16 Facts About Andrew Rothstein

Andrew Rothstein, who was to become a significant figure in British Communism, was born in London to Russian Jewish political emigrants.

From 1890, Theodore Andrew Rothstein settled in Britain for the next 30 years.

Andrew Rothstein supported the unity process that led to the formation in 1911, by a merger between a number of socialist groups and the SDF to create the British Socialist Party.

However, Theodore Andrew Rothstein was working for the Foreign Office and the War Office as a Russian translator.

Andrew Rothstein was decisive in the move to oust the Hyndman national chauvinist current in the BSP in 1916 and took part in founding of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

Andrew Rothstein became Director of the Institute of World Economy and World Politics and, from 1939, was an Academician, receiving the Order of Lenin.

Andrew Rothstein was a corporal when he discovered that his unit was about to be sent to Archangel, the Russian port where British troops had been sent to assist the Tsarist forces resistance to the new Soviet government, led by the Bolsheviks.

Andrew Rothstein was a foundation member of Communist Party in 1920 and was the man who recruited Tom Wintringham to the communist cause.

Andrew Rothstein regularly wrote articles for the Party, the labour movement, and as a correspondent for the Soviet news agency as "C M Roebuck".

Andrew Rothstein was "utterly against" the new line but found himself appointed as deputy head of the Anglo-American department of the Red International of Labour Unions and served in the post for 18 months, based in Moscow.

Andrew Rothstein was President of the Foreign Press Association, from 1943 to 1950 and, after the war, was the London correspondent of Czechoslovakian trade union paper, Prace, a post he held until 1970.

Andrew Rothstein translated many Marxist texts from the Russian into English; for example, Plekhanov's In defence of materialism, segments of Lenin's Collected Works, such as, for the 4th English edition, a report on the meeting of the editorial board of the journal "Proletary" in 1909 and Ponomaryov's History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, first published in English in 1960 by the Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow.

Andrew Rothstein was awarded a Soviet pension in 1970 and, after formal retirement, was chair of the Marx Memorial Library and vice-chair of the British-Soviet Friendship Society.

Andrew Rothstein wrote and published widely; there was an account of the origins and background of the building that houses the Marx Memorial Library, A house on Clerkenwell Green, and material that he had first hand knowledge of: When Britain Invaded Soviet Russia: the Consul Who Rebelled and The Soldier's Strikes of 1919.

Andrew Rothstein was proud to be the recipient of card number one of the re-established Communist Party of Britain in 1988.

Andrew Rothstein was the father of the curator and academic Natalie Rothstein.