23 Facts About John Pepper

Jozsef Pogany, known in English as John Pepper or Joseph Pogany, was a Hungarian Communist politician.

John Pepper later served as a functionary in the Communist International in Moscow, before being cashiered in 1929.

John Pepper's family were ethnic Jews, but he himself adopted the Hungarian name Pogany to de-emphasize his Jewish origins.

John Pepper's father, Vilmos Schwarz, was a tradesman who became a minor civil servant; he served Chevra Kadisa synagogue in Pest.

John Pepper was not related to artist Willy Pogany, as was once claimed by Whittaker Chambers.

John Pepper was shortly moved again to the position of People's Commissar of Education, a position which he retained until the fall of the revolutionary government on 1 August 1919.

John Pepper was tried in absentia and convicted along with five others in October 1921, but never extradited for enforcement of the sentence.

Future factional ally Benjamin Gitlow later recalled the initial impression which John Pepper made upon him when he first met him at the Bridgman convention:.

John Pepper wrote extensively on international developments and domestic policy questions for the party press, becoming the American Communist movement's most forceful advocates for abandonment of "underground" isolation and adoption of the strategy of constructing a mass Labor Party in America.

John Pepper aligned with Jay Lovestone's pro-Bukharin faction, as Whittaker Chambers recalled in his memoirs:.

John Pepper first came to this country in the summer of 1922 and soon began to regulate party affairs with the arbitrary authority of a receiver appointed by the court to take over a bankrupt concern.

John Pepper was made a member of the governing Central Executive Committee of the CPA's "above-ground" arm, the Workers Party of America, a position to which he was re-elected by the 3rd Convention in January 1924.

Not surprisingly, Pepper was loathed by the opposition faction headed by William Z Foster and James P Cannon, who managed to have Pepper recalled to Moscow by the Comintern in 1925.

Once back in Moscow, John Pepper headed the Information Department of the Comintern, while continuing to play a role in a factional war that swept the American Communist Party by supporting the various positions of the Ruthenberg-Lovestone faction which came before the Executive Committee of the Communist International.

An acute factionalist, John Pepper was early to attempt to bolster the standing of his American allies in Moscow by agitating against Leon Trotsky and accusing the Foster group of softness towards the discredited Soviet leader.

John Pepper was a delegate of the Communist Party of America to the 5th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI, convened in March 1925, to which he delivered the report of the Information Department on 6 April 1925.

At the 6th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI, held in February and March 1926, John Pepper was made an alternate member of the Presidium of ECCI and returned to the political commission of that body.

At the 7th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI, held in November and December 1926, John Pepper was named a member of the political commission, where he was instrumental in helping to remove his nemesis Grigory Zinoviev from the Comintern Presidency.

In July 1927 John Pepper was elected to the Presidium of ECCI.

John Pepper fell from favor in 1928 as Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Bukharin parted company in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with John Pepper's political views coming under criticism at both the 9th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI and the 6th World Congress of the Comintern.

At the time of his 1937 arrest, John Pepper was serving as the head of the publicity department of the People's Commissariat of the Food Industry.

John Pepper was arrested by the Soviet secret police on 27 July 1937.

On 30 May 1956, John Pepper was posthumously rehabilitated by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union.