{{short description|English communist (1894–1937)}} {{for|the writer|Rose Gollup Cohen}} {{EngvarB|date=June 2017}} {{Use dmy dates|date=June 2017}} {{Infobox person |name = Rose Cohen |image = Rose Cohen_IMG_0437_1024.jpg |caption = |birth_name = Rose Cohen |birth_date = {{Birth date|1894|05|20|df=y}} |birth_place = London, England |death_date = {{Death date and age|1937|11|28|1894|05|20|df=y}} |death_place = Moscow, Soviet Union |death_cause = Execution |nationality = |citizenship = British |education = |alma_mater = |employer = |occupation = journalist, employee of the Comintern, newspaper editor, suffragist |years_active = |spouse = David Petrovsky |children = Alexey D. Petrovsky |parents = }}
'''Rose Cohen''' ({{Langx|ru|Роза Морисовна Коэн|translit=Roza Morisovna Koen}}; 20 May 1894 – 28 November 1937) was an English feminist, suffragist, and founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920. She worked for Communist International (Comintern) from 1920 to 1929. Between 1931 and 1937, Cohen served as a foreign editor of ''The Moscow News''. She was executed during the Great Purge in the Soviet Union and posthumously rehabilitated in the Soviet Union in 1956.
== Biography ==
=== Early life ===
Rose Cohen was born in 1894 in London's East End to a family of Jewish immigrants from Łódź, Poland. Her father, Maurice Cohen, was a tailor who later opened his own business and prospered.<ref>Beckett, p.18</ref> She was the first cousin of Abraham Cohen<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.geni.com/people/Rev-Dr-Abraham-Cohen-MA-PhD-D-H-L/6000000008472889846 |title=Rev. Dr. Abraham Cohen, MA, PhD, D.H.L. |website=Geni.com|date=27 April 2022 }}</ref> and the first cousin once removed of Morris Wartski,<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.geni.com/people/Hinda-Cohen/6000000043683387900 |title=Hinda Cohen |website=Geni.com|date=27 April 2022 }}</ref> both through her father's side. Through the Workers' Educational Association Cohen became well-versed in economics and politics, and fluent in three languages.<ref name="historytoday.com">{{cite magazine|author=Casey, Maurice J. |title=The Suffragettes Who Became Communists|location= London|magazine= History Today|date= 4 February 2018|url=https://www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/suffragettes-who-became-communists|access-date = 20 October 2024}}</ref><ref name="Beckett17">Beckett, p.17</ref> After leaving the family home, Rose lived with her sister Nellie, Daisy Lansbury and May O’Callaghan in a shared flat on Grays Inn Road, London.<ref name="historytoday.com" /><ref>{{Cite book |last=Casey |first=Maurice J. |title=Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism's Forgotten Radicals |publisher=Footnote Press |year=2024 |isbn=9781804440995 |location=London |language=en}}</ref> In the 1910s, Rose and Nellie became active members of the East London Federation of Suffragettes led by Sylvia Pankhurst. (Nellie worked as Sylvia Pankhurst’s personal secretary).<ref name="historytoday.com"/> By 1916, British intelligence had placed Rose Cohen under surveillance. Transcripts of intercepted letters and phone calls became publicly available in 2003.<ref name="Beckett21"/>
Her education allowed Rose Cohen to get a job at London County Council, where she worked until 1917, and later in the Labour Research Department. She served as a secretary to Beatrice Webb and Sidney Webb.<ref name="ReferenceA">Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) – fond 495, Opis 198, Delo 733</ref> She left the Labour Research Department in 1920. Towards the end of the First World War, the department became the center of the young leftist intellectuals.<ref name="Beckett17"/> In his memoirs Maurice Reckitt wrote that Cohen "had great vivacity and charm... and was probably the most popular individual in our little movement..."<ref>Reckett, Maurice: ''As it happened'', London, 1941.</ref> In 1920 she became a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.
Contemporaries described Cohen as lively, intelligent, educated, and beautiful.<ref name="Beckett19">Beckett, p.19</ref> Among Cohen's admirers, Harry Pollitt was the most persistent. A photograph of Cohen at the People's History Museum in the United Kingdom was inscribed by Pollitt: "Rose Cohen – who I am in love with, and who has rejected me 14 times."<ref>Beckett, pp 84-85</ref>
=== Work in the Comintern === In the early 1920s, Cohen travelled the world as a Comintern agent. She was assigned secret missions, which included delivering messages and transferring money to Communist parties. In 1922–23 she spent long periods in the Soviet Union, and also travelled to Finland, Germany, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Turkey, France, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. As a Comintern courier, Cohen transferred large sums of money to the Communist parties of these countries.<ref name="Beckett21">Beckett, p.21</ref><ref>PRO KV2/1397, file references from The National Archives (UK)</ref>
In 1925, Cohen worked in the Soviet embassy in London and also spent several months in Paris on a secret mission for the Comintern, and handled large sums of money for the Communist Party of France. That year, she met David Petrovsky, whom she later married.<ref name="centarch"/>
=== Life in Moscow === In 1927, following instructions from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Cohen went to work in Moscow, and in the same year, she joined the Russian Communist Party.<ref name="centarch"/>
In the beginning of 1929, Cohen married Petrovsky, and in December 1929 she gave birth to their son Alexey (Alyosha). She spent six months that year overseas, traveling to China, Japan, Poland, and Germany on Comintern business.<ref name="Beckett21"/> thumb|Cohen and her son Alyosha (on right). London, 1932
In 1930, Cohen enrolled at the International Lenin School of the Comintern, and from 1931 she was an employee and later chief of the Foreign Department and the editor of the ''Moscow Daily News''.<ref name="Beckett21"/> Cohen and Petrovsky were considered the "golden couple of the expatriate community in Moscow",<ref>Beckett, p.22</ref> and their apartment became a salon for the foreign community.
=== The victim of Stalin’s terror === Petrovsky was aware of the danger emerging in the Soviet Union following the murder of Sergei Kirov in 1934, the assassination that functioned as the catalyst for the Great Purge.<ref name= "Myers">{{cite journal|url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/2246150576|author=Meyers, Joshua|title=A Portrait of Transition: From the Bund to Bolshevism in the Russian Revolution|journal=Jewish Social Studies|volume= 24|issue= 2|date=Winter 2019|pages=107–134|doi=10.2979/jewisocistud.24.2.09|access-date = 20 October 2024|id={{ProQuest|2246150576}} |url-access=subscription}}</ref>
thumb|left|150px|David Petrovsky (a prison photo), 1937 In the summer of 1936, Cohen went to London but was not permitted to make the trip with her son, Alyosha, so he stayed behind. Her sister Nellie thought that Rose was "unhappy, and had it not been for Alyosha might not have returned".<ref>Beckett, p.55</ref>
At that time Petrovsky was planning a business trip to America and got permission to travel abroad from his supervisor Sergo Ordzhonikidze - the head of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy and the head of the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry of the Soviet Union. Sergo Ordzhonikidze, who knew Stalin closely, more than anyone else, saw what was happening in the country. Anticipating his fate, he wanted to save Petrovsky from Stalin’s terror and understood that he most likely would not return from a business trip. It seems that Rosa and David hoped to use their travels as an opportunity to leave Russia almost simultaneously and be saved.{{original research inline|date=November 2024}} However, they had failed to acquire an exit visa for their son, and unwilling to leave without him, they remained in the Soviet Union.<ref name= "Myers"/>
In February 1937, Ordzhonikidze died. In March 1937, Petrovsky was arrested, and Cohen was expelled from the Russian Communist Party. On 13 August she was arrested in Moscow. Cohen was accused of being: "a member of the anti-Soviet organization in the Comintern, spying for Great Britain, and the resident of British intelligence".<ref name="centarch">Investigation materials. The Central Archive. Federal Security Service, Russia</ref><ref name="ReferenceA"/>
She denied all charges until 29 October 1937.<ref name="centarch"/> A closed court hearing started at 2:20 pm on 28 November. Cohen was not given access to defence counsel or witnesses, "in accordance with the Law of 1 December 1934". She "pleaded not guilty, denied all charges, and refused to confirm her testimony given during the preliminary investigation, claiming it was false".<ref name="centralarchive">Judicial records. The Central Archive. Federal Security Service, Russia</ref> In her final statement she again pleaded not guilty.<ref name="centralarchive"/> However, the ruling handed down twenty minutes after the start of legal proceedings declared Cohen guilty.<ref name="centralarchive"/> That same day, Cohen was shot.
Petrovsky was shot on 10 September 1937 (rehabilitated in the Soviet Union in 1958). Their seven-year-old son, Alyosha, was placed in an orphanage with the label "son of the enemies of the people". Rose's sister and brothers told everyone that Rose and Alyosha died in Russia of pneumonia and forgot about him for 50 years.<ref>Petrovsky Family Archive</ref>
=== British reaction=== Having learned of Cohen's arrest, British communist leaders Harry Pollitt and Willie Gallacher appealed to the Secretary General of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, Georgi Dimitrov, and his deputy Dmitry Manuilsky, and were advised "do not interfere".<ref name="ReferenceA"/><ref name="rbt">Beckett, Francis: ''[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jun/24/russia.bookextracts Rose between thorns]'', ''The Guardian'', 24 June 2004. Retrieved 20 October 2024.</ref> As a result, the Communist Party of Great Britain did not file a protest, and was not supportive of the protest launched in the pages of the ''New Statesman'', via a letter written by Maurice Reckitt.<ref name="rbt"/> The inquiries of Beatrice Webb and Sidney Webb about Rose Cohen remained unanswered.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>
The British government did not deny rumours that Cohen had taken Soviet citizenship, and had been a citizen of the Soviet Union at the time of her arrest.<ref>''The Manchester Guardian'', 26 April 1938.</ref><ref name="tribuk426">''Tribune'', London, 26 April 1938</ref> Soviet records show that Cohen did not naturalise as a Soviet citizen.<ref name="centarch"/> The British Embassy's protest was late and was officially expressed only in April 1938.<ref name="tribuk429">''Tribune'', London, 29 April 1938</ref>
The CPGB opposed efforts by the British government to get Cohen released, describing her arrest as an internal affair of the Soviet Union. Pollitt privately tried to intervene on her behalf, but by the time he did so she had already been shot.<ref name="Newsinger 39">{{cite book |author=Newsinger, John |title=Hope Lies in the Proles: George Orwell and the Left |date=2018 |page=39 |doi=10.2307/j.ctt21kk1wk.7 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt21kk1wk.6 |access-date=23 March 2021 |publisher=Pluto Press|jstor=j.ctt21kk1wk.6 }}</ref> Twenty years after Cohen's death, Pollitt requested information from Moscow about whether she was still alive.<ref name="Newsinger 149">{{cite book |author=Newsinger, John |title=Hope Lies in the Proles: George Orwell and the Left |date=2018 |page=149 |doi=10.2307/j.ctt21kk1wk.7 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt21kk1wk.6 |access-date=23 March 2021 |publisher=Pluto Press|jstor=j.ctt21kk1wk.6 }}</ref>
=== Political rehabilitation and family === After the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (February 1956), Cohen's son filed an appeal to review her case. On 18 July 1956 the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Harry Pollitt, sent a letter to the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, with a request to clarify the situation regarding the arrest of Rose Cohen in 1937 and asking what had happened to her after the arrest.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>
On 8 August 1956, the Military Collegium of the Soviet Union Supreme Court invalidated the 28 November 1937 ruling against Cohen. All charges were dropped and the case was dismissed for lack of corpus delicti. Cohen was posthumously rehabilitated as a victim of political repressions.<ref>The Determination of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union number 4N-012577/56. The Central Archive. Federal Security Service, Russia</ref>
Cohen and David Petrovsky's son, Alyosha, spent three years living in the orphanage after his parents' execution in 1937. In 1940 he was adopted from the orphanage by David Petrovsky’s cousin Rebecca Belkina, a doctor, and a major of the armed forces' medical service during the Second World War. She succeeded in getting permission for Alyosha’s adoption when she lived with her family in political exile in Tobolsk, Siberia under Article 58 of the Soviet Penal Code. Alyosha spent the rest of his childhood living in Siberia with her and her family. Afterward, many years later,<ref name="Beckett184">Beckett, p.184</ref> he earned a Ph.D. in Engineering, Ph.D. in Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, and became an Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Their grandson, Michael A. Petrovsky,<ref name="Beckett184"/> holds a Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics.
== References == {{Reflist|30em}}
==Sources== {{Cite book |last=Beckett |first=Francis |author-link=Francis Beckett |title=Stalin's British Victims: The Story Of Rosa Rust |publisher=The History Press |year=2004 |isbn=9780750932233 |publication-place=Stroud, Gloucestershire}} {{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cohen, Rose}} Category:1894 births Category:1937 deaths Category:20th-century English Jews Category:Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Category:British expatriates in the Soviet Union Category:British people executed abroad Category:English socialist feminists Category:Communist Party of Great Britain members Category:English people of Polish-Jewish descent Category:English suffragettes Category:Executed communists Category:Executed English women Category:Great Purge victims from the United Kingdom Category:Jewish British feminists Category:Jewish socialists Category:Jews executed by the Soviet Union Category:People executed by the Soviet Union by firearm Category:Politicians from London Category:Female revolutionaries Category:Executed revolutionaries