Judith Szathmari-Lécuyer

1944–2012

Our dear sympathizer Judith Szathmari-Lécuyer died June 12 from cancer, after fighting bravely to the end against the disease. Our thoughts are with her family, especially her husband, Jean Lécuyer.

Judith was born in Hungary. Her family fled to the United States in 1956, when she was 12, at the time of the Soviet intervention to crush a proletarian political revolution in Hungary. Judith still remembered clearly a Soviet Army soldier who was crying because he did not want to shoot at his Hungarian class brothers. This experience allowed her to have a deep understanding of what a political revolution means, and it played an important role in her later evolution toward Trotskyism.

She spent her teenage years in Washington, D.C., and California. She was won to Trotskyism in the early 1970s at the University of California at Davis and was active in several branches of our American section. Notably, she was one of the comrades who went to Detroit, the center of the U.S. auto industry at the time, when we were building a local branch there to orient to the city’s militant black working class.

Later, she moved to New York, where she played an important role in establishing our international center, at a time when our American comrades were fighting to break out of national isolation and extend internationally. She contributed to our efforts to transform from an unstable sub-propaganda group into the international propaganda group that became the international Spartacist tendency and subsequently the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist).

Judith went to France in 1977, our French section having been founded in 1975. Thus, she was one of the comrades who helped re-implant Trotskyism in France, in direct continuity with James P. Cannon’s American Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and our comrades of the Spartacist League/U.S., who maintained the Trotskyist heritage against the SWP’s Pabloite degeneration in the early 1960s.

Judith met Jean in 1975 at a summer camp held in Austria by our international tendency, and they were a couple for 37 years, until her death. She played a crucial role in checking the translation of Hungarian letters and documents written by Michel Varga, which allowed us to arrive at our conclusions at an international commission of inquiry held concerning this individual in the mid 1970s. For several years, Judith was in charge of circulation of the Ligue Trotskyste de France newspaper, Le Bolchévik, and she was also on its production team.

Jean and Judith went to Mexico in 1989, under very difficult conditions. They played an important role in laying the groundwork for the development of our ICL section in that country. In 1990, the Grupo Espartaquista de México fused with subjectively Trotskyist cadres who had broken with followers of Argentine adventurer Nahuel Moreno over the question of the Morenoites’ support to the capitalist reunification of Germany. This strengthening of the GEM made possible the publication of our Mexican newspaper, Espartaco.

Comrades remember Judith’s great patience in recruiting people to the party and in pedagogically explaining our program to younger comrades. They remember her English classes that enabled comrades to read the party’s international newspapers and documents. They remember her advice on books to read, especially novels on the black question in the U.S., and her recommendations to visit various museums.

Judith left the party in the 1990s but remained close to us and loyal to our program. She continued to work for the party, especially looking for photographs for the newspaper—work to which she continued to devote her time and energy even while fighting the devastating disease. One of her last tasks was the translation into English of a university thesis about Greek Trotskyism during World War II. She continued to learn about everything she could, attending lectures after she retired from her job. She regularly went to the movies in Paris and always had something to say about the latest films. Having become a real Parisian by adoption, she knew the city’s every nook and cranny, all the cinemas and museums, and she always knew about the latest exhibitions.

Judith was close to her family, who she watched over even though they were dispersed in several countries. She kept ties with some members of her family who remained in Hungary, and she was very concerned in recent years by the rise of reaction there. She was also greatly appreciated by her colleagues at work, especially by her younger colleagues, many of whom came to her memorial service.

All the comrades throughout our International who knew her and who were fortunate enough to work with her admired her strength, talent, charm, intelligence and sense of humor—Judith loved to laugh.

We will not forget her, and to honor her we continue the struggle for the rebirth of the Fourth International, the party of revolution, to which she gave her time and energy.

—Translated from Le Bolchévik No. 201, September 2012