Letters

Raya Dunayevskaya

Dear comrades,

I am sending you two documents published by News and Letters: an introductory brochure to the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection, and the guide to the John Dwyer Collection. I hope that you will mention these in Revolutionary History, so as to bring the existence of these collections to the attention of a wider range of people on the British left.

While the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection is important, above all as a record of the development of her own independent philosophy of Marxist-Humanism, there is also a wealth of material that belongs to the history of Trotskyism – notably Appendix 1: Leon Trotsky: Letters, Conversations, Unpublished Documents.

Although John Dwyer was a leading member of News and Letters from its inception in 1955 until his death in 1989, the greater part of his collection relates to his earlier years in the American Trotskyist movement.

Both collections are held at Wayne State University Archives of Labour and Urban Affairs in Detroit, but the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection is available on microfilm. There are currently two microfilm sets in Britain, in the University Libraries of Sussex and Manchester.

Any of your readers who would like a copy of the brochure on the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection can obtain one by sending a large stamped addressed envelope to me at 30 Sunningwell Road, Oxford OXI 4SX.

Richard Abernethy