Kessler , Mario A Political Biography of Arkadij Maslow: Dissident Against His Will (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 579 be sinological and journalistic articles on China), embraced Chinese culture by learning the language and by defying social norms to marry a Han Chinese (or perhaps Manchu) girl in 1907, the first high-status member of the Russophone community to do so. As in Harbin’s urban setting, in Budberg’s mind different cultures and ethnonational categories remained separated and hierarchized. Gamsa carefully avoids presentism and convincingly refuses to ‘hyphenate’ Budberg between the German and Chinese worlds, even though the baron tried to do precisely that through the naming of his daughter Zhong-De-Hua (‘Chinese-German Flower’). Cross-cultural contact and social hierarchy went hand in hand in the age of empires. A European aristocrat, who considered Chinese culture ‘infinitely superior’ (p. 142) to the West, chose a life of constant contact with people of a lower social status (women, prostitutes, his underage wife, a Chinese boy he bought and kept as a servant), whom he helped and over whom he exercised power. In 1920, Budberg railed against ‘the suffocating democratic winds [that] are raging through the world, leveling everything’ (quoted at p. 151). When he died, Orthodox, Buddhist and Lutheran clergymen officiated his funeral. Gamsa notes that historians must save the objects of their study ‘from generalization by respecting their uniqueness’ (p. 242). He splendidly manages to do this with both Roger Budberg and the city of Harbin. Department of History, Philosophy and Religious Studies N. Pianciola Nazarbayev University Kessler, Mario. A Political Biography of Arkadij Maslow: Dissident Against His Will. Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2020. xv + 258 pp. illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £54.99;£43.99 (e-book). In the beginning, there is the transformation of a highly talented young man into a radical Communist. Isaak Yefimovich Chemerinsky, born in 1891 in Ukraine, moved with his family to the German Empire. As a boy he stood out for his musical and exceptional mathematical talents. He enrolled in the famous Kreuzschule Gymnasium in Dresden and also the Conservatoire, and spent his teenage years performing as a concert pianist across Europe, Japan and Latin America. In 1912, Albert Einstein accepted him as one of his few students at Berlin University. Chemerinsky spoke a dozen languages, at least to some degree, and was able to mimic the Saxon accent of his compatriots perfectly. But he became neither a musician nor a scientist. The war and the Russian Revolution turned Chemerinsky into a politically committed person. In 1918, he joined the radical left Spartakusbund and became a founding member of the SEER, 99, 3, JULY 2021 580 German Communist Party (KPD). Here he assumed the alias Maslow (Butter Man). For the rest of his life, his self-chosen name, Arkadij Maslow, would signify a new life completely dedicated to Communism. In 1919, he met his life companion, another ardent revolutionary, the young Elfriede Friedländer. She would become known under her party alias as Ruth Fischer. The couple never married but their relationship remained vivacious and stable until Maslow’s death in 1941. Maslow is the central figure of Mario Kessler’s political biography. Despite his extraordinary beginnings, Kessler does not attempt to present Maslow as a consistently outstanding figure. It was a while before Maslow and Fischer took centre stage politically, both remaining marginal figures on the ultra-leftist wing of the KPD until 1921. Apart from his posthumously published novel, The General’s Daughter (written between 1937 and 1938), Maslow’s political writings are more briefly mentioned than extensively discussed. His political activities were essentially limited, thus allowing two other protagonists to dominate: Ruth Fischer and the KPD. The book also serves as a history of the German Communists in the early Weimar Republic, with Kessler demonstrating a deft hand for choosing impressively apt material from his sources. At the end of 1923, Fischer and Maslow became part of the leadership, promoted by Zinoviev, with Stalin’s support. Initially it was Fischer, rather than Maslow, who commanded the spotlight, particularly during the decisive years between 1924 and 1926, during which time Maslow was in prison. It was Fischer who implemented the Bolshevization of the KPD which led to a ‘dramatic curtailment of...