Parvus Helphand

Alexander Lvovich Parvus, born Israel Lazarevich Gelfand (8 September 1867 – 12 December 1924) and sometimes called Helphand in the literature on the Russian Revolution, was a Marxist theoretician, publicist, and controversial activist in the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

Biography

Early life

Israel Lazarevich Gelfand was born to a Lithuanian Jewish family on 8 September 1867 in the shtetl of Berazino in the Russian Empire, (in present-day Belarus). Although little is known of Israel's early childhood, the Gelfand family belonged to the lower-middle class, with his father working as an artisan of some sort — perhaps as a locksmith or as a blacksmith. When Israel was a small boy, a fire damaged the family's home in Berazino, prompting a move to the city of Odessa, Russian Empire, (present-day Ukraine), the hometown of Israel's paternal grandfather.

Gelfand attended gymnasium in Odessa and received private tutoring in the humanities. He also read widely on his own, including material by the iconic Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, the journalist Nikolai Mikhailovsky, and the political satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, which led the young Gelfand to begin to question the legitimacy of the Tsarist Empire.

Revolutionary

In 1886, the 19-year-old Gelfand first travelled from Russia to Basel, Switzerland. It was there that Gelfand was first exposed to the writings of Alexander Herzen as well as the revolutionary literature of the day. He returned to Russia briefly the following year but he became the subject of official scrutiny by the tsarist secret police and was forced to leave the country again for his safety.Zeman and Scharlau, ''The Merchant of Revolution,'' pg. 14. He would remain abroad for more than a decade.

Returning to Switzerland, in the autumn of 1888 Gelfand enrolled at the University of Basel, where he studied political economy. Gelfand would remain at the university for the next three years, graduating with a doctorate degree in July 1891.Zeman and Scharlau, ''The Merchant of Revolution,'' pg. 18. Gelfand's professors were largely hostile to his Marxist approach to economics, however, and difficulty in his oral examination resulted in a rider being attached to the degree which rendered it the equivalent of a third class degree.

Gelfand chose not to pursue an academic career but rather sought to begin a political career which would both provide him financial support and serve the cause of socialism.Zeman and Scharlau, ''The Merchant of Revolution,'' pg. 19. Alienated from the backwardness of agrarian Russia and the limited political horizons there, Gelfand moved to Dresden, in Germany, joined the Social Democratic Party and took over the editorship of the socialist newspaper ''Sächsische Arbeiterzeitung''. He enlisted the German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg as a contributor.

From 28 January to 6 March 1898, Parvus used his newspaper to run a series of polemical articles attacking the German Marxist Eduard Bernstein, who had queried Marx's prediction that the collapse of capitalism was inevitable, and advocated a non-violent reforms as the route to socialism. Giving his series the title 'Bernstein's Overthrow of Socialism', he attacked Bernstein in personal terms, as someone who had deserted Marxism. He was in a minority within the SDP, most of whose leaders were shocked by his intemperate language, but he was backed by Rosa Luxemburg, and the leading Russian Marxist, Georgi Plekhanov.

On 25 September 1898, Parvus and his assistant editor, Julian Marchlewski were expelled from Saxony, and settled in Munich, handing control of ''Sächsische Arbeiterzeitung'' to Rosa Luxemburg. In Munich, he founded the publishing house that introduced the work of Maxim Gorky to Germany. In 1900, Parvus met Vladimir Lenin for the first time, in Munich, each admiring the other's theoretical works. Parvus encouraged Lenin to begin publishing his revolutionary paper ''Iskra''.Александр Парвус (Израиль Гельфанд)
" Khronos, Accessed September 27, 2009.

Parvus' attempts to become a German citizen proved fruitless. He once commented in a letter to his German friend Wilhelm Liebknecht

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