Erlich and Alter, 'The Sacco and Vanzetti of the USSR': An Episode in the Wartime History of International Socialism

Abstract

Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter,1 the two leading members of the Polish Bund,2 were shot by the Soviet government on an unknown date some time between 1941 and 1943. At a large protest meeting in New York, Mayor La Guardia called them the Sacco and Vanzetti of the USSR.3 Yet the British Left, in spite of its many links with European socialists, displayed no such strong reaction, even verbal. This article examines the reasons for this embarrassed silence in the