Joshua rubenstein biography

Joshua Rubenstein has been professionally involved with human rights and international affairs for over forty years as an activist and independent scholar with particular expertise in Russian affairs.

Mr.

In this groundbreaking biography, Joshua Rubenstein tells the story of one of Russia’s most controversial and enigmatic figures.

Ehrenburg was a young Bolshevik who turned anti-Communist, then two decades later became a spokesman for Stalin. As Joshua Rubenstein writes in his introduction, “Stalin’s death gave the Kremlin and the West the chance to escape the grim reality of his nightmarish imagination, a challenge they failed to accomplish.

Representing the executor of a multibillion-dollar estate who was being sued by siblings over their treatment in their parents' will, Josh crafted a solution that satisfied all parties and restored family harmony. How did Trotsky view the world, and what was unrealistic about it?
Joshua Rubenstein: The first person who really says this openly was Milovan Djilas, and I picked that up from his book The New Class.

Clients praise his intelligence and experience, describing him as "a consummate professional," who "has a global view of things. He does not just try to solve the immediate problem but looks instead at the whole picture. In the area of estate administration, which can bring intense feelings to the surface for family members, Josh and his clients also benefit from his emotional intelligence.

What was the role of democratic values in the Russian Revolution? The book uncovers the man behind the controversies, whose personal life was as unconventional as the career he fashioned.

Joshua Rubenstein portrays Ehrenburg as a man of great gifts whose life embodies all the tragic dilemmas of a Russian intellectual under communism.

It is a pity that Ehrenburg is not alive to appreciate the quality of this work and the merit which is thus cast on his reputation. (Published by Basic Books in 1996. But in the end, there’s this tension he can’t overcome, which is the role of Lenin and Trotsky and people like themselves in the course of history.

The particular issues—the Tsar, the Russian Empire, the Bolshevik underground movement—it’s too romantic. If we have a proletarian revolution in Germany, that will resolve Hitler and Hitler’s threat, he thought. Well, people make history. It is no overstatement to say that his passing marked a major turning point in the twentieth century. There are lots of examples.
JK: Referring to how he understood Stalin, you write that, as a Marxist, “Trotsky never liked to ascribe historical events to personalities.” In what ways was Trotsky’s own history due to his personality?
JR: Of course, Trotsky is one of the two most important figures in the Bolshevik Revolution, and Lenin needed him, because Lenin wasn’t such a great orator.

People feel oppressed and they want to protest it or overcome it. A political exile from czarist Russia, he spent years in Paris as a bohemian poet and later became Izvestiacorrespondent in Western Europe. If you disavow democratic values along the way, then it’s not clear what you will accomplish even if you dislodge the government in place.

He made all kinds of claims that the Red Army had come to the defense of the working class, which had nothing to do with Stalin’s intention. What is potentially romantic about Trotsky’s life and what are the sober realities of it?
JR: The potential, the allure let’s call it, and the romanticism is that Trotsky was one of the handful of people most responsible for this tremendous revolution in the Russian Empire—not some island in the middle of the Pacific.

A paperback edition is available from the University of Alabama Press.) Tangled Loyalties has also been published in Hebrew (Mossad Bialik); Spanish (Siglo XXI Espana); and Russian (Akademichesky Proyekt).

“A solid and eloquent work.”

– Tomas Venclova, The New Republic

“A convincing, judicious, and enjoyable biography.”

– Richard Lourie, The New York Times Book Review

“Joshua Rubenstein has written a brilliant analysis and biography of Ilya Ehrenburg, the famous Russian iconoclast and critic.