Joseph Vanzler

Joseph "Usick" Vanzler (November 29, 1901 – June 21, 1956), best known by the pseudonym John G. Wright, was a Jewish-American socialist, activist and translator. Vanzler is best known as the translator of a number of the important works of Leon Trotsky — materials which helped to establish to expand the influence of the Trotskyist movement in the English-speaking world.

Biography Early years Joseph Vanzler, known to all who knew him by the nickname "Usick," was born in 1901 in Samarkand, then part of the Russian Empire and today part of Uzbekistan. An ethnic Jew, Joseph was the son of a glasscutter (who had his own shop at Dzhamskaya Str., 19).

Vanzler was permitted to attend Russian-language school, institutions which strictly limited Jewish enrollment as part of a policy of official antisemitism under the Tsarist regime.

In the 1920s Vanzler married Edith Rose Konikow, the daughter of birth control activist Dr. Antoinette Konikow, a Boston physician and founding member of the Communist Party of America. Under the influence of his wife and mother-in-law, Vanzler was initiated into the world of radical politics.

Death and legacy Joseph Vanzler died of a heart attack on June 21, 1956 in New York City. He was 55 years old at the time of his death.

Vanzler was survived by his first wife, Edith Konikow Vanzler, and their son, Tyl, and by his second wife, Doris Vanzler, and their son who was born in 1952.

Footnotes

Works Writings The Truth About Kronstadt. New York: Socialist Workers Party National Educational Department, n.d. [c. 1938]. Outline History of Russian Bolshevism. With Joe Hansen. New York: Educational Department, Socialist Workers Party, 1940.

Translations Leon Trotsky, The Kirov Assassination. New York: Pioneer Publishers, 1935. Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin. New York: Pioneer Publishers, 1936. Leon Trotsky, Whither France? New York: Pioneer Publishers, 1936. Leon Trotsky, Lessons of October. New York: Pioneer Publishers, 1937. Leon Trotsky, The Stalin School of Falsification. New York: Pioneer Publishers, 1937. Leon Trotsky, The First Five Years of the Communist International. In two volumes. New York: Pioneer Publishers, 1945.