Rothstein, Fedor Aronovich

Rothstein, Fedor Aronovich 

Born Feb. 14 (26), 1871, in Kaunas; died Aug. 30, 1953, in Moscow. Soviet historian, public figure, and diplomat. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939). Member of the Communist Party from 1901.

Rothstein was in emigration in Great Britain between 1890 and 1920, where he took an active part in the British labor movement. From 1895 to 1911 he was a member of the Social Democratic Federation (after 1907, the Social Democratic Party) and a member of its executive committee from 1901 to 1906. From the late 1890’s to the early 1900’s he was an active contributor to the Marxist press of Great Britain, Russia, Germany, and the USA. Rothstein headed the left wing of the British Socialist Party (BSP) after the party’s founding in 1911. During World War I, he was an internationalist. One of the founders of and contributors to Call (1916–20), the organ of the BSP, he also took part in the forming of the Communist Party of Great Britain (1920).

Upon returning from emigration, Rothstein was a member of the RSFSR delegation in the peace negotiations with Great Britain (1920). He was representative plenipotentiary of the RSFSR in Iran in the period 1921–22 and a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs from 1923 to 1930. He also served as managing editor of the journal Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn’ (International Life). From 1922 to 1926 he was simultaneously an active member of the Socialist (after 1924, Communist) Academy and a member of the presidium of the Russian Association of Social Science Research Institutes (RANION). In the period 1924–25 he was director of the Institute of World Economics and World Politics, and from 1927 through 1945 he was a member of the chief editorial board of the first edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.

Rothstein was the author of several Marxist research works on the history of Great Britain (in particular, the British labor movement), Germany, colonial policy, and international relations. He was awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and various medals.

WORKS

Zakhvat i zakabalenie Egipta, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1959.
Ocherki po istorii rabochego dvizheniia ν Anglii, 2nd ed. Moscow-Leningrad, 1925.
Dve prusskie voiny. Moscow-Leningrad, 1945. (Second edition under the title Iz istorii prussko-germanskoi imperii. Moscow-Leningrad, 1948.)
Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia ν kontse 19 v. Moscow-Leningrad, 1960.
The Decline of British Industry: Its Cause and Remedy. London, 1903.

REFERENCE

Imperializm i bor’ba rabochego klassa: Sb. st. pamiati akad. F. A. Rothsteina. Moscow, 1960. (Contains a bibliography of Rothstein’s works.)