Lubitz' TrotskyanaNet - Trotskyists' Name Authority File (original) (raw)

Name Authority Files

– Survey –

Name Authority File I
(used names to authority names)

A - B |C - E |F - G |H - K |L - M |N - R |S - T |U - Z

Name Authority File II
(authority names to used names)

A - Z

Introduction & How to use the name files

About pseudonyms (1)

All the time people have used pseudonyms for various personal, political, work-related and other reasons. Renowned men of politics, letters and arts who used pseudonyms were, for example, Plato, Dante, Voltaire, Picasso, Kemal Atatürk, Brandt, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin.

In many countries, people shaping the Trotskyist movement as activists and/or writers and editors extensively have used pseudonyms, particularly during the first three decades of the movement's existence. The noticeable use of pseudonyms encountered in publications and written documents of all kind (pamphlets, articles, manuscripts, letters, minutes, proceedings, etc.) present formidable obstacles to a fuller understanding and evaluation of events and persons involved in those events, or — as a historian of the American workers' movement said — reading of such documents often has been an exercise in a kind of political cryptography.

However, it is a truism that the extensive usage of pseudonyms by Trotskyists didn't occur just for fun. Some of the main reasons why Trotskyists excessively used pseudonyms should be mentioned here: in many countries — even those with long democratic traditions (e.g. Switzerland, France, the United States) — communists, leftists, Trotskyists and other 'enemies of the system' became targets of political repression and roundups, and often they were subjected to intensive surveillance(2), blacklisting, etc. — pressures under which people used pseudonyms as defensive, self- and group-protective measures. Furthermore they sometimes had to work illegally or semi-illegally, e.g. during the years of the Second World War when a considerable number of Trotskyists were jailed or interned in France, Britain, Switzerland, the United States and other non-fascist and non-Stalinist countries, or they had to hide their international affiliations.

Trotskyists not only fell victim to Stalinist assaults and persecution as well as to fascist torture and liquidation, but also to factionalism, i.e. that they often had to face physical and otherwise attacks from within the left; they were monitored, blacklisted or slandered by communist or socialist parties (and even by some sects calling themselves Trotskyist) as well as by crime-organized unions or they got in conflict with government loyalty oaths, etc. In face of all those troubles, repressive measures, surveillance and attacks many Trotskyists prefered to hide their identity by using pen names — some using up to 20 or 30 different alias names during the years of their activity in the Trotskyist (or, broader left) movement or when being active as Trotskyists while at the same time working on an 'entryist' basis within reformist or Stalinist parties.

During the past thirty years, however, a considerable amount of material by and about more or less prominent Trotskyists (or, ex-Trotskyists) found its way into publicly accessible archives and a good deal of those materials have been researched by scholars, biographers, etc. Thus many of the identities behind the pseudonyms have already been established as biographical facts.

Our sources

We have been gathering those facts over the years using a great variety of sources, including written biographical and autobiographical informations (published biographies, autobiographies and answers to questionnnaires), public archives and libraries (or their finding aids and catalogues, respectively), serious biographical reference works, such as the famous multi-volume Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier fran�ais, probably better known as Le Maitron, the works and working tools of renowned Trotsky scholars as for example Louis Sinclair or Pierre Broué, the critical apparatuses of the various Trotsky works editions as well as a number of scholarly secondary works including published and unpublished dissertations and other university works, such as for example J.-P. Salles' excellent La Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (1968-1981) (2004). Some of the Trotskyist serials have also been used as rich sources of biographical information, and it should be mentioned that obituaries published in such serials sometimes are the only valuable sources of information when you are searching for biographical details about lesser-known deceased Trotskyists.

Contents and scope of our name authority file

Nevertheless the Names Authority Files provided here are hardly more than indices to our biographical databases; in many cases we have voluntarily put names from this listing in order not to violate individual rights of still living persons; for similar reasons, we have listed some living persons under their pseudonym(s) although their identity is known to us. We like to emphasize that we are fully aware that this name authority list is still an incomplete one and not at all 'exhaustive' or 'final', with regard to the persons listed as well as with regard to the names and pseudonyms referenced. With these reservations in mind, we can state that at the time being these Name Authority Files containing several thousand entries or references are the most comprehensive in this field, and that we seriously have tried to avoid some of the mistakes and shortcomings which usually can be found when consulting similar tools.

Please note, that the term 'Trotskyist' has been used here in a very broad sense; thus our listing not only comprises the names of 'lifelong' Trotskyists like Mandel, Pablo, Cannon, but also the names of persons which only for a short span of time were active in the Trotskyist movement and then either dropped from politics totally or became adherents of other political currents; after having left the Trotskyist movement, some of the persons listed here became veritable rightwingers, spokesmen of conservatism, or nationalism, some others made careers as social-democratic or liberal politicians, or they became theoreticians condemning Trotskyism and all other variants of leftism. The listing also comprises a certain number of persons which can be considered as peripheral figures of the Trotskyist movement only, or as temporarily close sympathizers at best; and last not least there are listed a few persons who later became notorious as Stalinist spies, infiltrators and agents provocateurs within the Trotskyist movement, such as for example the brothers Sobolevicius, Mark Zborowski, Otto Freitag.

What is meant by "authority file"?(3)

Authority file and authority control are terms used in library and information science to describe the practice of ensuring that any term used as a catalogue entry is correlated with all other forms of that term, e.g. pseudonyms, maiden names, variant spellings, various transliterations related to a certain author. Most commonly applied to authorship details, hence the name, authority files also serve to ensure that people with the same (or, quite the same) name can be better distinguished, usually by adding their life span or year of birth or nationality. Thus, authority files chiefly function as a useful tool when books or other written documents have to be catalogued or when bibliographies, finding aids and similar repertories have to be compilated. In this connection, librarians and archivists are also commonly using related terms such as authority heading and reference. The best known publicly available name headings authority file is that run by the Library of Congress (LoC), Washington, DC, containing some 4 million personal name authority records.

There are two name file listings: Name Authority File I is arranged by 'Used names' while Name Authority File II is arranged by 'Authority names' — please find more details in the next paragraph How to use the Name Files.

How to use the Name Files | German text

• We provide two name listings, each consisting of two columns:
  in Name Authority File I alphabetical arrangement is by 'Used names', listed in the left column; 'used names' means all forms of a person's name known to us: assumed names such as pseudonyms, pen names, nicknames, as well as acronyms, maiden names, variants of spelling, names by birth and of course real names and names changed legally (e.g. by naturalization). In the right column you can find the respective 'authority name', i.e. the form of a person's name under which he or she became commonly known, under which most of his or her writings have been published or under which his or her name has been entered into the catalogues, databases or authority lists of the world leading libraries. In some cases, however, the decision which form of name should be regarded as 'authority name' may be controversial. Years of birth and death are provided if known.
  In Name Authority File II alphabetical arrangement is by 'authority names', listed in the left column; in the right column you can find the respective pseudonyms, other assumed names, variants, etc.
• Question marks ('?' or '[?]') behind data indicate missing or uncertain information.
• Alphabetical arrangement is word by word; please note that dots (.), dashs (—) and apostrophes (') have been ignored when arranging names whereas colons (,) have been considered; initialisms and acronyms have been filed as they appeared in the respective sources, thus for example 'A.B.' has been entered as 'A.B.' instead of 'B., A.' Please note, too, that 'ä', 'ö' and 'ü' are alphabetically arranged as 'ae', 'oe' and 'ue', respectively. Arrangement principles are illustrated here by a simulated example:
  M.
  M.Ar.
  Marek, E.
  M-e.
  Meyer, A.
  M.F.
  Möhrchen
  Mogel
• Some of the listed persons either became commonly known by their pseudnonyms exclusively, or have published books and articles chiefly using the respective pseudonyms. With other words: our authority files don't give evidence of how often a person used which pseudonym or what name became best known.
• Included are also pseudonyms used by the respective persons outside the Trotskyist movement.
• Finally there are 4 examples for illustration [the examples refer to _Name Authority File I_]:
  • George Breitman (=real name)
    The left column shows:
    Breitman, George — his real name and
    Petrone, John F.; Hofla, Chester and Parker, Albert — his pen names
    The right column for all entries lists his real name ('authority name') amended with date of birth and death: Breitman, George (1916-1986)
  • Michel Pablo (=pseudonym)
    Again, the left column lists all names known to us, i.e. pseudonyms and his real name 'Mikhalis Raptis'. As he became known by his pen name Michel Pablo we decided this name as 'authority name' (right column) amending his real name (= Raptis, Mikhalis) in square brackets and date of birth and death.
  • Tim Wohlforth (=authority name)
    The left column lists his name by adoption (Tim Wohlforth, short for Timothy Andrew Wohlforth), his various pseudonyms and additionally his name by birth (James Sutton)
  • With regard to Myra Tanner Weiss, the left column shows her maiden name 'Tanner, Myra' but as 'authority name' we chose 'Weiss, Myra Tanner', the name she adopted by marriage, because with this name she became best known.

Hinweise zur Benutzung des Name Directory

• Wir bieten hier zwei Namenslisten an, jede aus 2 Spalten bestehend. Im Name Authority File I sind die Einträge alphabetisch nach den 'Used names' ('vorkommende Namensformen') in der linken Spalte sortiert; der Begriff 'Used names' wird von uns als Sammelbezeichnung für diverse angenommene Namen wie etwa Pseudonyme, Künstlernamen, Kosenamen, sowie für Mädchennamen, Akronyme, Initialen, Schreibvarianten, Geburtsnamen und nicht zuletzt natürlich für wirkliche Namen sowie für offiziell (z.B. anlässlich einer Einbürgerung) geänderte Namen verwendet. In der rechten Spalte finden sich die entsprechenden 'Authority names', d.h. diejenigen Namensformen, unter der die betreffenden Personen am bekanntesten sind und/oder vorzugsweise publiziert haben und/oder in Bibliothekskatalogen, Archivlisten, Bibliographien, Datenbanken usw. vorzugsweise angesetzt sind. Die Entscheidung, welche Namensform von uns letztlich als 'Authority name' (dieser Begriff aus dem anglo-amerikanischen Bibliotheks- und Dokumentationswesen ist im Deutschen nicht exakt wiederzugeben und wird zumeist als 'Ansetzungsform' übersetzt werden) bestimmt wird, mag in einzelnen Fällen sicherlich strittig sein. Lebensdaten werden, soweit bekannt, in Klammern angegeben.
  Im Name Authority File II figurieren in der linken Spalte, alphabetisch geordnet, die 'Authority names', während Sie in der rechten Spalte die entsprechenden Pseudnonyme, Akronyme, Varianten usw. finden können.
• Ein '?' oder '[?]' bedeutet, dass eine Angabe bisher nicht mit letzter Sicherheit verifiziert werden konnte bzw. genauere Angaben uns bislang fehlen.
• Die Sortierung der Einträge erfolgt alphabetisch Wort für Wort, wobei ein Komma mit nachfolgendem Leerzeichen als Trenner gilt, Punkte, Striche und Apostrophe hingegen nicht. Initialen und Akronyme werden vorlagegemäß aufgeführt (also z.B. 'by A.B.').
• Ferner sei noch betont, dass einige der aufgeführten Personen ausschließlich oder überwiegend unter ihrem Pseudonym bekannt wurden bzw. unter diesem publiziert haben; über die Häufigkeit der Verwendung eines Pseudonyms und darüber, unter welchem wirklichen oder Aliasnamen eine Person bekannter war (oder ist), geben die Name Authority Files mithin keine dezidierte Auskunft. Erwähnt werden soll auch noch, dass die Verzeichnisse sehr viele von den betreffenden Personen benutzte Pseudonyme enthalten, die diese in Publikationen oder bei ihrem Auftreten außerhalb der trotzkistischen Bewegung benutzten, sofern uns dies bekannt wurde.
• Zum Schluss 4 Beispiele [sie beziehen sich auf _Name Authority File I_] zum besseren Verständnis:
  • Für George Breitman tauchen z.B. die Namen 'Breitman, George' als wirklicher Name, und 'Petrone, John F.', 'Hofla, Chester' und 'Parker, Albert' als von ihm benutzte Pseudonyme in der linken Kolumne des Verzeichnisses auf und verweisen jeweils auf den wirklichen Namen in der rechten Spalte, ergänzt durch die Lebensdaten: Breitman, George (1916-1986).
  • Für Michel Pablo tauchen in der linken Spalte außer seinem vorzugsweise benutzten Pseudonym ('Pablo, Michel') zahlreiche weitere von ihm geführte Pseudonyme auf z.B. 'Gabe' oder 'Gabriel', sowie schließlich auch sein wirklicher Name (in verschiedenen Schreibvarianten); in der rechten Spalte wird jeweils auf seinen bekanntesten, am häufigsten verwendeten Namen (Pablo, Michel) verwiesen, ergänzt durch den wirklichen Namen (Raptis, Mikhalis) in eckigen Klammern sowie die Lebensdaten.
  • Am Beispiel von Tim Wohlforth sei erwähnt, dass in der linken Spalte nicht nur Pseudonyme und wirkliche Namen, sondern zum Beispiel auch durch Adoption o.ä. abgelegte Geburtsnamen aufgelistet werden (Hier: James Sutton).
  • Bei Myra Tanner Weiss wird in der linken Spalte von ihrem Mädchennamen 'Tanner, Myra' auf den Namen verwiesen, den sie nach ihrer Eheschließung mit Murry Weiss annahm und unter dem sie allgemein bekannt wurde.

Notes:

(1) This paragraph of the introduction is based on Perry, Jeffrey B.: Pseudonyms : a reference aid for studying American communist history, in: American Communist History, 3.2004 (1), pp. 55-126.

(2) Thus for instance the American FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) closely watched all American Trotskyist parties and groups; e.g. they placed some 300 informers inside the SWP (Socialist Workers Party) during the 1960s and 1970s when this Trotskyist party comprised some 400 to 1.600 members. [See Wohlforth, Tim: The prophets's children, Atlantic Highlands, NJ., 1994, p. 81.]

(3) This paragraph is based upon the excellent Wikipedia article on 'Authority control'.