Sergei Shevitch

Sergei Shevitch, socialist newspaper editor and political activist.

Sergei Egorovich Shevitch (spelled variously, c. 1847–1911) (Russian: Сергей Егорович Шевич) was a Russian newspaper editor and socialist political activist who achieved his greatest fame in the United States of America. As editor of the New Yorker Volkszeitung (New York People's News) from 1879 to 1890, Shevitch emerged as arguably the most important leader of the Socialist Labor Party of America. In 1889, Shevitch was the leader of a split of the Socialist Labor Party of America, emerging victorious and serving for a short while as the National Secretary of the organization.

Shevitch and his wife, the former Helene von Racowitza, returned to Russia in 1890 to avoid loss of his estate lands to the crown owing to emigration. Following several years on his estate, Shevitch emigrated again, this time to Germany, where he would die by his own hand in 1911.

Biography Early years

Sergei E. Shevitch was born in Russia in approximately 1848. Of noble birth and radical political proclivities, Shevitch attended university in Russia before emigrating to Paris. It was there that he met and married the former Helene von Racowitza, over whom socialist leader Ferdinand Lassalle lost his life in a duel in 1864. Shevitch developed fluency and oratorical skill in English as well, which was demonstrated in his debate against Henry George held at the Cooper Union. This brought Shevitch and the privately owned Volkszeitung into conflict with the leadership of the SLP, which advanced its views through a pair of publications, the English-language Workmen's Advocate and the German Der Sozialist.

Ultimately the Rosenberg faction refused to accept this decision of the SLP Control Committee, based in Philadelphia, and rival conventions were held.

Return to Russia

In 1890 Shevitch and his wife returned to Russia, their decision forced by rules that would have ceded the substantial landed estate which Shevitch had inherited to the crown in the case of protracted absence from the country. The pair lived on the estate for several years before successfully selling it.

German period

Thereafter the couple moved to Munich. Shevitch was prohibited from political participation by the German government owing to his radical views and he lived out the rest of his live in relative quiet, where he waited his time for a constitutional order to be established in his native Russia.

Works

Coauthored with : (published under the pseudonym Serge Lensky).

Footnotes