Adler, Valentine (1898–1942)

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Adler, Valentine (1898–1942)

Austrian anti-Nazi and editor. Name variations: Vali, Valentine Sas-Adler. Born in Vienna, Austria, on May 5, 1898; died in a labor camp on July 6, 1942; daughter of Alfred Adler (1870–1937, the psychologist who would later gain fame for breaking with the teachings of his mentor Sigmund Freud) and Raissa Timofejewna ; sisterof Alexandra Adler (a research fellow in neurology at Harvard); married Gyula Sas ("Giulio Aquila").

Radicalized by the events of World War I, joined the Austrian Communist Party (1919); soon after arriving in Berlin, transferred to the German Communist Party (1921); worked in Berlin until 1933 as an editor and translator; moved to Moscow (1933) to be with her husband; arrested during the Great Purge (January 1937); found guilty of "Trotskyite activities" and sentenced to ten years imprisonment; died in a labor camp (1942) and posthumously rehabilitated by a decree of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR (1956).

A Marxist idealist, Vali Adler became one of the many refugees from Nazi terror who succumbed to the bloody purges unleashed by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. A "true believer" in a socialist society, Adler came to her revolutionary ideals not out of economic need but because she was convinced that a Utopian world was achievable in the 20th century. She was born in Vienna on May 5, 1898, the daughter of the distinguished psychologist Alfred Adler. A member of the Austrian Communist Party from 1919 through 1921 and of the German Communist Party starting in 1921, she was convinced that a brave new world was in the offing, and that the Soviet Union would lead the way to a new level of human decency and justice. The rise of Nazism in Germany only strengthened this belief, and she doubtless arrived in the Soviet Union in 1933 with high hopes. Her husband Gyula Sas ("Giulio Aquila") had preceded her to Moscow, and for several years they worked together believing that, led by Stalin and the Communist Party, the USSR would be able to create a stable and prosperous state sufficiently strong to lead the world in meeting the growing menace of fascism.

Adler's beliefs proved to be illusory, as an ever-growing reign of terror destroyed the lives of millions of people in the Soviet Union, including many of the Communists and Socialists who had sought refuge there from Hitler since 1933. The constantly shifting party line and the arbitrary nature of Communist power meant that one could never be certain of the "correct" ideological stance. Working at the publishing house of foreign workers in the USSR, Adler voiced her growing concerns about the risks of even a slight ideological misstep to fellow exile and writer, Susanne Leonhard : "Keep your hands off; it is like dancing on eggs."

Arrested on January 22, 1937, she was first interrogated at Moscow's infamous Lubianka prison, then held at the Butyrki prison until sentence was passed on September 19 of that year. The Military Tribunal of the USSR Supreme Court found her guilty of illegal Trotskyite activities and having established contacts with foreign Trotskyite groups. One of the charges against her was that her parents had met with Leon Trotsky and that it was through them that she had established her Trotskyite connections. Sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, she did not survive the privations of Soviet labor camps, dying in one on July 6, 1942. It was not until 1952, after Albert Einstein personally petitioned Soviet authorities for information on Adler's case, that the date of her death was released. On August 11, 1956, during the first phase of Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization campaign, the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court declared Valentine Adler to be posthumously rehabilitated.