Schwarz, Shlomo

Shlomo Schwarz (Solomon Monoszon; 1883, Vilna - 1973, Jerusalem), was a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, and a historian who specialized in the study of the history of Soviet Jews and the Soviet Union. He graduated from the gymnasium in Vilna (Vilnius), and finished law studies at the Heidelberg (Germany) and Iaroslavl’ (Russia) universities. In 1901–1905 he studied at the medical faculty of the University of Berlin, but interrupted his studies and returned to Russia to participate in the First Russian Revolution (1905-1907). In 1903 Schwarz joined the Bolsheviks, but due to ideological differences he sided with the Mensheviks from the summer of 1907. He was arrested several times and exiled. Schwartz was also actively involved in the trade union movement in Russia. He was a member at the editorial boards of a few trade union magazines, and from 1913 he edited the magazine “Strahovanie rabochikh”, which was published in Saint Petersburg. With the outbreak of the First World War, Schwartz was expelled from St. Petersburg, and was active in the Moscow organization of the Mensheviks. After the October Revolution, he was drafted into the Red Army. In February 1921 he was arrested by the Bolsheviks, and in January 1922 he was exiled abroad. He settled in Berlin, and following Adolf Hitler’s rise to power he moved to Paris in 1933. In 1940 he settled in New York. In the United States, Shlomo Schwartz was a member of the editorial board of the Mensheviks’ magazine "Socialisticheskii vestnik", and was its editor-in-chief from 1957 to 1960. He is author of several books on the history of the USSR, antisemitism and Jewish life in the Soviet Union. In 1966 his wife Vera Alexandra, a well-known Russian literary critic and editor, died. He immigrated to Israel in 1970. The private collection of Shlomo Schwarz includes: manuscripts and drafts of his works on history; reviews of his works; materials on the history of the USSR, the Soviet Jews, and the Mensheviks in the exile; Shlomo Schwarz’s extensive correspondence; manuscripts, articles, notes and correspondence of his wife – Vera Aleksandrova; press clippings; personal documents and family photos -- Read more