Boris Konstantinovich Lifschitz 'Souvarine' was born in in 1895 in Kiev to a Jewish family. His family moved to Paris in 1897. He came into contact with the French Socialist movement while working as an apprentice jeweler. But World War I and his experiences in the French army turned him toward politics and the pacifist movement. His talents at a writer developed during the war years and he began signing his articles with a new name: Souvarine. He supported the November 1917 Russian Revolution and being bilingual he helped to write about those events for French socialists. He hoped that Communist and Socialist Parties could together create a proletarian democracy in Russia. And feared a dictatorship of the Bolsheviks and their leader. He became an executive member of the Comintern, but by 1924 he was removed from the his official roles and expelled from the Comintern. In France Souvarine participated in a variety of organizations and journals of the anti Stalinist left. In the 1920s he also had growing differences with Trotsky, who described him as a journalist and not a revolutionary. In 1935 he published his book on Stalin, Staline, aperc?u historique du bolche?visme .He also criticized Lenin. His criticisms of Stalinism were important sources for some less orthodox Trotskyists, such as C.L.R. James, who translated his book Stalin into English.--Amazon.com.