Valentine Adler (also known as Vali Adler) (5 May 1898 – 6 July 1942) was an Austrian writer and activist.

Personal life

Valentine Adler was born in 1898 in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, Austria. Her father was Alfred Adler and her mother was Raissa Timofeyevna Epstein, daughter of a Jewish merchant from Moscow. She was the sister of

Alexandra Adler Alexandra Adler (24 September 1901 – 4 January 2001) was an Austrian neurologist and the daughter of psychoanalyst Alfred Adler. She has been described as one of the "leading systematizers and interpreters" of Adlerian psychology. Her sister ...

. She married Hungarian journalist Gyula Sas.

Political involvement

Adler joined the Communist Party of Austria in 1919. She left the party in 1921. That year, she joined the German Communist Party. She had interest in moving to the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

because of the political state of the country. As

Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

gained influence in Germany, her husband moved to Moscow. Adler moved there in 1933. Adler started to work as an editor at a publishing house focused around Soviet emigrants. She became disenchanted by the Soviet Union as the political and social climate changed and voiced her concerns through her writing.

Arrest, sentencing and death

On 22 January 1937 Adler and Sas were arrested and imprisoned at the

Lubyanka Building The Lubyanka ( rus, Лубянка, p=lʊˈbʲankə) is the popular name for the building which contains the headquarters of the FSB, and its affiliated prison, on Lubyanka Square in the Meshchansky District of Moscow, Russia. It is a large Ne ...

. She was

interrogated Interrogation (also called questioning) is interviewing as commonly employed by law enforcement officers, military personnel, intelligence agencies, organized crime syndicates, and terrorist organizations with the goal of eliciting useful informa ...

there. She was then transferred to the

Butyrki prison Butyrskaya prison ( rus, Бутырская тюрьма, r= Butýrskaya tyurmá), usually known simply as Butyrka ( rus, Бутырка, p=bʊˈtɨrkə), is a prison in the Tverskoy District of central Moscow, Russia. In Imperial Russia it ...

. On 19 September 1937 she was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for being "guilty of illegal

Trotskyite Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an Orthodox Marxism, orthod ...

activities and having established contacts with foreign Trotskyite groups." Her parents had met

Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...

before, which the military tribunal claimed was the cause for Adler's interests and involvement in anti-Soviet activism. She died in a

Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...

camp on 6 July 1942.

Legacy

In 1952

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

petitioned the Soviet Union to release details about Adler's trial. Until this petitioning, her death date was unknown. She was declared rehabilitated on 11 August 1956 by the

Supreme Court of the USSR The Supreme Court of the Soviet Union (russian: Верховный Суд СССР) was the highest court of the Soviet Union during its existence. The Supreme Court of the USSR included a Military Collegium and other elements which were not typic ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Adler, Valentine 1898 births 1942 deaths 20th-century Austrian women writers 19th-century Austrian Jews

Valentine A valentine is a card or gift given on Valentine's Day, or one's sweetheart. Valentine or Valentines may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Valentine (name), a given name and a surname, including a list of people and fictional char ...

Austrian socialists Great Purge victims Jewish socialists Jewish Austrian writers Writers from Vienna People who died in the Gulag Soviet rehabilitations Stalinism-era scholars and writers Utopian socialists Austrian people who died in Soviet detention Austrian emigrants to the Soviet Union