The Ukrainian Marxist Roman Rosdolsky was one of the pioneering scholars of Marxology. He was engaged as a Marxist activist and social scientist in spaces ranging from European cities like Lviv, Krakow, Prague, and Vienna during the interwar period all the way to New York and Detroit after the war.
Rosdolsky’s life is intricately interconnected with his scholarly work. Born in 1898, he became an active socialist before World War I. During the October Revolution, he supported the Bolsheviks and became a leading figure of the newly established Communist Party of Western Ukraine.
With his lifelong partner and comrade, Emily, he shared the experience of exile and political isolation while retaining a firm belief in the possibility of a better world. Rosdolsky narrowly escaped the attention of the Soviet secret police and survived imprisonment in three Nazi concentration camps.
After moving to the US, he remained a committed Marxist in a bitterly hostile environment and produced important studies that helped transform our understanding of Karl Marx’s theory. Rosdolsky left behind a remarkable body of work, much of which has yet to appear in English translation more than half a century after his death in 1967.
Rosdolsky’s interest in Ukrainian history and sociology dated back to a time when Ukraine lacked statehood and an official language. Hailing from a liberal bourgeois background deeply connected to the Ukrainian independence movement, the Rosdolsky family had close associations with figures like Ivan Franko, a prominent poet in the pre-Marxian…
Auteur: Pablo Hörtner
