‘Larissa Reissner’ by Lev Sossnovsky from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 6 No. 13. February 18, 1926.

On February 9th 1926, Comrade Larissa Reissner died of typhoid in Moscow after much suffering. Born in Leningrad on May 1st 1895 as daughter of Professor Michael Reissner, the famous communist lawyer, she occupied herself with literature from her youth, she especially carried on a campaign against the imperialist war and social patriotism, took an active part as a Communist in the civil war on the East and South fronts and later spent a long time in foreign countries, among them Germany. Her best known works are “The Front, 1918—1919” and “Hamburg on the Barricades”, which have been translated into German. Editor.

In Larissa Reissner the Soviet Union has lost one of its first rate journalists, a vigorous character, in the prime life and full of the joy of life.

She is perhaps the only one among our journalists who has the right to be called not only a fighter but an artist. There are altogether but few artists among us journalists. But in the press of Soviet Union we cannot boast of such a combination of fine artistic, literary gifts with the true fighting spirit of the revolutionary communist.

Larissa Reissner was attracted by storms. Hardly had the tempest broken over Hamburg when she was there to lead us with her pen into the proletarian fight for communism. Her pen gave the distant, misty scene impressive and sharp outlines and a familiar form. She showed that the dock worker of Hamburg bears a striking resemblance to the turner of Lugansk. He hates the exploiter no less thoroughly. He is equally brave in fighting his strongest opponent, he has the same contempt for danger and he also can yield if necessary. In order to gain force for a new assault. The Hamburg proletarian heroes of the barricades were brought nearer to us, seemed more closely related to us, when Larissa Reissner wrote about them.

Do we know anything of Krupp and other rulers of bourgeois Germany of our times except general facts and a few figures? We ought however to know, and Larissa Reissner a sees that we do so. Hardly had she recovered from her impressions of Hamburg than she penetrates into the offices of the Krupp directors, collects impressions there and tells us how the magnates of world capital live and rule.

I shall never forget one of her best feuilletons of recent times. It appeared under the title “Milk”. Never has anyone introduced us in such a telling way to the daily life and the household of the German worker. Early in the morning, the milkman climbs the stairs of a large tenement house: Larissa Reissner invites us to follow him into each flat. We see at what cost the working class family procures the scanty jug of milk. We see the border-line of distress. We make the acquaintance of working class families from whose tables milk has entirely disappeared. In doing so we penetrate into the very souls and see the attitudes of mind of working Germany subjected to the Dawes plan. We see before us the drama of two generations, the old and the young. In other words, the story of the passing milkman in the house inhabited by workers suffices, under the sharp, gifted pen of the artist and journalist to show us the genuine, suffering and fighting Germany of the workers not only in dry figures and diagrams but in living, unforgettable form.

Wherever Larissa Reissner might be, under fire in 1918 in the Red flotilla on the Volga, when fate tossed her to Afghanistan, where she succeeded in seeing European imperialism face to face at its work in the colonies, when she was in the coal fields of the Ural, in the huts of the home-workers in Central Russia, in the working-class suburb of Hamburg when the smoke of powder had not yet dispersed — she was always a keen observer in whom were combined in an incomparable original way, the fighter, the artist and the chronicler.

Full of the joy of life, mobile, undaunted, she might have turned up unexpectedly any day in a new spot far or near.

And now she has left us unexpectedly. One of the best has been taken from us.

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecorr” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecorr’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly. The ECCI also published the magazine ‘Communist International’ edited by Zinoviev and Karl Radek from 1919 until 1926 monthly in German, French, Russian, and English. Unlike, Inprecorr, CI contained long-form articles by the leading figures of the International as well as proceedings, statements, and notices of the Comintern. No complete run of Communist International is available in English. Both were largely published outside of Soviet territory, with Communist International printed in London, to facilitate distribution and both were major contributors to the Communist press in the U.S. Communist International and Inprecorr are an invaluable English-language source on the history of the Communist International and its sections.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1926/v06n13-feb-18-1926-Inprecor.pdf