The pianist-turned-revolutionary who drove the KPD's ultra-left turn, and became the anti-Stalinist left's perpetual dissident
“Comrade Maslow, who is playing at Leftism and wishes to exercise himself 'hunting Centrists,' has more zeal than sense.” — Lenin, singling him out by name in his 'Letter to the German Communists' (14 August 1921).
Born into a Ukrainian Jewish merchant family, he abandoned a concert-pianist career to study physics under Einstein and Planck, then the First World War radicalized him into the KPD's founding. As Ruth Fischer's lifelong partner he took the party chairmanship in 1924 and drove 'Bolshevisation', a break with the united front and a one-sided crusade against Social Democracy, until Stalin and Thälmann displaced and expelled him in 1926, leaving him a lifelong anti-Stalinist dissident.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1919Founding member of the KPD; agitates among Russian POWs for the Spartacus League
- 1920–1923KPD Central Committee; leads Berlin left wing with Fischer; foreign-affairs editor, Die Rote Fahne
- 1924–1925KPD chairman; drives 'Bolshevisation' and the party's ultra-left turn
- 1924–1926Arrested by German authorities; sentenced to 4 years, released July 1926 due to failing health
- 1926Expelled from the KPD for opposing Stalin and Thälmann; backs the United Opposition
- 1928Co-founds the Leninbund with Urbahns and Fischer; soon resigns
- 1934–1937Works closely with Trotsky; active in the Fourth International movement's International Secretariat
- 1937–1941Exile in Paris and Cuba; breaks with Trotsky, founds Marxist-Leninist International Group
Related historical events
- 1918.10–1919.08The German Revolution of 1918–1919KPD founding memberIn 1919 he helped found the KPD and agitated among Russian prisoners of war for the Spartacus League.
- 1923–1927The Succession Struggle and the Left OppositionKPD leader ousted at Stalin's insistenceRemoved from the KPD leadership at Stalin's insistence in autumn 1925, he and Ruth Fischer were expelled in August 1926 for backing the United Opposition.
Cuban exile and death in Havana (1941)
After the Nazi occupation of France, Maslow and Ruth Fischer went to Cuba. Unlike Fischer, Maslow could not obtain an entry visa to the United States and had to remain on the island. According to the Russian-language account, he arrived in Havana on 30 May 1941 and again organized a news service there; on 21 November 1941 Fischer, about to tell him from New York that his US visa had at last been approved, learned by telephone that he had died.
The English-language account records that he was found dead on a street in Havana on 20 November 1941, so the sources differ over the exact date. An official investigation concluded that he had suffered a heart attack, but Fischer and Franz Pfemfert held that he had been murdered by the NKVD; in 1952 Guenther Reinhardt agreed and described the death in terms implicating the NKVD. Because the cause is unconfirmed, this record presents the official finding and the murder allegation together rather than classifying the death as an execution.