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Biography
Manya Reiss (also known as Maria Aerova, sometimes spelled Ayerova, Chinese: 马尼娅; pinyin: Mǎníyà, 1900–1962) was an American Marxist–Leninist and a founding member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).
Manya Reiss was of Russian-Jewish origin and immigrated to the United States in 1912. In the United States, she was a garment worker as well as a communist activist. In 1931, she attended the International Lenin School. After this, she worked for the Eastern Secretariat of the Comintern and was later sent on missions to Germany and France. She returned to the United States in the late 1930s to work for the propaganda department of the Communist Party USA and to teach at a party school. By 1940, she had returned to Moscow.
In 1957, a few years after the death of Stalin, Reiss went to Beijing, China to work for the Beijing Daily and the Xinhua News Agency.
Manya Reiss died of cancer in Beijing and was buried at the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery.