Description
Description
This collection consists of correspondence, interviews, articles, notes, lectures,
speeches, photographs, and audiovisual materials that document Fischer’s life as a
journalist, writer, commentator on international affairs, and a founder of the
Liberal Party (1944). The collection includes the papers of Fischer’s wife, Bertha
"Markoosha" Mark Fischer, as well as family correspondence and papers. General
correspondence focuses on the Soviet Union, India, and Spain during the Spanish Civil
War and is primarily personal in nature. Notable correspondents and interviewees
include Svetlana Allilueva, Georgii Chicherin, Jawarhalal Nehru, Eleanor Roosevelt,
President Sukarno of Indonesia, Josep Broz Tito, Sumner Welles, and Fischer℗s sons,
George and Victor. Fischer’s service in Palestine, early attempts at making his 1950
book on Gandhi into a motion picture, his ideas for undermining Stalin’s position in
Soviet public opinion, and his early life and life in Princeton are well documented.
Other important correspondence documents Fischer’s impressions of interviewees, his
involvement in the Spanish Civil War, and relationships with publishers and the
media. Writings contain Fischer’s articles for magazines and lectures, speeches,
reviews and notes. Interviews and conversations are with politicians and groups of
people Fischer met in his overseas travel. Financial and administrative records
include tax returns and appointment books. Clippings and reviews document Fischer’s
public life and book reviews. Miscellaneous items relate to Fischer’s life and
include his early research papers on the Soviet Union. Photographs and films document
Fischer’s early work and travel and the Fischer family, and sound recordings include
Fischer’s talks and interviews.
The Markoosha Fischer Papers document her life in Europe as well as her time in the
United States and include family and other correspondence, writings, and personal
materials. Notably, Markoosha℗s papers contain material relating to her own books,
which were based on her experiences in the Soviet Union and in Germany where she
worked in displaced persons camps for the International Rescue and Relief Committee
(IRRC) between 1948 and 1951. Her unpublished manuscripts include a full account of
her experiences as a secretary and translator at the 1922 Genoa Conference, with a
description of the Russian officials she met.
Collection Creator
Biography
Louis Fischer was born on February 29, 1896 in Philadelphia, son of David, a fish and
fruit peddler, and Shifrah (nee Kantzapolsky). He attended the Philadelphia School of
Pedagogy (affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania) from 1914 to 1916, then taught
public school. From 1917 to 1920 he served as a volunteer in the Jewish Legion, a
military unit recruited by the British army and spent 15 months in Palestine
(1919-1920). After this military service, he worked for a brief period for a news agency
in New York where he met the Russian-born Bertha “Markoosha” Mark (1890?-1977).
Markoosha had been in New York since late 1916, first as a pianist touring with a group
of Russian musicians; then holding various secretarial and translator jobs, sometimes
working for Soviet government officials.
In 1921 Markoosha went to Berlin, Germany, to work for a former Soviet employer. Louis
joined her a few months later. Aiming to get journalistic experience, he started
contributing to the New York Evening Post as a European
correspondent. In early 1922 he moved to Moscow. Markoosha, who had been working as an
interpreter to Soviet delegations at conferences in Genoa and the Hague, joined him in
September. In November, they married. Shortly thereafter, Markoosha returned to Berlin,
while Louis stayed in Moscow. Their son George was born in May 1923, followed by Victor
one year later. Markoosha stayed in Berlin with the boys until 1927, when she started
working for the new Jewish farm colonies in the Ukraine. It was not until 1928, after
Markoosha and the boys moved to Moscow, that the Fischers lived under one roof, though
Louis often traveled thereafter.
Louis had been working for The Nation as special European
correspondent since 1923, and contributing articles to foreign papers, often selling the
same article more than once. To supplement his earnings, Fischer traveled to the United
States every year to give lectures on the Soviet Union. While living in Moscow, he
sympathized strongly with the Soviet regime. In 1926 his first book, Oil Imperialism: The International Struggle for Petroleum, was
published; it described the international struggle for Russian petroleum concessions.
The two-volume study The Soviets in World Affairs (1930)
followed and became a standard reference in its day. Between 1931 and 1935, he published
three more books on the Soviet Union. In 1936, the year of Stalin's first purge trial,
Fischer went to Spain to report on the Spanish Civil War, where he was an active
supporter of the Republican anti-fascist regime, and briefly joined the International
Brigades.
In 1938 Fischer decided not to return to the Soviet Union. However, Markoosha and the
boys, still living in Moscow as Soviet citizens, were denied permission to leave the
country until Eleanor Roosevelt personally intervened. Reunited in the United States in
spring 1939, the family first settled in New York—although Louis chose to live by
himself in a hotel. Very soon it was obvious that their marriage was over, but until the
late 1950s Louis and Markoosha stayed in close touch, visited and wrote each other,
often met with the children together, and commented on each other's manuscripts. They
never divorced.
Louis encouraged Markoosha to write, and her autobiography, My
Lives in Russia, appeared in 1944. In it, she tried to explain the life of the
Russian people and the early appeal of Communism to her. She wrote articles and reviews,
two novels (1948 and 1956), and in 1962 Reunion in Moscow, a
Russian Revisits Her Country. In 1948-1949 she returned to Germany, working in
displaced persons camps for the International Rescue and Relief Committee (IRRC). In
1949, because of ill health, she declined to work as a translator at the Nuremberg
trials. However, she worked again for the IRRC in 1950-1951.
In 1941 Louis's Men and Politics: An Autobiography
appeared, an account of the developments in Europe between the two World Wars, and his
personal encounters with politicians, correspondents, and political activists. During
the Second World War, Fischer continued to report on European politics, but he also
became interested in the cause of Indian independence. A guest of Mohandas Gandhi in
1942, he soon authored A Week with Gandhi (1942). He
traveled to India several more times and his biography The Life of
Mahatma Gandhi (1950) was the basis of the film Gandhi (1982).
Fischer's other major field of interest remained the Soviet Union and its foreign
policy. His first new book after his family moved to the United States appeared in 1940
and dealt with the Nazi-Bolshevik Pact of 1939. In Communist and some left wing circles
he was criticized for disloyalty to the Soviet Union. In June 1945 he broke publicly
with The Nation, with which he had been associated for 22
years, accusing them of a ‘misleading' representation of current events, and employing
double standards, especially concerning the Soviet Union. He began writing for small
anti-Communist liberal magazines such as The Progressive,
as a foreign correspondent and commentator on international politics, focusing on Europe
and Asia, especially Communism in the Soviet Union and China; imperialism; and the
problems of emerging nations. He was one of two American contributors to The God That Failed (1949), an autobiographical collection of
essays written by ex-Communists and disillusioned fellow travelers. Fischer took offense
when he was labeled an ex-Communist, because he had never joined a Communist Party,
having only been sympathetic to the Soviet cause. In a note for a biographical entry, he
referred to himself as a “left-of-center liberal who favors drastic social reform to
improve living conditions” and an “active anti-imperialist.” He was also called a
“liberal internationalist,” and his critical but utilitarian-humanitarian beliefs placed
him among those liberals who have been called “believing skeptics.” His publications
about the Soviet Union include studies of Soviet foreign relations and biographies of
Stalin (1952) and Lenin (1964), the latter winning the National Book Award. (A complete
list of his books can be found in the Appendix.)
Fischer's life of free-lance writing, lecturing and extensive traveling settled down
with his appointment as a research associate at the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton in December 1958. In 1961 he became a lecturer at Princeton University's
Woodrow Wilson School, where he taught Soviet-American relations and Soviet foreign
politics, until his death on January 15, 1970.
Collection History
Acquisition
The papers were donated by George and Victor Fischer in 1970, following the wishes of their father. The papers of
Markoosha Fischer, including family papers, were added after her death in 1977.
Processing Information
This collection was processed by Helene van Rossum in
2000, with the assistance of Desmond Dorsey '99, Bev Prewitt
'02, Lindsey Tripp '04. Finding aid written
by Helene van Rossum in 2000.
Sponsorship
These papers were processed with the generous support of George
Fischer.
Bibliography
Fischer, Louis. Men and Politics, An Autobiography. New
York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1940.
Fischer, Markoosha. My Lives in Russia. New York and
London: Harper & Brothers, 1944.
Raucher, Alan. “Beyond the God that Failed: Louis Fischer, Liberal Internationalist”.
The Historian 44, No. 2 (1982): 174-189.
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