Herman Bernstein

an established journalist, translator, and Jewish advocate

 Dickinson Professor Crispin Sartwell’s research interests in anarchist political philosophy brought him to the work of Russian revolutionaries Mikhail Bakunin and Petr Kropotkin. But Prof. Sartwell has a personal connection to Russian culture. His great-father, Herman Bernstein (1876-1935), was born in Vladislavov--now present-day Lithuania, but then located on the Russian-German border. In 1893, Herman emigrated from the Russian Empire to the United States, where he wrote for The New York Evening Post and The Nation, and was an editor of The New London Day and The Jewish Tribune. In 1917, he returned to Russia to cover the Russian revolution for the New York Herald. In 1918, Herman made headlines by publishing a secret correspondence between Tsar Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm II, which he called "The Willy-Nicky Telegrams." On top of his journalistic career, Herman was a prolific translator, translating works by Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, and Leonid Andreev from Russian into English. A collection of his interviews with Tolstoy, Kropotkin, Leon Trotsky, and others was published in 1913 as Interviews by Herman Bernstein and Celebrities of Our Times.

  Crispin Sartwell

 (Prof. of Art & Art History and Philosophy). 

Do you see a resemblance? 

 
The Russian Department announces the launch of a new multimedia project - Russian Rooms. The project was created and curated by Maria Rubin, Visiting International Scholar at Dickinson for the 2012-2013 academic year. Russian Rooms is an ongoing blog, which shows portraits of average Russians in their home environment. You can read about each person and listen to an interview with them (in Russian) while viewing their portraits and the picture of the room they call their own.

Click Here to visit Russian Rooms