Roman Rosdolsky (1898-1967)

Roman Rosdolsky nasceu há exatos 118 anos, em 19 de julho de 1898. Nasceu em Lvov, que à época era parte do Império Austro-Húngaro e, hoje, uma cidade da Ucrânia. Foi, ao lado de Isaak Rubin, um dos mais importantes intérpretes da obra econômica de Marx.

João Antonio de Paula escreveu um artigo que eu tive o prazer de publicar em Nova Economia e que é a melhor informação biográfica sobre Rosdolsky disponível em português.

Numa memória escrita em 1956 sobre os anos em que foi prisioneiro em Auschwitz, Rosdolsky conta o seguinte diálogo, que é esclarecedor de sua compreensão do socialismo, que continua tão atual:

"Why do I write about this? Why reopen old wounds? Let me just recall one small episode. It was in the camp, on Sunday, after lunch. A group of prisoners were lying on their bunks and talking about the end of the war, which they expected was approaching. A young Pole, Kazik, turned to an older prisoner, whom everyone called “the professor,” and asked him: “Professor, what will happen to Auschwitz after the war?”

“What do you think should happen? answered “the professor.” “We’ll go home.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, professor,” said Kazik. “No one here will get out alive.”

“That’s true,” said the professor. “But, still, the living should not abandon hope [words of the Polish poet Juliusz Stowacki]! And as for Auschwitz itself, the new Poland will build a great museum here and for years delegations from all of Europe will visit it. On every stone, on every path, they’ll lay a wreath: because each inch of this earth is soaked with blood. And later, when the barracks collapse, when the roads are overgrown with grass and when they have forgotten about us, there will be new and even worse wars, and even worse bestialities. Because humanity stands before two possibilities: either it comes up with a better social order or it perishes in barbarism and cannibalism.”

The unfortunate professor was only repeating the words already spoken by the socialist thinker Friedrich Engels 80 years ago. I had heard them several times before the war. But in the bunks of Auschwitz they sounded more real and more correct than ever in the past. And who today, after all the Auschwitz’s, Kolymas, and atom bombs, can doubt the truth of these words?"

Roman e Emily Rosdolsky.