Boris Souvarine

Boris Souvarine
Born
Борис Константинович Лифшиц
Boris Konstantinovich Lifschitz

1895
Kyiv, Ukraine
Died1 November 1984 (aged 89)
Paris, France
NationalityRussian (before 1906), French (since 1906)
Occupation(s)Activist and journalist
Political partyFrench Communist Party, Democratic Communist Circle
PartnerColette Peignot

Boris Souvarine (1 November 1895 – 1 November 1984), also known as Varine, was a French Marxist, communist activist, essayist and journalist.

A founding member of the French Communist Party, Souvarine is noted for being the only non-Bolshevik communist to have been a member of all three leading bodies of the Comintern for three years in succession.[1] He famously authored the first biography of Joseph Stalin, published in 1935 as Staline, Aperçu Historique du Bolchévisme (Stalin, Historic Overview of Bolshevism) and kept close correspondence with Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky until their deaths.[2]

His anticonformism and early criticism of Stalin made him break away from the party in 1924. In the decades that followed, Souvarine continued publishing as a leading Sovietologist and anti-Stalinist. He was also the founder of the Institute of Social History and an author, historian, publisher and journalist.[1]

  1. ^ a b [1] Archived 2018-07-03 at the Wayback Machine 'Historical Note', Preface to Boris Souvarine Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Harvard University
  2. ^ Boris Souvarine, Prologue to La Critique Sociale, Reprinted 1984, March 1984, p. 15