Anya Berger (née Anna Zisserman; published as Anna Bostock; 1923 – 23 February 2018) was a Russian-British translator, intellectual, and feminist, whose work has been described as having "shaped the horizons of the English-speaking left on issues of race, gender and class". She was best known for her translations of thinkers such as

Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky,; ; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky'' was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist. He was a key figure ...

Wilhelm Reich Wilhelm Reich ( ; ; 24 March 1897 – 3 November 1957) was an Austrian Doctor of Medicine, doctor of medicine and a psychoanalysis, psychoanalyst, a member of the second generation of analysts after Sigmund Freud. The author of several in ...

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

, and

Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...

Early life and education

Anna Zisserman (known as Anya) was born in 1923 in

Harbin, China Harbin, ; zh, , s=哈尔滨, t=哈爾濱, p=Hā'ěrbīn; IPA: . is the capital of Heilongjiang, China. It is the largest city of Heilongjiang, as well as being the city with the second-largest urban population (after Shenyang, Liaoning prov ...

, to Matilda Glogau and Vladimir Zisserman, a Russian landowner. Anya spent her early years among an émigré community displaced by the

Russian revolution The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution, social change in Russian Empire, Russia, starting in 1917. This period saw Russia Dissolution of the Russian Empire, abolish its mona ...

, before travelling to Vienna in 1936 to live with her mother's family. Following the Nazi annexation of Austria, Anya escaped to Britain, where she was able to attend St Paul’s Girls’ School in London. Though she began a degree in modern languages at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

, she left to work at a Russian monitoring organised by

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency ...

, translating radio broadcasts and some of Stalin’s speeches. Zisserman married British intelligence officer Stephen Bostock in 1942, with whom she had two children.

Career

Following the end of the war and the breakdown of her marriage, Anya Bostock continued her translation work, now for the recently established

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

. She joined a circle of leftwing artists and intellectuals, among them the historian

Eric Hobsbawm Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm (; 9 June 1917 – 1 October 2012) was a British historian of the rise of industrial capitalism, socialism and nationalism. His best-known works include his tetralogy about what he called the "long 19th century" (''Th ...

, writer

Doris Lessing Doris May Lessing ( Tayler; 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British novelist. She was born to British parents in Qajar Iran, Persia, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where ...

, and artist

Peter de Francia Peter Laurent de Francia (25 January 1921 – 19 January 2012) was an Italian-British artist, who was Professor of Painting at the Royal College of Art (RCA), London, from 1972 to 1986. His paintings and drawing are included in art collections ...

. She wrote fiction reviews for the ''Manchester Guardian'', and read for the publishers Methuen and Hutchinson. As Anna Bostock, she became a prolific translator into English, including of works by Trotsky, Lenin, Marx,

Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , ; ), was a Swiss-French architectural designer, painter, urban planner and writer, who was one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture ...

, and Ernst Fischer. In 1951, she met writer and artist

John Berger John Peter Berger ( ; 5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel '' G.'' won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism '' Ways of Seeing'', written as an accompaniment to t ...

, and the two began a relationship in 1958 - with Anya changing her name to Berger by deed poll. Moving to Geneva, Anya resumed translation work for the United Nations, as well as becoming active in the

Women's liberation movement The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism. It emerged in the late 1960s and continued till the 1980s, primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which resulted in g ...

. Before their split during the 1970s, the Bergers had two children. In 1972, Anya made a BBC radio programme titled ''Women’s Liberation''. She was also a contributor to the feminist journal ''

Spare Rib ''Spare Rib'' was a second-wave feminist magazine, founded in 1972 in the United Kingdom, that emerged from the counterculture of the late 1960s as a consequence of meetings involving, among others, Rosie Boycott and Marsha Rowe. ''Spare Rib'' ...

.'' Anya Berger continued working and travelling widely into her 80s, described as remaining "a ferocious intellectual" into her later years. Her last translation was ''Gesture and Speech'' by

André Leroi-Gourhan André Leroi-Gourhan (; ; 25 August 1911 – 19 February 1986) was a French archaeologist, paleontologist, paleoanthropologist, and anthropologist with an interest in technology and aesthetics and a penchant for philosophical reflection. ...

, published in 1993. Berger died in 2018 aged 94.

Legacy

Since her death, writers such as Tom Overton have posited the importance of recognising Berger and her work, including "as part of a broader recent movement to recognize the labour of translators, not least because it has often been invisible work, often by women." Berger had spoken six languages: Russian, German, French, English, some Polish and Serbo-Croat. She is noted for having been responsible for translating "some of the great socialist thought of the twentieth century into English".{{Cite web , title=The Constructor , url=https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/02/the-constructor , access-date=2025-06-20 , website=tribunemag.co.uk , language=en-GB

Selected bibliography

* '' The Modulor'' by

(with Peter de Francia; London: Faber and Cambridge, Mass,: Harvard University Press, 1954) * ''Modulor 2'' by Le Corbusier (with Peter de Francia; London: Faber, 1958, and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958) * ''Julio Jurenito'' by

Ilya Ehrenburg Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg (, ; – August 31, 1967) was a Soviet writer, revolutionary, journalist and historian. Ehrenburg was among the most prolific and notable authors of the Soviet Union; he published around one hundred titles. He becam ...

(with Yvonne Kapp; London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1958) * People and Life: Memoirs of 1891-1917 by Ilya Ehrenburg (with Yvonne Kapp; London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1961) * '' Return to My Native Land'' by

Aimé Césaire Aimé Fernand David Césaire (; ; 26 June 1913 – 17 April 2008) was a French poet, author, and politician from Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the Négritude movement in Francophone literature" and coined the word in French. He ...

(with John Berger; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969) * ''Marx in His Own Words'' (London: Penguin Press, 1970) * ''The Necessity of Art'' by Ernst Fischer (London: Penguin, 1971) * ''Lenin in His Own Words'' (London: Penguin Press, 1972) * ''Sex-pol: Essays 1929-34'' by

, ed. Lee Baxandall (with Tom Dubose and Lee Baxandall (New York: Random House, 1972) * ''The Great Art of Living Together: Poems on the Theater'' by

Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...

(with John Berger; London: Grenville, 1972) * ''Understanding Brecht'' by Walter Benjamin (London: NLB, 1973) * ''The Theory of the Novel'' by

György Lukács György Lukács (born Bernát György Löwinger; ; ; 13 April 1885 – 4 June 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, literary historian, literary critic, and Aesthetics, aesthetician. He was one of the founders of Western Marxism, an inter ...

(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974) * ''Soul and Form'' by

(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974) * ''Gesture and Speech'' by

(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993)

References

1923 births 2018 deaths People from Harbin 20th-century British women writers 20th-century British translators 20th-century Russian translators