Ruth Fischer was an Austrian and German Communist and a co-founder of the Austrian Communist Party in 1918. She later became a staunch anti-Communist activist and, according to secret information declassified in 2010, was a key agent of the American intelligence service known as "The Pond".
Background
She was born Elfriede Eisler in Leipzig, Germany, the daughter of Rudolph Eisler and of Marie Edith Fischer. She was raised in Vienna, where her father was on the philosophy faculty of the University of Vienna. She was the sister of the modernist composer Hanns Eisler and of Gerhart Eisler, who was active in Communist politics in Weimar Germany during the 1920's, China in 1929-1930, the United States during the 1940's, and the German Democratic Republic after 1949.
Education
She was raised in Vienna, where her father was on the philosophy faculty of the University of Vienna.
Assuming her mother's maiden name at some time during her career, "Ruth Fischer" first joined the Austrian Social Democratic party while a student at the University of Vienna during World War I.
She was elected chairman of the Berlin branch of the German Communist party in November 1921 and attended the Fourth World Congress of the Comintern in 1922.
Career
In 1919, she moved to Berlin, which she believed to be the real center of revolutionary struggle in Europe. She was elected chairman of the Berlin branch of the German Communist party in November 1921 and attended the Fourth World Congress of the Comintern in 1922.
She was elected a Communist delegate to the German Reichstag in 1924 (serving on the Foreign Affairs Committee), and was a member of the Comintern Presidium from 1924 to 1926.
As a leader of the "Left Opposition, " in 1925-1926 Fischer dissented from the more conservative and Russian orientation of the German party, the Comintern, and the Soviet party led by Stalin. She identified with the Zinoviev-Bukharin-Trotsky "bloc" (although in 1924 she had vilified Trotsky and his policies).
She lived in Moscow from August 1925 to June 1926 (she claimed to have been detained at Stalin's orders but stayed at the Lux Hotel, which was the official residence for Comintern members). Upon her return to Berlin she denounced the 1926 treaty concluded between the Soviet Union and Germany and also the more conservative thrust of Soviet foreign policy.
In December 1926 she returned to Moscow, where her expulsion was reviewed and eventually reaffirmed. In 1927 she unsuccessfully attempted to form an international conference of Left Communists, in effect an anti-Stalinist bloc among European Communists. (During the Moscow purge trials of 1936, Fischer was tried in absentia on the charge of conspiring on Trotsky's order to assassinate Stalin in 1933. )
After the Nazi seizure of power, Fischer fled to Paris and eventually became a French citizen. There, in 1933, she met and renewed personal and political relations with Trotsky.
After the fall of France, she fled to Lisbon and in April 1941 immigrated to the United States. (She became a United States citizen in 1947. )
An emotional anti-Stalinist, she began and edited a newsletter, The Network (1944 - 1945), subsequently renamed The Russian State Party (1946 - 1947), in which she identified a number of individuals, including her brother Gerhart Eisler, as Soviet agents in the United States.
In November 1946, she published an article in the American Mercury (reprinted by the Reader's Digest) claiming that the leaders of the East German Socialist Unity party were Soviet agents. That same month, in testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), the ex-Communist Louis Budenz publicly identified Gerhart Eisler as "equivalent to a representative of the Communist International" to the United States Communist party and "as the power behind the throne. "
The Committee subpoenaed Eisler to testify on February 6, 1947, and the resultant hearings focused on his entry into the United States on a fraudulent passport. Eisler, however, refused to be sworn in by the committee unless first allowed to read a prepared statement. He was later indicted and convicted for contempt of Congress and for passport fraud.
Ruth Fischer did testify on February 6. She denounced her brother Gerhart as "a most dangerous terrorist" and further impugned the loyalty of her other brother, Hanns, who was later subpoenaed and also cited for contempt by HUAC.
In May 1949, Fischer further developed these charges before a Senate Subcommittee, emphasizing the need to revise existing immigration laws to make it more difficult for Communist "agents" to enter the United States.
In 1948, Fischer published a lengthy monograph, Stalin and German Communism. The book contains considerable biographical detail, but is limited to her German years and admittedly biased. She claimed to be working on a sequel study of Comintern activities in Europe but never published it.
She died in Paris.
Politics
Assuming her mother's maiden name at some time during her career, "Ruth Fischer" first joined the Austrian Social Democratic party while a student at the University of Vienna during World War I.
As a leader of the "Left Opposition, " in 1925-1926 Fischer dissented from the more conservative and Russian orientation of the German party, the Comintern, and the Soviet party led by Stalin.
Although expelled from the German Communist party in July 1926, Fischer retained her Reichstag seat and with four other expellies formed the Independent German Communist party.
Membership
She was a member of the Austrian Communist Party.
She was also a member of the Reichstag from 1924 to 1928 under her then legal name Elfriede Golke.
She was a member of the Prussian House of Representatives between 1924 and 1928 too.