Charles Rappoport Papers
Period
1900-1940 (-1994)
Total size
0.85
m.
Consultation
Not restricted
Biography
Born in Doutsky, Russian Lithuania 1865, died in Cahors, France 1941; high school in Vilnius; publicist, militant socialist; from 1883 active in the Russian revolutionary movement, exiled in 1887; lived first in Berlin, expelled in 1895 and went to Paris; naturalized in 1899; wrote for socialist journals in France, Germany, Switzerland and for the Russian emigrant-press; member of the Fédération des Socialistes Révolutionnaires and later of the Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO) in which he opposed reformism; joined the Executive Bureau of the Committee for the Third International in March 1920; elected as member of the Directing Committee at the founding congress of the Parti Communiste Français (PCF); PCF-delegate to the second plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (COMINTERN) in 1922; in the same year lost his position in the Directing Committee of the PCF; denounced in 1928 Leon Trotsky and G.E. Zinov'ev; became correspondent for Izvestija; resigned during the trial of N.I. Bucharin in 1938 from both the Izvestija and the PCF.
Content
Correspondence (mainly received) with Anatole France, Jules Guesde, Jean Jaurès, Karl Kautsky, Georgij Plechanov, Edouard Vaillant, Clara Zetkin and others; correspondence written and received while French correspondent for Izvestija and during the time he was director of Contre la Guerre and Revue Communiste; handwritten and partially typed manuscript of his memoirs `Ma Vie'; manuscripts (handwritten and typed) of his articles; some proofs of articles; many notebooks; autobiographical notes; personal documents; pamphlets; leaflets and press clippings; file with photocopies of letters, articles, manuscripts, etc. concerning Rappoport, originating from the Vogein Collection at the Centre de Documentation sur l'U.S.S.R. et les Pays Slaves in Paris.
Correspondence with Gaston Bergery 1939, Jean Marestan 1936, Pierre Morhange 1929-1930, Romain Rolland 1915, Georges Sadoul 1936, Maurice Thorez 1937, Henry Torrès 1928, and others 1915-1937 (1941); file on Jean Jaurès n.d.; file on his contributions to the Izvestija 1930-1934; typescripts 'Élaboration de la conception Marxiste' 1919, 'La première révolution sociale victorieuse' n.d., 'Mon séjour en URSS' / 'Mon voyage en Russie' 1927-1928, 'Calendrier philosophique' [1936], 'M. Staline est-il le diable de "Faust"' [1939] and other; original typescript, with notes, of and correspondence on the memoirs of Rappoport, annotated by Harvey Goldberg and Georges Haupt, edited by Marc Lagana and published as Une vie révolutionnaire 1883-1940. Les mémoires de Charles Rappoport in 1991, 1990-1994.
Processing information
Inventory made by Rena Fuks-Mansfeld in 2009
INTRODUCTION
Charles Rappoport was born in Doutsky, a small village in Lithuania on 14 June, 1865. His father was a well-to-do merchant and a pious Jew. He received the traditional education of a Jewish boy in his time and attended a talmudical academy. There he became acquainted with books and journals in Hebrew which advocated reform and modernization of the traditional Jewish way of life. He became an adept and in spite of the fierce opposition of his family he managed to to move to Vilnius in 1880. There he worked for a living and learned Russian in his spare time. With a grant he was able to enter the gymnasium which was a hotbed of young adherents of the revolutionary Narodnaya Volya of which Rappoport became a member. He passed his final examination in 1887 and escaped the persecution of the Russian police by going to Paris in the same year. From Paris he went to Switserland where he became involved in the work of revolutionary Russian emigrants, but also managed to finish his studies of philsophy with a doctoral degree from the university of Zurich in 1897. By then he was fluent in Yiddish (his native tongue), Hebrew, Russian German and French.
Rappoport remained in contact with his comrades in Russia and became influential in the international socialist movement. He participated in all international socialist meetings, wrote reports and commentaries for many journals and became one of the leading marxist thinkers of his time.
In 1897 he moved back to Paris. After he received the French nationality in 1899, he became deeply involved in the socialist party. Though he did not share the ideas of Jean Jaurès about participation of socialists in bourgeois parliaments, he remained close the the cercle of Jaurès. In his writings Rappoport proved himself to be an orthodox marxist, though he acknowledge the necessity of submitting to the discipline of the party for the sake of unity. So he became an important and influential member of the French Socialist Party, and later on, in 1920, of the French Communist Party. Apart of two years in the direction of the Communist Party (1920-1922), Rappoport remained in the margins of officialdom and dedicated his time on his writings and teaching. Though he was much opposed to the ideas of Lenin, and had written countless articles against the Bolshevist social and political ideas, he acclaimed the Russian revolution in 1917.
In 1921 he was invited by the new Russian government to visit his country of origin and there he met with many of his old comrades. In 1927, he participated in Russia in the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the Revolution. By then he was aware of the evolution of Stalinism and the decline of the Communist International as a tool in the hands of the Stalinists. Nevertheless, his relations with the Soviet Union and the Soviet embassy in Paris remained close, as he was an official correspondent of the Russian journal Izvestia. Nevertheless he became more and more estranged to the official line of the French Communist Party and the developments in the Soviet Union and warned in word and writing against the developing stalinist terror. When the persecution against the old revolutionaries and leaders started, Rappoport finally gave up his membership of the French Communist Party in 1938. He spent his last years in bitterness, looking back on his life spent in service of socialist ideas which had not been realised. The archives are not complete. The contents illustrate Rappoport's activities as a French politician and socialist journalist, but without continuity. Rappoport's autobiography Ma vie has been published by Harvey Goldberg and Georges Haupt: Une vie revolutionnaire 1883-1940: Les memoires de Charles Rappoport (Paris 1991).
The archives of Charles Rappoport were purchased by the IISH in 1939. Other parts of his correspondence and literary estate can be found in the Fonds Charles Rappoport, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris and in the Collection Vogein-Rappoport, Centre d'études sur l'URRSS et l'Europe centrale, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris.
INVENTORY
Correspondence
- 1-14
-
General
correspondence.
1891-1941.
1 folders.
- 3
-
CGT.
1929.
France, Anatole. With the declaration of Anatole France in favour of Charles Rappoprt for the Conseil de guerre. 1915-1921.
- 7
-
Marcu,
Valeriu.
1928-1933.
Morhange, Pierre (Co-editor of the La Revue marxiste. 1929-1930.
Martov, Julius. 1896. (Photocopy of a letter of Rappoport in Russian)
Naquet, Alfred. 1902, 1909.
Pankhurst, Emily. 1914
- 8
-
Parti
Communiste Français (PCF).
1923-1937.
NB. Correspondents include Marcel Cachin, Pierre Sémard, Maurice Thorez, Henry Torrès and Paul Valillant-Couturier.
Most originals come from the Collection Vogein and include transcriptions.
Books and writings
Une vie révolutionnaire
- 20-21
- Original manuscript (handwritten and partially typed) of the memories of Charles Rappoport 'Ma vie, mes pensées, mes velléites, mes erreurs, mes conclusions'. 1925-1927. 2 volumes.
Other writings
- 26-36
-
Manuscripts and typescripts of pamphlets, news reports and articles
by Charles Rappoport.
1910-1939 and n.d.
11 folders.
- 26
-
Les
34 parlements soviétiques
.
L’Autorevisionisme de Karl Kautsky .
Calendrier philosophique . 1937.
Les collaborateurs de Lénine et les victimes de Staline .
- 27
- Déclaration de Charles Rappoport devant le Conseil de guerre de Paris le 3 juin 1918 . (With the proof and the pamphlet itself).
- 28
-
Discours en réponse a la conférence de monsieur l’Abbe
Desgranges
.
1927.
Ecole marxiste communiste .
Élaboration de la conception Marxiste. 1919.
L’Histoire de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale . 1939.
Is the left block dead? (In Russian)
Jean Jaurès (1859-1914) .
- 29
-
Jeudi, 5 mai 1921
.
Karl Marx .
Letter to A.M. Negrin.
Lenine et Lloyd George .
M. Staline est-il le diable de "Faust" .
Marx und die Arbeiterklasse .
Les maitres du socialisme . (serial articles)
Mes souverins de Lénine .
- 32
-
La
première révolution sociale victorieuse
.
Quelques souvenirs sur Anatole France .
Le régime absurde te le moyen de le renverser . 1934.
Robert-Houdin au pouvoir .
La situation politique en France .
Le socialisme et l’état . (With the proof)
Miscellaneous documents
- 39
-
Press cards
of the Izvestija, visiting card as director of
La Revue
Marxiste
, congress cards of the Parti Communiste, Parti Socialiste and
other organisations.
1910-1937, n.d.
Autobiographical annotations. With an article in l'Humanité (Strasbourg) on Charles Rappoport. 1923 and n.d. 1 folder.
- 40
-
Statute of the
Freie Organisation der in Auslande Lebenden Sozial-Demokraten Deutscher Zunge.
(1910)
Report of Boris Souvarine on the activities of the Executive Committee of the PCF containing also some critical remarks on Charles Rappoport. With a copy of a letter to Delph Becot and the pamphlet La Troisiéme Internationale . 1921.
Manifeste de la section Francaise des Amis de l'Union Soviétique. (1925)
Declaration of the Parti Radical et Radical-Socialiste. Ca. 1927.
Statute of La Revue Marxiste. 1929.
Open letter by a.o. Paul Langevin to Front Commun. 1933. 1 folder.