Alexander Trachtenberg

Alexander "Alex" Trachtenberg (November 23, 1884 – December 26, 1966) was an American publisher of radical political books and pamphlets, founder and manager of International Publishers of New York. He was a longtime activist in the Socialist Party of America and later in the Communist Party USA. For more than eight decades, his International Publishers was a part of the publishing arm of the American communist movement. He served as a member of the CPUSA's Central Control Committee. During the period of McCarthyism in America, Trachtenberg was twice subject to prosecution and convicted under the Smith Act; the convictions were overturned, the first by recanting of a government witness and the second by a US Circuit Court of Appeals decision in 1958.

Biography

Early years Alexander Leo Trachtenberg, later known to his friends as "Alex" or "Trachty," was born on November 23, 1885, of Jewish parents in the city of Odesa, part of the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire.

Trachtenberg joined the radical movement while attending the University of Odessa School of Electrotechnique as an engineering student from 1902 to 1904. During the Russo-Japanese War, he was conscripted into the Russian army. For his service, he earned the Cross of the Order of St. George and rose to the rank of captain.

Soon after his return home in the late summer of 1905, Trachtenberg was arrested and imprisoned by the government for a year, during a period of political dissidents suppression. From 1908 to 1915, Trachtenberg was a student at three different universities, earning his bachelor's degree from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1911, followed by a master's degree in education from Yale University in 1912. He continued studies in economics at Yale through 1915 and completed a dissertation on safety legislation for the protection of Pennsylvania coal miners, but he did not complete his doctorate. Trachtenberg's dissertation was accepted for publication by the United States Department of Labor in 1917, but delays in preparation of the manuscript and budgetary issues at the department ultimately ended the project. Trachtenberg finally published his manuscript a quarter of a century later through International Publishers, which he co-founded, as The History of Legislation for the Protection of Coal Miners in Pennsylvania, 1824–1915.

In 1921, Trachtenberg, Kruse, and Engdahl helped form the Committee for the Third International inside the Socialist Party, later splitting as an independent organization known as the Workers' Council. The Workers' Council published a small biweekly magazine, The Workers' Council, starting in April and running to December 1921. The underground Communist Party was being pushed toward open activity by pressure of the Communist International. At the end of 1921, the Worker's Council joined with the Finnish Socialist Federation and the underground communists to help establish a new, so-called "Legal Political Party," the Workers Party of America. At the 2nd Convention of December 1922, Trachtenberg was re-elected to the same role. In 1924, he ran for Congress on behalf of the Workers Party in the New York 10th District, running for the same office for the Communist Party in the New York 14th District in 1926, 1928, and 1930, after the Stock Market Crash.

International Publishers

Trachtenberg led the Party's cultural efforts, particularly publication and distribution of materials. In his memoirs, Whittaker Chambers summarized the activist's career by 1952 as follows: Alexander Trachtenberg who, as head of International Publishers, was the party's "cultural commissar" and had the New Masses and the John Reed Clubs under his wing, and, as an old Bolshevik (he was said to be a former Tsarist cavalry officer and a doctor of philosophy from Yale), was a member of the Central Control Commission. This group, replacing the John Reed Club and its many chapters nationwide, operated within the Popular Front but was organized by the CPUSA. Members included Joseph Freeman, Mike Gold, and party secretary Earl Browder. The Party also organized the League of American Writers, whose members include Nelson Algren, Langston Hughes, Kenneth Burke, and Erskine Caldwell.

With the social upheaval and economic distress of millions during the Depression, many people were searching for solutions in alternatives to American capitalism.

In the fall of 1935, Trachtenberg was instrumental in helping to create the "Book Union" — a radical book-buying circle based upon the model of the Book of the Month Club. The first offering of the Book Union was an anthology entitled Proletarian Literature in the United States, a thick volume of nearly 400 pages edited by Michael Gold, Granville Hicks, Joseph North, and others.

In the same issue, Counterattack also claimed that both Trachtenberg and Golos were members of a Communist Party "Control Commission," renamed "National Review Commission" by 1945. Research based on documents in the Russian archives opened after the fall of the Soviet Union showed either direct Soviet funding or indirect funding through the CPUSA. As part of this job, Trachtenberg countersigned all checks prepared by Jacob Golos. In the 21st century, Golos is known to have been closely tied to the secret Soviet foreign intelligence apparatus in America during these years. Trachtenberg told Congress that he received payment from World Tourists for his services for only about one year, either in 1936 or 1937.

During the 1940s, the FBI continued to monitor Trachtenberg. It infiltrated International Publishers with informants.

Trachtenberg was convicted on February 2, 1953, for violating the Smith Act. At his sentencing, he criticized the selective examination of his firm's publications, rather than their overall history. He served three months in prison. The verdict was overturned when government witness Harvey Matusow recanted.

In 1956, Trachtenberg was convicted for a second time in Federal court and sentenced to one year in prison. In 1958, the US Circuit Court of Appeals voided the conviction based on Supreme Court case Yates v. United States.

Later years

Trachtenberg retired from International Publishers in 1962. His successor, James S. Allen, continued to reprint classics (e.g., three volumes of Lenin's Selected Works in 1967 in a "New World Paperbacks" series). The firm continued to publish the classical works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Lenin. It ceased to publish books by leaders who had fallen out of favor, such as Nikolai Bukharin, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin. In 1975, Lou Diskin took over the firm.

Death

Trachtenberg married Rosalind Kohn; they chose to have no children.

Alexander Trachtenberg died age 81 on December 16, 1966, in New York of a stroke. He was survived by his wife.

Legacy As of 2024, International Publishers continues in active operation. It remains closely affiliated with the CPUSA and maintains an office in New York City.

Works

Books and pamphlets

American Socialists and the War: A Documentary History of the Attitude of the Socialist Party toward War and Militarism since the Outbreak of the Great War, New York: Rand School of Social Science, 1917. The American Labor Year Book, 1919–1920. Editor. New York: Rand School of Social Science, 1920. The American Labor Year Book, 1921–1922. Editor. New York: Rand School of Social Science, 1922. The Heritage of Gene Debs. New York: International Publishers, 1930. History of May Day. New York: International Pamphlets, 1947. (revised edition) The History of Legislation for the Protection of Coal Miners in Pennsylvania, 1824–1915. New York: International Publishers, 1942. The Lessons of the Paris Commune New York: International Publishers, 1934.

Articles

"The Marx-Engels Institute", in The Liberator, Issue 13: November 1924, v. 5, no. 1 (1924) "1905 – The Rehearsal for 1917", in The Liberator, Issue 14: December 1925, v. 5, no. 2 (1925) "Marx, Engels and Lenin on the Paris Commune", in The Liberator, Issue 17: March 1926, v. 5, no. 5 (1926) "Marx, Lenin and the Commune", in Theoretical Magazine for the Discussion of Revolutionary Problems (Workers Party of America, 1928, volume vii, March 1928, number 3, edited by Bertram Wolfe) "Publishing Revolutionary Literature," in American Writers’ Congress, edited by Henry Hart (1935)