Jürgen Kuczynski (German pronunciation: [ˈjʏʁɡn̩ kuˈtʃɪnskiː]; 17 September 1904 – 6 August 1997) was a German economist, journalist, and communist.^[1][2] He also provided intelligence to the Soviet Union during World War II.

By 1936, Kuczynski had followed his father and other family into exile in England. After being temporarily interned as an enemy alien at the start of World War II, during the war he was recruited by the OSS, the precursor of the CIA, to recruit German communists to be sent to Germany to make contact with resistance groups.^[3] He also served in the US Army as a colonel in its Air Force, on a team conducting the Strategic Bombing Survey. At the same time he passed their results "to Soviet intelligence."^[2] In 1942 he recruited Klaus Fuchs to Soviet intelligence and introduced the physicist to his sister Ursula Kuczynski (aka Ruth Werner), who had become a "star agent" of the Soviet Union.^[3] She acted as Fuchs's courier for four years, but as far as is known she was never placed under surveillance by MI5, and was not prevented from leaving England in 1950 shortly before Fuchs went on trial.

After the war, Kuczynski initially returned to Germany on assignment with the US Army, first serving in the American zone of what became West Germany. Appointed to an academic position by the Soviet authorities, he settled in East Germany. He joined the "Communist-dominated Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED)", which directed him to work in academic and cultural affairs.^[2] He became one of East Germany's leading intellectuals after the war, maintaining his Marxist faith and communist affiliations.^[3] He wrote prolifically and is credited with nearly 4,000 titles.^[2]

In 1946 he had been appointed to the teaching chair for Economic History at Berlin University. He was in charge there of the Institute for Economic History until 1956.^{[citation needed]}

On 30 June 1947 he was elected as the first Chairman of the Society for the Study of Soviet Culture (forerunner of the Society for German–Soviet Friendship). He reportedly said to its members, "He who hates and despises human progress as it is manifested in the Soviet Union is himself odious and contemptible."^[2] Between 1949 and 1958, Kuczynski also sat as a member of the People's Chamber (Volkskammer), which was the country's national legislature.^[1] In 1950, he moved to East Berlin, leaving his family home in West Berlin, after Fuchs was arrested in Britain in December 1949, which led to his fears that he might soon be arrested as well.^[29]

The SED directed him to cultural and academic activities. He was one of East Germany's most prominent and productive academics. During his lifetime he published approximately 4,000 pieces of writing.^[2] (Sources differ over the estimated total.^[32]) In 1955 he was founder and chief of the Economic History Department at the German Academy of Sciences, in addition to the Institute of Economic History. Both were communist fronts. Kuczynski's sister Renate noted that because of his bildungsbürgerlich values that he always believed that as long as works of high culture were made available to the masses that he assumed this must mean that their characters were being improved, and for Kuyzynski the really important thing was the East German state were publishing the classics of world literature in cheap paperback copies.^[21] Fair-Schulze wrote: "Kuczynski's Marxism was deeply intertwined with German cultural history and a specifically German bildungsbürgerlich project of modernity...Thus their Marxism was by nature far more inclusive and open-ended than what evolved as official Marxism-Leninism within the Soviet dominion...Intellectuals like Kuczynski were culturally tied to the mental world of first and second generation Marxism".^[21]

His public lectures were very popular. As a senior member of the country's "revolutionary aristocracy", he was permitted greater freedom to criticize the regime than was allowed to others. Kuczynski always wrote from a Marxist perspective, but many of his writings differed significantly from the official line, for an example he sometimes criticized Vladimir Lenin, saying he had made mistakes, which was normally taboo in East Germany.^[33] In 1956, Kuczynski triggered a major intellectual controversy with an article about historical objectivity in the journal Zeitschrift für Geschtswissenschaft.^[34] Kuczynski began his argument by saying that Marxist historians must reject the "bourgeois pseudo-concept of 'objectivity'", criticizing scholars such as Leopold von Ranke and Max Weber for hiding their bias behind the façade of objectivity and concluding "...in reality, scientists cannot, did not, and must not avoid taking a stand".^[34] Kuczynski argued that all scholarly writing is "partisan" as everyone has a bias in some way, but that: "The development of historical science demands rather a specific type of partisanship. It demands partisanship for progress; at the beginning of the 19th century, for capitalism and the bourgeoise; today, partisanship for the socialism and the working class. It demands partisanship for the new and progressive, to which society advances. To be partisan for reality-that is the literal meaning of the word objectivity...That trait consists of the fact, that in the process of social motion is a process of development, not an anarchic or circular motion...but a progressive movement, from the lower to higher stages of society. It is a law-governed and elemental process."^[35] In this way, Kuczynski argued that reality itself was "partisan" and that whatever intellectuals wrote was always grounded upon the particular stage of "progress" a society was at in any given moment of time.^[35]

However, he qualified his thesis that to be "partisan" for the "new and progressive" must be "scientific" and grounded in reality.^[35] Despite his criticism of Ranke, Kuczynski paid him a back-handed tribute as he wrote: "No doubt, Ranke uses the new instrument in the interests of the ruling classes...But how much closer we have come in technical terms to an adequate understanding of the past through Ranke!...Any means however that help us to understand reality better... are of importance to social progress".^[36] This thesis that objective "scientific" methods of research can be useful for understanding reality provided that they are directed towards the proper (Marxist) ends put him outside of the mainstream of Marxist historiography in the German Democratic Republic.^[36] Likewise, despite his criticism of Weber, Kuczynski largely accepted Weber's notion of history as a science which is verifiable and universal as Weber famously argued that what is truth for a German social scientist should also be truth for a Chinese social scientist provided that they can both verify the same phenomena via the scientific methods.^[37] Kuczynski wrote: "Our demand for partisanship in historiography is a postulate, which is the indispensable condition of any scientific research on society whatsoever. It is impossible to develop an adequate attitude to the reality of social development, without taking sides with the new and progressive produced by that reality. The demand for partisanship that we make today, is therefore nothing else but the demand for realistic objectivity".^[37] Despite his express rejection of Weber's approach, Kuczynski's view of social sciences was very similar with the main difference being that Weber anchored his views in the logic and rationality of science itself while Kuczynski anchored his view in the progressive development of society based on Marxism as he contended that everyone would take a view based on how far advanced a given society was at any moment.^[37] Much of the controversy caused by Kuczynski's article in East Germany centered around his implicit claim that historians should be guided by Marxism, but in a manner that was "realistic objective", which very strongly implied intellectual freedom to write in a manner that was "realistic objective" instead of being dictated to by the regime.^[38] Kuczynski was calling for freedom of expression at least for those scholars writing from a Marxist perspective.^[38] Kuczynski's article led him to be subjected to a lengthy series of disciplinary hearings in 1956–58, in which he was criticized for advancing a thesis that was not "partisan" enough for the SED regime.^[39]

In 1957, he published the book Der Ausbuch des ersten Weltkriegs und die deutsche Sozialdemokratie, in which he claimed that not only the majority of the Social Democrats had supported the German government in August 1914, but also the majority of the working class, an interpretation of history that was entirely against the official line in East Germany.^[33] Even more controversially Kuczynski defended the decision of Karl Liebknecht, the leader of the left-wing of the Social Democrats, to initially support the war and to vote for war credits in the Reichstag.^[40] The officially Marxist SPD had long promised to call a general strike to shut down the German economy if the German government should go to war, but in August 1914 the majority of the SPD leaders had instead supported the government, accepting the claim of the government that Russia was about to invade Germany, and hence it was the patriotic duty of the SPD to support the government. This decision split the SPD into the Majority Social Democrats who supported the war and the Independent Social Democrats who were opposed. The German Communist Party had its origins in the latter faction, and the official line in German Communist historiography had always been was that the Majority Social Democrats had "betrayed" the working class by supporting the war. Kuczynski by arguing that the majority of the German working class had supported the Majority Social Democrats and that the Independent Social Democrats were a marginal movement in August 1914 was challenging the founding legend of German Communism, hence the vehement reaction his book generated in East Germany.^[41] Even more infuriating to the East German regime, Kuczynski argued that the SPD in August 1914 was not a Leninist party, and could not had called the promised general strike to stop the war even if they had wanted to.^[41] A key counter-factual assumption to the founding legend of German Communism was that if only the SPD had called the promised general strike in August 1914, then World War One would have been stopped and millions of would have been lives saved, so Kuczynski's claim that the SPD could not have stopped World War I was especially distasteful to the SED regime.^[41]

In West Germany, Kuczynski's book was ignored as the general view of him was that he was a "red terrorist" as Gerhard Ritter called him.^[40] In East Germany, Kuczynski's book had challenged the orthodox view of what had happened in August 1914 provoked immense controversy and led to vigorous attempts by other East German historians to defend the Leninist line.^[40] In Neues Deutschland, the official newspaper of the SED, a harsh review of Kuczynski's book was published by Albert Schreiner, accusing him of "revisionist" beliefs and of promoting "a false view of the relationship between leftists and centrists in the workers' movement" in August 1914.^[42] In the (East) German Academy of Sciences, Kuczynski was subjected to sustained campaign by senior and junior faculty to retract his book and publicly apologize for writing it, causing him to be ostracized when he refused.^[42] On 27 February 1958, Der Ausbuch des ersten Weltkriegs und die deutsche Sozialdemokratie was in effect banned as it was announced that bookstores would no longer be allowed to sell it.^[43] In March 1958, Einheit, the official journal of the SED, published a very negative view of Der Ausbuch des ersten Weltkriegs und die deutsche Sozialdemokratie by Rudolf Lindau which accused Kuczynski of "a strange predilection" for the enemies of Marxism such as the "revisionist" Karl Kautsky, the "anarchist" Franz Pfemfert and the "Trotskyist" Paul Frölich.^[43] For a time in 1958, Kuczynski's career was in serious danger of being ended as his book had very much displeasured the East German regime.^[44]

Kuczynski's friend, the philosopher Ernst Bloch, had been fired from his faculty position for differing from the party line and he himself believed that there was a serious chance of him likewise being fired.^[45] Victor Klemperer wrote in his diary on 14 February 1958 that he believed there was "a second Bloch case in the offering", even through he had agreed with what Kuczynski had written.^[45] The fact that Kuczynski came from an upper middle-class Jewish family and had spent the Nazi years in exile in Britain instead of the Soviet Union were additional factors against him.^[45] Kuczynski was threatened with being fired from the Academy of Sciences and with being expelled from the SED if he did not retract his book as he was warned that Kurt Hager, the SED's secretary for science and culture, wanted to see him punished.^[45] On 2 March 1958 in a speech before the Third University Teachers' Conference with Hager being present, Kuczynski partially retracted what he had written, saying he had made mistakes, through he also expressly rejected the charge of "revisionism".^[45] Kuczynski was also saved by the fact that his book had submitted in advance to the censors before he had published it, and it was felt to be embarrassing for the regime to punish an author for publishing a book that had gone through its very strict censorship process.^[45]

As Kuczynski reached and passed retirement age, he continued to occupy a range of important advisory posts and memberships. Above all he continued to write prodigiously. He claimed to be a dissenter of the party line. He was discovered by a new generation of readers with his book entitled Dialogue with my great grandson (1983, "Dialog mit meinem Urenkel"). ^[6] It was widely read in East Germany during the 1980s, and Kuczynski was criticised for it by Socialist Unity Party of Germany. In Dialog mit meinem Urenkel , Kuczynski addressed the question of Stalinism, writing: "If you would ask me if I was happy as a comrade and a scholar in the 'time of Stalin', I can only answer: Yes! Yes! For I was convinced of the greatness and intelligence of Stalin, and did not feel oppressed in my scholarly work, let alone repressed. But don't forgot that the effects of Stalinism were slighter in our Party than in the Soviet Union. Our conditions-think of the multi-party system-made the worse crimes impossible, as did the influence of several Party comrades".^[46] The scholar John Connolly wrote that there was an element of truth to Kuczynski's account as Stalin did not regard East Germany as permanent and in 1952 offered to allow German reunification provided Germany was neutral, which made establishing "full socialism" undesirable.^[47] Connolly wrote that Kuczynski was correct that the East Germany did not have the same "monster show trials" that the other "people's democracies" in Eastern Europe did in the late 1940s-early 1950s, but he ignored that about 2% of the East German population were the victims of government repression, of whom one-tenth died as a result.^[48] In Dialog mit meinem Urenkel, Kuczynski did admit to shame over some of his actions in the Stalinist period.^[49]

He never lost the confidence of East German leader Erich Honecker, for whom he frequently worked as a speech writer.^[6] And he never lost his Marxist faith: unlike some members of the East German establishment, he continued to celebrate the German Democratic Republic. He also supported the PDS (party) (which inherited the mantle of the SED) in his writing, long after the reunification of 1989/90 had opened up the dark side of the old one-party dictatorship to wider and deeper scrutiny.^[6]

Jürgen Kuczynski married Marguerite Steinfeld, an economist and translator. The couple had three recorded children, Thomas, Peter and Madeleine.

Thomas, like his father, became an economic historian and university lecturer. Peter, an expert on American civilisation, worked for many years at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg.

As an eldest son of a bookish family, Jürgen Kuczynski inherited many books. The collection included works from the eighteenth century, and he greatly added to it.^[50] His "great grandfather's grandfather" had been an admirer of Immanuel Kant, and had purchased a number of first editions by the Königsberg philosopher.^[50] He also owned an early edition of the Communist Manifesto (a pirate edition printed in 1851), which a more recent ancestor had picked up on a trip to Paris.^[50] When Kuczynski's father, Robert René Kuczynski, had fled to England in 1934, he had to leave much of the collection behind, where it was lost in the war. He shipped 20,000 books to England.^[50]

By the time Jürgen Kuczynski died, he had inherited these books and added to the collection, accumulating a valuable private library of approximately 70,000 books and journals.^[50] Kuczynski's library was taken over in 2003 by the Berlin Central and Regional Library.^[51] It is held in the library's historical collection. It is believed to take up "approximately 100 meters of shelf space".^[50]

Kuczynski was frequently identified with Stalinism during the dictator's period in power. After Stalin died, his successor Nikita Khrushchev made a speech to party leaders On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, denouncing the abusive excesses of the regime. After this became public, Stalinists were pressured to change their positions.^{[citation needed]}

But Kuczynski believed that "Stalinism" embraced the entire body of developments over a period of three decades, and included both positive and negative results. In the 1950s and 60s, Kuczynski rejected the new denunciation of Stalin as a "continuation of Stalinism" ("Fortsetzung des Stalinismus").^{[citation needed]} His own argument would have appealed to the leadership of the German Democratic Republic.^{[citation needed]} Viewing the world through his prism of Economic History, Kuczynski noted two major achievements under Stalin: rapid industrialization with the creation of a large heavy industrial sector across rural Russia, and the defeat of Nazi Germany.^{[citation needed]}

Kuczynski thought that Stalin had enjoyed the trust of the Soviet people. He said that the personality cult and the speeches provided the people and the soldiers with moral strength. He did note that Stalin had abused this trust through his purges and brutal dictatorship. He believed that the dictator's talents as a propagandist made him successful in imposing dogmas and killing off dialectically objective controversy.^{[citation needed]} He seemed to ignore the role in state terror in suppressing opposition.

• 1949 National Prize of East Germany
• 1964 Banner of Labor
• 1969 Order of Karl Marx
• 1974 National Prize of East Germany
• 1979 Star of People's Friendship
• 1984 Patriotic Order of Merit
• 1989 Patriotic Order of Merit Gold clasp

Kuczynski was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Economics,^[52] but he never won it.

Since 2007 some supporters have proposed renaming the southern part of the Antonplatz ("Anton Square"), in Berlin's Weißensee quarter, as "Jürgen-Kuczynski-Platz".^[53] Numerous local residents oppose this idea, but in 2014, proponents were still pushing it.^[54]

Jürgen Kuczynski produced approximately 4,000 published pieces of writing, mostly articles but also numerous books;^[2] some sources give higher estimates.^[32][53] Some of these works were written jointly with others, and the figure appears to include his contributions to academic and other journals. He estimated that roughly 100 were books or substantial pamphlets ("etwa 100 Bücher oder stärkere Broschüren").

Mario Keßler has listed the six most important as follows:

• Connolly, John (2009). "The Paradox of East German Communism: From Non-Stalinism to Neo-Stalinism". In Tismaneanu, Vladimar (ed.). Stalinism Revisited: The Establishment of Communist Regimes in East-Central Europe. BudapestL: Central European Press. pp. 161–191. ISBN 978-9639776630.
• Fair-Schulze, Axel (2011). "Jürgen Kuczynski: A German-Jewish Marxist scholar in exile". In Fair-Schulz, Axel; Kessler, Mario (eds.). German Scholars in Exile: New Studies in Intellectual History. LanhamL: Lexington Books. pp. 137–159. ISBN 978-0739150481.
• Feldner, Heiko (2002). "History in the Academy: objectivity and partisanship in the Marxist Historiography of the German Democratic Republic". In Major, Patrick; Osmond, Jonathan (eds.). The Workers' and Peasants' State: Communism and Society in East Germany Under Ulbricht 1945-71. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 262–279. ISBN 0719062896.
• Polmar, Norman; Allen, Thomas (1998). The Spy Book The Encyclopedia of Espionage. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-375-70249-0.
• Reid, James (1990). Writing Without Taboos: The New East German Literature. Oxford: Berg Publishers. ISBN 0854960201.<
• Stibbe, Mathew (2010). "Fighting the First World War in the Cold War: East and West German Historiography on the Origins of World War One, 1949-1959". In Hochscherf, Tobias; Laucht, Christoph; Plowman, Andrew (eds.). Divided, But Not Disconnected: German Experiences of the Cold War. Oxford: Berghahn Books. pp. 34–49. ISBN 978-1845456467.
• Stibbe, Mathew (February 2011). "Jürgen Kuczynski and the Search for a (Non-Existent) Western Spy Ring in the East German Communist Party in 1953". Contemporary European History. 20 (1): 61–79. doi:10.1017/S0960777310000378. S2CID 159895569.