Charles Rappoport (14 June 1865 – 17 November 1941) was a Russian and French militant communist politician, journalist and writer. A Jewish intellectual, and a

multilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...

scholar, he's been referred to as "a grand man of French radicalism".

Biography

Rappoport was born in a

Dūkštas Dūkštas (; pl, Dukszty) is a city in eastern Lithuania, north from Ignalina, on the bank of Lake Dūkštas. Notable people * Charles Rappoport (1865–1941), militant communist politician, journalist and writer, who lived most of his life in ...

shtetl A shtetl or shtetel (; yi, שטעטל, translit=shtetl (singular); שטעטלעך, romanized: ''shtetlekh'' (plural)) is a Yiddish term for the small towns with predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish populations which existed in Eastern Europe before ...

'' in the

Kovno Governorate Kovno Governorate ( rus, Ковенская губеpния, r=Kovenskaya guberniya; lt, Kauno gubernija) or Governorate of Kaunas was a governorate ('' guberniya'') of the Russian Empire. Its capital was Kaunas (Kovno in Russian). It was forme ...

of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

(present-day

Lithuania Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...

), grew up in a traditional Jewish area. He attended gymnasium in

Vilnius Vilnius ( , ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the municipality of Vilnius). The population of Vilnius's functional urb ...

, but left the country after encountering the

Narodnaya Volya Narodnaya Volya ( rus, Наро́дная во́ля, p=nɐˈrodnəjə ˈvolʲə, t=People's Will) was a late 19th-century revolutionary political organization in the Russian Empire which conducted assassinations of government officials in an att ...

. He attended university in Switzerland, and then moved to France. As a young man, he was a journalist for

Hebrew language Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

periodicals. He entered politics in the Russian People's Will Party, later the

R.S.D.L.P. The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP; in , ''Rossiyskaya sotsial-demokraticheskaya rabochaya partiya (RSDRP)''), also known as the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party or the Russian Social Democratic Party, was a Socialism , s ...

He was a member of the

Union of Russian Socialist Revolutionaries Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Un ...

, along with

Chaim Zhitlowsky Chaim Zhitlowsky (Yiddish: חײם זשיטלאָװסקי; russian: Хаим Осипович Житловский) (April 19, 1865 – May 6, 1943) was a Jewish socialist, philosopher, social and political thinker, writer and literary critic born i ...

(founder), M. M. Rozenbaum, and

S. Ansky Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport (1863 – November 8, 1920), known by his pseudonym S. Ansky (or An-sky), was a Jewish author, playwright, researcher of Jewish folklore, polemicist, and cultural and political activist. He is best known for his play ' ...

. He emigrated to France, setting in Paris at the end of the 19th century, and becoming a French citizen in 1899. Rappoport was instrumental in mobilizing Yiddish-speaking Parisian Jews; in 1901, he founded the ''Groupe des ouvriers israelites'', a club and meeting place for Jewish socialists in the

Pletzl The Pletzl (פלעצל, "little place" in Yiddish) is the Jewish quarter in the 4th arrondissement of Paris, France. The Place Saint-Paul and the surrounding area were unofficially named the Pletzl when the neighborhood became predominantly Jew ...

Rue Vieille-du-Temple ''Ruta graveolens'', commonly known as rue, common rue or herb-of-grace, is a species of ''Ruta'' grown as an ornamental plant and herb. It is native to the Balkan Peninsula. It is grown throughout the world in gardens, especially for its bluis ...

. As a Marxist, Rappoport campaigned in the French Section of the Workers' International (''Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière'', SFIO). In 1914, he denounced the SFIO's acceptance of the First World War. An early Zimmerwaldian. he was neither a reformist nor a modernist in his ideology. With

Paul Vaillant-Couturier Paul Vaillant-Couturier (8 January 1892 – 10 October 1937) was a French writer and communist. He participated in the founding of the French Communist Party (PCF) in 1920. Biography Born into a family of actors, Vaillant-Couturier studied law ...

and Albert Treint, Rappoport was a representative of the Comintern ("Third International"; 1919–1943). At the SFIO's

Tours Congress The Tours Congress was the 18th National Congress of the French Section of the Workers' International, or SFIO, which took place in Tours on 25–30 December 1920. During the Congress, the majority voted to join the Third International and create ...

in December 1920, he was part of the majority who founded the

French Communist Party The French Communist Party (french: Parti communiste français, ''PCF'' ; ) is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its MEPs sit in the European Unit ...

(''Parti communiste français'', PCF), and was elected to the Steering Committee. Although in 1922-1923 he supported the Frossard centre of the group, following the Stalinization of the PCF in the late 1930s, he strongly disagreed with the party line and support for the Soviet Union, and he left the PCF in 1938. At the time of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, he retired to Saint-Cirq-Lapopie where he died in 1941. One can read on his tomb at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris the following epitaph: ''Le socialisme sans la liberté n'est pas le socialisme, la liberté sans le socialisme n'est pas la liberté'' ("Socialism without freedom is not socialism, freedom without socialism is not freedom.")

Works

Rappoport was the author of numerous works such as ''La Philosophie de l'histoire comme science de l'évolution'' (1903), ''Un peu d'histoire : origines, doctrines et méthodes socialistes'' (1912), and ''La Révolution sociale,'' (1912), and ''Pourquoi nous sommes socialistes?'' (1919). In ''La Crise socialiste et sa solution, par Charles Rappoport'' (1918), Rappoport discusses his intellectual and ideological development. The biography of

Jean Jaurès Auguste Marie Joseph Jean Léon Jaurès (3 September 185931 July 1914), commonly referred to as Jean Jaurès (; oc, Joan Jaurés ), was a French Socialist leader. Initially a Moderate Republican, he later became one of the first social dem ...

, ''Jean Jaurès: l'homme, le penseur, le socialiste'' (1915), written after his assassination, is considered the best biography of Jaurès. Rappoport's memoir, ''Une vie révolutionnaire : 1883-1940 : les mémoires de Charles Rappoport'', was published in 1991.

References

External links

Charles Rappoport at Worldcat
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rappoport, Charles 1865 births 1941 deaths People from Dūkštas People from Novoalexandrovsky Uyezd Lithuanian Jews Emigrants from the Russian Empire to France French people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent French Section of the Workers' International politicians French Communist Party politicians French Marxists Lithuanian writers Marxist journalists Burials at Montparnasse Cemetery French male writers Jewish socialists University of Bern alumni