of failing out of policy to
denounce the Soviet power for suppressing "small, weak states".
We can only answer quite flatly that he is wrong. We say what we believe.
What we believe is very different from what Mr. Fischer believes.
We believe Russian policy is primarily a security policy, not an imperialist
one; it can become dangerous to the world, therefore, only if Russia
decides that the other major powers are plotting against it. It would
be dishonest to pretend that we think Russia's foreign policy is as
great a threat to the basic purpose of destroying fascism and its
political and economic roots as is the foreign policy of Britain and
the United States.
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