KONSTANTIN GALLOP

KONSTANTIN GALLOP (August 13, 1862-January 13, 1892)

            He was born in Yaneve (Jonava), near Kovno, Lithuania.  His family moved to Saratov, Russia, where he studied in religious primary school and later in a secular high school.  There he was drawn into the revolutionary movement, and he was deported by the police to Kovno.  Later, with his brother’s family, he moved to London.  He was one of the most important Jewish writers on current affairs.  He was the leader of the Jewish socialist revolutionaries in London.  He worked for peace between the social democrats and the anarchists, and in an impartial manner ran the newspaper Arbayter fraynd (Friend of laborers), which he edited from its beginning in 1890 until February 1891, when the anarchists took it over for themselves completely.  In the newspaper, he allowed the leaders of the anarchists and the social democrats, even from America, to argue with one another, and according to Dovid Edelshtat, the newspaper was “read by all intelligent Russian Jews in England and the United States.”  In April 1891, he became editor of the monthly magazine Di fraye velt (The free world), which the socialist revolutionaries and the social democrats together began to publish.  However, a short time later, he came down with tuberculosis, and after the first few numbers, he was too sick to return to this work.  He was the brother-in-law and also a close friend of Morris Rozenfeld.  Dovid Edelshadt in a poem, “In memoriam,” dedicated “to the memory of K. Gallop,” lamented: “Like a tree that has not yet sprouted its young buds, the rosy blossoms, / He abandoned the suffering world, rich with pain, poor with joy.”

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1; “Konstantin gallup,” Di fraye velt (London) (February 1892); M. V. (Morris Winchevsky), “Erinerungen on k. gallup” (Reminiscences without K. Gallop), Di fraye velt (February 1892); H. Burgin, Di geshikhte fun der arbeter bavegung (The history of the labor movement) (New York, 1915), see index; M. Winchevsky, in Dos naye lebn (New York) (July-August 1910); K. Marmor, Der onhoyb fun der yidisher literatur in amerike (The beginning of Yiddish literature in America) (New York, 1944), pp. 31, 48; Geshikhte fun der yidisher arbeter bavegung in di fareynikte shtatn (History of the Jewish labor movement in the United States), vol. 2 (New York: YIVO, 1945), see index; K. Marmor, Dovid edelshtat (New York, 1950), pp. 74, 79, 92, 266, 267, 280, 318.

                                                                                                               Aleksander Pomerants