Summary Information
Alexander Gumberg Papers 1904-1939
- Gumberg, Alexander, 1887-1939
New York Mss J; PH 3989
6.6. c.f. (14 archives boxes and 2 card boxes) and 2 photographs
Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)
Papers of Alexander Gumberg, a Russian-born resident of New York City who was an adviser to American financial and business corporations and, through the American-Russian Chamber of Commerce, a promoter of closer political, economic, and cultural relations between Russia and the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. Also included is material relating to his efforts to lessen tension between the two countries and to bring about diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union by the United States, especially his correspondence with William E. Borah, William Henry Chamberlain, Louis Fischer, John Reed, Raymond Robins, Boris Skvirsky of the Soviet Union Information Bureau, and Upton Sinclair. Gumberg's reports on the Geneva Disarmament Conference of 1927-1928, material concerning Gumberg's institutional and business connections with the All-Russian Textile Institute, Amtorg, the Russian trading company in the U.S., the American-Russian Chamber of Commerce (including subject files), Reeve Schley and Chase National Bank, Floyd B. Odlum, and Atlas Corporation are also included. The collection contains a vast correspondence and other material pertaining to internal developments in Russia, including the career of Gumberg's brother Veniamin Gombarg, vice-president of the Chemical Syndicate, and United States political affairs, especially the appointment of Joseph E. Davies as ambassador to Russia and Philip La Follette's attempt to create a national Progressive Party. Photographs show exterior views of a Russian Textile Institute ship and her personnel. English
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Biography/History
The following incomplete description of the Gumberg Papers was prepared by William Appleman Williams.
Alexander Gumberg, born in July, 1887, to a Russian family of Orthodox Jewish faith then living in the Ukraine, died in New York City on November 17, 1939, of a heart attack while employed as personal confidential assistant to Floyd B. Odlum, president and chairman of the board of Atlas Corporation. It may be surmised that Gumberg's heart was not congenitally weak. It had carried him through emigration to the United States, the bitter battle of survival in New York's Lower East Side, the turmoil and tension of the Russian revolutions of 1917, efforts to effect a rapprochement between his native and adopted countries, the strains of his services to economic giants such as the Chase National Bank and the Atlas Corporation, and had sustained his great personal zest for life.
Rather might it be suggested that Gumberg had filled up the appointed three-score-and-ten ahead of time. He had, indeed, an exceptional heart--both literally and metaphorically. He lived by balancing thought and action, a style of life at once demanding and rewarding. He died because he had used himself up, not because his body proved unequal to the tasks asked of it by his mind, or because his flesh drifted into the limbo of old age.
A poet, an historian with a philosophical turn of mind, or a close friend would see a symbolic unity in Gumberg's life and death. Like all men, he had a hierarchy of values and purposes. Unlike most men, he tried to heighten his consciousness of those standards while (and by) laboring to give them meaning in the real world. Gumberg died when his values and his efforts to realize them, entered upon a period of transformation and transmutation by war.
Gumberg hoped to contribute to an improvement of the human condition in Russia and America. He sought to do this, an effort which gave meaning to his own life, by bringing both countries closer together. Such interaction, he was fond of explaining (he seldom took time to argue), would benefit both nations directly and would, by its stabilizing effect on the rest of the world, underwrite an era of freedom from major wars. Gumberg had no compulsion or desire to reform the world. He did hope that Russia and the United States would realize their respective and mutual potentials. However metaphysical the thought, it was not too surprising that Gumberg died in November, 1939. For that was an hour in which it was apparent that such an effort as his had failed for the time being and that, when taken up again, would depend upon other men.
Gumberg left a record of his efforts because he realized that the historian, like other men, can never understand the present--or what occurred in the past--unless he also knows what could have happened. The continuity of history is based, indeed, as much upon the re-emergence of developments temporarily eclipsed as it is upon the further unfolding of once dominant trends. Gumberg's papers are thus a record of a momentary failure which nevertheless gives us a revealing light, for example into the split over foreign policy within the hierarchy of corporate power in the years from 1950 to 1956. In like fashion, his records help us understand the divergence of opinion within this same class over the issue of whether to go along with the New Deal or to oppose it directly and unreservedly. And, finally, Gumberg's papers offer a revealing picture of the significance and power of the unknown and so-called secondary figures of history. Such figures are seldom given speaking roles in written history, yet their influence is often persuasive. The advisor is a key man, whether his position is formalized in a bureaucratic structure or whether he operates as a self-employed gad-fly. Gumberg functioned within both patterns, and the record of his efforts is an important tool with which to probe and understand American history from 1917 to 1939.
Gumberg's public life, of which these papers are a record, had two basic objectives. He wanted to improve the nature and tone of society in Russia and the United States. The most likely means by which to accomplish these goals, in his view at any rate, was to use his personal influence on those men in each nation who had some measure of decision making authority. His associations with three such men were of crucial importance. Two of them gave him a hearing in Russia. The first of these was his brother, who had remained in Russia, joined the Bolshevik Party, and worked his way upward to a position of trust and responsibility. The second was Leon Trotsky, on whose New York emigree newspaper Gumberg had worked as translator and handy-man in the years before Trotsky returned to Russia to help lead the Bolshevik Revolution.
The third individual was Raymond Robins, a man of considerable importance in the movement to reform the fabric of American life. Perhaps Gumberg's association with Robins, which began during the storm of the Russian Revolutions, was the key relationship. For it was Robins who gave Gumberg entree into the group of Americans such as Senator William E. Borah, Dwight Morrow, and Reeve Schley, who exercised some influence over relations between the United States and Russia. It is with this in mind, then, that Gumberg's papers need to be used in conjunction with those of Raymond Robins (also on deposit in this library).
Gumberg's activities between 1917 and 1939 may be organized into the following periods of emphasis:
(1) The period of the Revolution and early efforts to bring about some lessening of tension between Washington and Moscow, 1917-1924. Gumberg's records of this period contain key materials on the formal and informal relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, on the affairs of the All-Russian Textile Institute, and upon internal developments in the USSR. His correspondents included such leading figures as Louis Fischer, William Henry Chamberlain, William E. Borah, Boris Skivirsky (of the Soviet Union Information Bureau, which Gumberg helped get established), Upton Sinclair, John Reed, Bessie Beatty, and Raymond Robins. The organization of his correspondence for this period is exclusively chronological.
(2) The years 1924 to 1933, during which time Gumberg became extremely effective behind the scenes in his efforts to reestablish relations between the United States and Russia. He worked on two levels: the institutional and the personal. Institutionally, he served as personal advisor to Reeve Schley of the Chase National Bank (a connection he made via Raymond Robins, who introduced him to William Boyce Thompson of the House of Morgan while all three men were in Russia); organized the cotton and textile trade with Russia; and helped found Amtorg, the Russian trading company in the United States.
In these same years, moreover, his personal influence expanded rapidly. He became a close friend and confidant of Dwight Morrow and other Americans interested in improving relations with Russia. These associations, coupled with his friendships in Russia, enabled him to function as a go-between and as an interpreter of conflicting points of view. His several trips to Russia during this period helped prepare the way for the well-known contracts between Russia and the Ford Motor Company and General Electric. Likewise, his reports on the Geneva Disarmament Conference of 1927-1928 provide revealing information on Soviet and American Diplomacy.
Gumberg's relationship with Reeve Schley of the Chase National Bank was of key importance in the reinvigoration and further development of the old American-Russian Chamber of Commerce. This organization, working through such men as Spencer Williams (its representative-in-residence in Moscow), G.M. Trone of General Electric, and W.M. Cooper of the Cooper Engineering Corporation, became the clearinghouse for American interest in economic relations with the Soviet Union. Gumberg was the driving force of the organization. His knowledge of Russian conditions, his friendship with such men as Peter Bogdanov of Amtorg and Dwight Morrow in America, and his willingness to invest himself in the business of developing new trade interests (such as machine tool exports) and maintaining old ties (such as cotton sales) make his files an invaluable source of information on the rise of American-Soviet commerce. For this reason, Gumberg's separate files from the American-Russian Chamber of Commerce have been left as a topical unit within the Organization Records.
Gumberg left the Chamber in 1932 to begin working with Floyd B. Odlum. He did so for two reasons. Odlum offered him far more money than had the Chase National Bank, and this was important to Gumberg, then thirty-four years old and lacking any significant savings. Secondly, Gumberg felt he had done all he could to establish American-Soviet commerce on a sound basis. In a sense this was true. The Chamber did go on to play a crucial role in forcing the Hoover Administration to relax its policies toward Russia, in organizing the political and social campaign for the recognition of Russia, and in developing the Russian market during the early years of the depression. But no individual stepped in to replace Gumberg. The organization rapidly declined in effectiveness after 1934. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision to concentrate on domestic economic projects played a part in this, as did Russia's own internal developments, but the organization lacked the leadership to carry through on its early successes.
Gumberg's subsequent career had two centers of attention: his activities within the framework of the Atlas Corporation, and his continued interest and involvement in Russian and Russian-American affairs. Gumberg's personal file concerning the Atlas Corporation has also been left intact in the Organization Records. But many of his activities, such as his connection with Atlas' interest in the workings of the Security Exchange Commission and the abortive political maneuvering of Philip La Follette of Wisconsin are to be followed within the main body of Correspondence that is arranged chronologically.
As has been suggested, Gumberg's papers contain a vast amount of material bearing directly and indirectly on internal developments in Russia. Letters from men like Louis Fischer, Spencer Williams, and Walter Duranty are filled with such data. Perhaps the most dramatic material in this collection, however, is the record of the Soviet purges as they affected Gumberg's brother Veniamin Gombarg, a significant figure in the administration of Russia's economic programming (vice-president of the Chemical Syndicate), in the internal crises during the early Five Years Plans and the rise of Japan and Germany (see Pravda, February 8, 1930).
His position was weakened as a result of Alex's emigration and subsequent association with American financial leaders. Alex invaded the letters-to-the-editor column of Pravda (April 7, 1930) in defense of his brother, and did much in later years to supply his family in Russia with extra money and other assistance. The record of his brother's exile to Siberia and subsequent rehabilitation (to the point of lecturing on Marxism in Leningrad) offers a particularly balanced and valuable case study of Soviet affairs in the 1930s.
Gumberg's interest in and association with Russian affairs came to something of an anti-climax in the mid-thirties. His associates within and around the Atlas Corporation seem clearly to have played a significant part in the appointment of Joseph E. Davies as Ambassador to Russia to succeed William Bullitt. Gumberg himself had several long conversations with Davies after the choice was confirmed, and appears to have provided Davies with access to certain levels of Russian officialdom. But Gumberg's relationship with Davies was in no sense as important as his earlier associations with Senator Borah, Raymond Robins, and Dwight Morrow. More important was Gumberg's friendship with and knowledge of some....
Scope and Content Note
The Gumberg Papers are arranged as MEMORABILIA, chronologically-arranged CORRESPONDENCE, and alphabetically-arranged ORGANIZATION RECORDS. As indicated above, much material in the collection bears on developments in Russia. Letters from Americans in Russia, among them Louis Fischer, Spencer William, and Walter Duranty, describe many events. Gumberg's brother, Veniamin Gombarg, vice-president of the Chemical Syndicate, was caught in the internal political and economic crises of the 1930's and the story of his rise, fall, exile, and rehabilitation may be traced through the collection. The correspondence also includes Gumberg's analyses of key Russian political figures and commentary on the Moscow trial, 1936-1938.
Among the prominent correspondents not mentioned above are Louis Adamic, George Barr Baker, Carleton Beals, Margaret Bourke-White, S. R. Bertron, Charles Chaplin, Stuart Chase, J. Reuben Clark, Hugh L. Cooper, Joseph P. Cotton, Donald J. Cowling, J. Alvarez Del Vayo, John Dewey, Kenneth Durant, Sherwood Eddy, Mordecai Ezekiel, Felix Frankfurter, James A. Frear, Lewis Gannett, Clinton Gilbert, S. Parker Gilbert, James P. Goodrich, John P. Gregg, Learned Hand, William Hard, D. Heywood Hardy, Will Hays, Leon Henderson, Sidney Hillman, Maurice Hindus, H.V. Kaltenborn, Rockwell Kent, Freda Kirchwey, Frederick Kuh, Robert M. La Follette, Jr., Charles A. Lindbergh, Walter Lippmann, Kenneth McKellar, Robert E. McCormick, Frances Perkins, Edward A. Ross, Margaret Dreier Robins, Richard B. Scandrett, Jr., Herbert Schachian, John L. Senior, L. A. Serebriakoff, Charles Hadden Smith, Lincoln Steffens, Leopold Stokowski, Thomas D. Thacher, Henrik W. Van Loon, Oswald G. Villard, Allen Wardwell, Burton K. Wheeler, William Allen White, Albert Rhys Williams, Charles Morrow Wilson, and Owen D. Young.
The chronological CORRESPONDENCE also includes two boxes of index cards. It is not known who prepared these cards, neither are they a true index. Rather the cards merely indicate the existence of an exchange in the CORRESPONDENCE series between Gumberg and a particular individual and organization, and for major correspondents, the time span of the correspondence and the general topics discussed.
Two photographs received with the Gumberg Papers were separated to the Gumberg Name File and to the Gorki Name File. Two additional photographs showing exterior views of a Russian Textile Institute ship and her personnel were catalogued as part of the Gumberg Papers at call number PH 3989.
Administrative/Restriction Information
Presented by Mrs. Frances Gumberg, 1950.
Contents List
New York Mss J
Box
1
Folder
1
|
Series: Memorabilia
|
|
|
Series: Correspondence
|
|
Box
1
Folder
2-10
|
1908 February-1923 June
|
|
Box
2
|
1923 July-1926
|
|
Box
3
|
1927-1929 September
|
|
Box
4
|
1929 October-1930 November
|
|
Box
5
|
1929 November-1931 October
|
|
Box
6
|
1931 November-1933 June
|
|
Box
7
|
1933 July-1934
|
|
Box
8
|
1935-1936 August
|
|
Box
9
|
1936 September-1938 February
|
|
Box
10
Folder
1-10
|
1938 March-1939 November
|
|
Box
10
Folder
10A
|
Xerox copy of autograph letters in SHSW vault, 1917-1918
|
|
Box
15-16
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“Index cards”
|
|
|
Series: Organization Records
|
|
|
All-Russian Textile Syndicate
|
|
Box
10
Folder
11
|
Balance sheets, 1925-1930
|
|
PH 3989
|
Photographs
|
|
New York Mss J
|
American-Russian Chamber of Commerce
|
|
|
Correspondence
|
|
Box
10
Folder
12
|
1926-1928
|
|
Box
11
|
1929-1932 March
|
|
Box
12
Folder
1-5
|
1932 April-1939
|
|
|
Subject files
|
|
Box
12
Folder
6
|
Addresses
|
|
Box
12
Folder
7
|
Membership lists, 1929-1935
|
|
Box
12
Folder
8
|
Minutes, 1929-1930
|
|
Box
12
Folder
9
|
Report #16, 1927
|
|
Box
12
Folder
10-11
|
Newspaper reports, 1930
|
|
Box
12
Folder
12
|
Pavlov, 1930
|
|
Box
12
Folder
12A
|
Amtorg Trading Corp. (Russian Gold, 1928)
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|
|
Atlas Corporation
|
|
Box
12
Folder
13
|
Articles of incorporation, 1931
|
|
Box
12
Folder
14
|
Albert Frank-Guenther Law Advertising, 1931-1935
|
|
Box
13
Folder
1
|
Allied General Corp., 1932-1933
|
|
Box
13
Folder
2
|
Allied Distributors, Inc., 1933, undated
|
|
Box
13
Folder
3-4
|
Consolidation, 1935-1936
|
|
Box
13
Folder
5
|
Corporation reports and notices, 1931-1932
|
|
Box
13
Folder
6
|
D. H. Silberberg & Co., 1933, undated
|
|
Box
13
Folder
7
|
Distributors Group, Inc., 1934, undated
|
|
Box
13
Folder
8
|
Electric Bond and Share Co., 1932-1933
|
|
Box
13
Folder
9
|
Fitch Publishing Co., 1932-1934, undated
|
|
Box
13
Folder
10
|
Forbes, 1932-1934
|
|
Box
13
Folder
11
|
Greyhound article for Fortune, 1934
|
|
Box
13
Folder
12
|
Hatch, L. Boyd, 1931-1935
|
|
Box
13
Folder
13
|
Interstate Distributors, Inc., 1932, undated
|
|
Box
13
Folder
14
|
Jones, John Price, 1933
|
|
Box
13
Folder
15
|
Miscellaneous correspondence, 1932-1935, undated
|
|
Box
13
Folder
16
|
Miscellaneous writings and reports, 1932-1935
|
|
Box
14
Folder
1
|
Munds, Winslow & Potter, 1932
|
|
Box
14
Folder
2
|
Odlum article in Fortune, 1935
|
|
Box
14
Folder
3
|
Wall Street Journal, 1932-1935
|
|
Box
14
Folder
4
|
Wilbur, Rollin A., 1932-1934
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|
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