Charles Malamuth

Charles Malamuth (November 9, 1899 – July 14, 1965) was an American journalist, writer, and translator known as an "expert in Slavic languages," "Russian expert," and "anticommunist. His best known over the years as translator is Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence by Leon Trotsky (1941) for which Soviet communists attacked him as a Trotskyite in the 1940s and Trotskyites attacked him as an anticommunist in the 2010s.[1][2][3][4]

Background

Charles Leo Malamuth (or Goodman) was born on November 9, 1899, in Lodz, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire). His father was Leo Goodman and mother Cipa (also Celia) Broder.[4]

Career

Linguist
Malamuth was assistant to Eugene Lyons (here, 1940) in Moscow

In the 1920s, Malamuth was a professor in the Slavonic Department at the University of California, Berkeley.[5]

Malamuth served as assistant to Eugene Lyons during the latter's stay there as Moscow bureau chief for United Press. On November 22, 1930, he accompanied Lyons to their historic interview with Joseph Stalin.[5][6][7]

Humanitarian
Malamuth worked for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (1914 telegram that prompted the Joint Distribution Committee's formation)

In 1947, he was director of European Public Relations in Paris for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.[1][4][8]

Around 1950, he left Paris to join Radio Free Europe in Frankfurt, Voice of America, and Radio Liberty.[1][6]

In 1953, the Communist Party of France attacked him in its newspaper fr:Ce Soir by calling him "un fidéle de Trotsky" ("a Trotsky loyalist") and citing the support from Lyons and him for Victor Kravchenko during the latter's trial in France for his book I Chose Freedom (1949), which exposed the GULAG system in the USSR. Ce Soir "accused" Malamuth of translating the first 500 pages of Kravchenko's famous book. Further, the newspaper accused Malamuth of close association with the "Trotskyite Max Eastman" and of Isaac Don Levine. Further, his visitors in Paris included ex-CP members Jay Lovestone and Benjamin Gitlow. Further, he was known to have visited the US Embassy in Paris weekly (i.e., implying that he was an American spy). Lastly, he had worked for the American Joint Distribution Committee ("Jewish welfare agency"), which the CP USSR had accused of "engineering" the "Doctors Plot."[6]

Life
Malamuth married Joan London, seen here on the right with her Jack London and sister (circa 1905)

On December 20, 1925, in Sacramento, California, Malamuth married Joan London, daughter of American novelist and socialist Jack London. It was her second marriage. They divorced in 1930, moved to Moscow remarried, separated in 1934, and divorced finally in 1935.[3][7] By 1950, he had married again to Renee Malamuth.[4]

He corresponded with Max Eastman, Eugene Lyons, Adolphe Menjou, and Lev Trotsky as well as Ilya Ehrenburg, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Aleksei Tolstoi, and Evgeny Zamyatin.[1] Other friends and acquaintances included Isaac Don Levine.[6]

He died in Los Angeles on July 14, 1965.

Legacy: Trotsky's Stalin (2016)
Malamuth's translation of Leon Trotsky's book on Joseph Stalin received heavy criticism from Trotskyist Alan Woods in the 2010s

While Stalinist communist parties called Malamuth a Trotskyist, Trotskyists considered him an Anti-Communist–and still do to this day.

Case in point – In 2016, Wellred Books published a new translation of Trotsky's biography Stalin by Alan Woods. For this new translation, Woods consulted not only Harvard University library archives (which holds Trotsky's papers for the book) but also French and Russian translations. It contains 100,000 words more than the 1940 translation. Also, the new translated presents "Malamuth's political distortions removed."[9]

Robert Sewell of In Defense of Marxism has criticized Malamuth strongly. He has written, "Whatever Malamuth's talents, this was a political task for which he was completely unsuited." Trotsky was unhappy with Malamuth because he had shown his unfinished translations to others (specifically Max Shachtman and James Burnham). For this indiscretion, Trotsky was soon blaming him further: "He does not know Russian; he does not know English; and he is tremendously pretentious."[10]

In video, he explained about Malamuth:

Clearly, he wasn't in the political state in order the carry out his particular task. He wasn't qualified enough to carry out this particular task. Therefore, he introduced into this later edited version a lot of material that he had decided to supplement to Trotsky's work. These supplements, these additions clearly went against the general thrust of Trotsky's political thought... Natalia Trotsky... wanted to take out the material that had been put in by Malamuth, that should be replaced by Trotsky's own writing... Malamuth had given the excuse that a lot of it was repetition... The main thing also he said that the transcripts had been damaged in the assassination attack in 1940, and some of the material was in disrepair... There wasn't any damage whatsoever... and files deliberately left out of the book... A vast number of words had been left out... an extra 100,000 words. Malamuth's text of about 10,000 were taken out.[11]

Ultimately, Sewell concedes a simpler explanation: "Following Trotsky's death, the American publishers (Harper and Brothers), who owned the rights to the book, placed Malamuth in charge, not only of the translation, but of 'editing' the final book. For them, this was simply a commercial calculation to salvage the book following the author's death." In other words, "Trotsky's views did not enter into their calculations."[10]

Given Malamuth's career, it seems clear that Sewell's assessment – that translation of Trotksy's Stalin was "a political task for which he was completely unsuited" – signal to fellow Trotskyists to Malamuth's career as anti-communist.

Translations
Malamuth translated Russian writers including Yevgeny Petrov (Евгений Петров) (1903–1942)
  • Squaring the Circle by Valentine Katayev (1928, 1935)[12][13][14]
  • The Volga Falls to the Caspian Sea by Boris Pilnyak (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1931)[12]
  • The Little Golden Calf by Evgeny Petrov (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1932)[12]
  • Chocolate, a novel by Alexander Tarasov-Rodionov;translated from the Russian by Charles Malamuth, (New York: Doubleday, Doran & company, inc., 1932)
  • Forward, O Time! by Valentine Katayev (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1933)[15]
  • Forward, O Time! by Valentine Katayev (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1934)[12]
  • Fear by Alexander Afinogenov (1934)[16]
  • Inga by Anatole Glebov (1934)[16]
  • Little Golden America by Evgeny Petrov (1936)[17]
  • Lonely White Sail, or Peace is Where the Tempests Blow by Valentine Katayev (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1936)[12]
  • Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence by Leon Trotsky (1941)[18][19]
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See also

References
  1. "Charles Malamuth Papers, ca. 1910-1965". Columbia University. Retrieved 3 December 2016.
  2. Reef, Catherine (2006). E.E. Cummings. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 80. ISBN 0618568492. Retrieved 2 December 2016.
  3. Stasz, Clarice (2006). "Jack London: Joan London". Sonoma State University. Retrieved 2 December 2016.
  4. "Transmigration Bureau document for Charles Malamuth". American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. 1950. Retrieved 4 December 2017.
  5. Lyons, Eugene (1938). Assignment in Utopia. 1937. ISBN 9781412817608. Retrieved 3 December 2016.
  6. "La preuve qu'il ne s'agit pas de philanthoropie". Ce Soir newspaper. 28 January 1953. Retrieved 3 December 2016.
  7. "Joan London Papers: Finding Aid". Online Archive of California: Hunting Library. 2000. Retrieved 3 December 2016.
  8. "Roman Vishniac". International Center of Photography. 8 July 1947. Retrieved 2 December 2016.
  9. "Stalin (Clothbound Hardback)". WellRed Books. 2016. Retrieved 2 December 2016.
  10. Sewell, Rob (13 May 2016). "The story of Trotsky's unfinished biography of Stalin". In Defense of Marxism. Retrieved 2 December 2016.
  11. "Rob Sewell on the making of Trotsky's "Stalin". In Defense of Marxism. 13 May 2016. Retrieved 2 December 2016.
  12. Reference Guide to Russian Literature. Routledge. 2013. pp. 393, 420, 620. ISBN 9781134260775. Retrieved 2 December 2016.
  13. "Charles Malamuth". Playbill. Retrieved 2 December 2016.
  14. "Malamuth, Charles". IBDB.com. Retrieved 2 December 2016.
  15. Time, Forward!. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1933. ISBN 9780810112476. Retrieved 2 December 2016.
  16. Catalog of Copyright Entries. Library of Congress. 1962. p. 41. Retrieved 2 December 2016.
  17. "Ilya Il'f and Evgenii Petrov, The Twelve Chairs". Swarthmore University. 2008. Retrieved 3 December 2016.
  18. "Trotsky, Leon, 1879-1940. Leon Trotsky's Stalin: material concerning English translation,1940: Guide". Harvard University. 2006. Archived from the original on 3 December 2016. Retrieved 2 December 2016.
  19. Stalin : an appraisal of the man and his influence. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1941. LCCN 42000329.
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