SCHATZ-ANIN, MAX

SCHATZ-ANIN, MAX (1885–1975), left-wing Socialist ideologist and author. Born in Friedrichstadt (Jaunjelgava), Latvia, Schatz-Anin studied law at St. Petersburg and joined the *Zionist Socialist Workers' Party (territorialists). He was later arrested and deported abroad, where he contributed to the party press in Russia and Central Europe. Schatz-Anin graduated from Berne university after writing his doctoral thesis "Zur Nationalitaetenfrage" (1910). On the eve of the congress of the Socialist International in Copenhagen (1910), he published an essay on "The Jewish Proletariat in the Socialist International," in which he demanded that nationalities be represented at the International. Returning to Russia in 1912, he settled in Riga as a lawyer. After the February Revolution in 1917, Schatz-Anin represented his party in the Petrograd Soviet and was a co-founder of the *United Jewish Socialist Workers' Party, representing it in the executive committee of the Ukrainian Rada. Returning to Riga in 1919, he joined the illegal Communist party and founded the left-wing Yiddishist Kultur-Lige. Although he went blind (1928), he continued to deliver lectures and write and was appointed university professor when Latvia became a Soviet Republic.

His philosophical essays and historical works in Yiddish and Russian include Temporalism (1919), Sotsiale Opozitsye in Yidisher Geshikhte ("Social Opposition in Jewish History," 1927), and Di Gezelshaftlikhe Bavegungen bay Yidn tsvishn der Ershter un Tsveyter Velt-Milkhome (1941).

bibliography:

Rejzen, Leksikon, 1 (1926), 117–9; Sovetish Heymland (June 1965), 158.

[Joseph Gar]