Comrade and Lover. This item is unavailable.Comrade and Lover

This is a collection of Rosa Luxemburg's letters to her lover and comrade, Leo Jogiches which reveal another side to her character. This translation captures her passionate and fearless nature, a woman who refused to let politics obliterate her private life, refused to compromise, refused to accept that she could be faced with a choice between either her lover or her political career. The letters show Luxemburg at her most intimate and personal, but also shed light on the dramatic developments on the revolutionary left of the era. The letters are annotated where necessary and each section is preceded by a short note giving the context in which the letters were exchanged. An introductory essay provides the background to the stormy relationship and to the history of the period.

"The career of Rosa Luxemburg spanned the final decade of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th, during which time she played a guiding role in the development of the European socialist movement, both in her native Poland, and more importantly in imperial Germany. As a student, then as a journalist, speaker, and organizer, finally as an economist and theoretician...she rose to dizzying heights, all the more remarkable for her being a woman, a Jew, and (in Germany) a foreigner... In January 1919, she was brutally murdered in Berlin by right-wing thugs; the recipient of these letters, Leo Jogiches, met death at the same hands not long afterward."The correspondence in this fascinating little book, superbly translated and very helpfully edited by Elzbieta Ettinger, covers only the 1893 to 1914; it is sufficient, however, to plot the course of a deep personal drama." Mark Falcoff , Commentary "This collection of 103 letters to her 'comrade and lover,' the Lithuanian Marxist Leo Jogiches...carefully translated and annotated...deal as strongly with urgent political and theoretical matters as with their difficult, often strained relationship... The collection is preceded by an incisive and informative essay by the translator, and followed by a short historical note and an index that reads like a directory of the European Left of the era." Ludo Abicht , Antioch Review