A01=Victor Grossman
American communist history
American defector story
American left history
American radical tradition
anti-fascist youth movements
Author_Victor Grossman
Berlin Wall era experiences
Blacklist era America
border crossings in Cold War Europe
Category=DNBH1
Category=GTM
Category=JPFC
Category=NHD
CIO labor movement studies
Cold War biographies
Cold War cultural history
Cold War memoir
Depression era childhood memories
dissident biographies
divided Germany studies
East Berlin social history
East Germany life
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
everyday life in East Germany
factory organizing in the 1940s
freelance reporting in Europe
German Democratic Republic history
Harvard student political activism
ideological conversion narratives
immigration through political defection
labor history memoirs
labor organizing history
life behind the Iron Curtain
life under state socialism
lived experience un
McCarthy era repression history
military desertion history
political asylum narratives
political exile accounts
political humor in memoirs
political journalism history
post-socialist transition studies
postwar German political systems
Red Scare era narrative
reunification critiques
secret police state studies
socialist economy evaluation
socialist state daily life
Soviet bloc perspective
Spanish Civil War solidarity history
tensions of divided Europe
transatlantic political journeys
travel writing in Eastern Europe
twentieth century radical politics
U.S. Army in Europe history
underground political networks
Western migrants to the Eastern bloc
Western observers of socialism
worker solidarity movements
Product details
- ISBN 9781558493858
- Weight: 509g
- Dimensions: 153 x 232mm
- Publication Date: 30 Jul 2003
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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What could impel a privileged 24-year-old American serving in the US Army in Germany in 1952 to swim across the Danube River to what was then referred to as the Soviet Zone? Why did he decide to forsake the land of his birth and build a new life in the young German Democratic Republic? These are the questions at the core of this memoir by Victor Grossman who was born Stephen Wechsler but changed his name after defecting to the GDR. A child of the Depression, Grossman witnessed first-hand the dislocations wrought by the collapse of the US economy during the 1930s. Unemployment, poverty, strikes and the fight to save Republican Spain from fascism made an indelible impression as he grew up in an environment that nurtured a commitment to left-wing causes. He continued his involvement with Communist activities as a student at Harvard in the late 1940s and after graduation, when he took jobs in factories in Buffalo, New York and tried to organize their workers. Fleeing McCarthyite America and potential prosecution, Grossman worked in GDR with other Western defectors, He was able to establish himself as a freelance journalist, lecturer and author. Travelling through East Germany he evaluated the failures as well as the successes of the GDR's ""socialist experiment"". He also recorded his experiences, observations and judgements of life in East Berlin after reunification, which failed to bring about the post-Communist paradise so many had expected.
Victor Grossman lives in Berlin. Mark Solomon is professor of history emeritus at Simmons College and author of The Cry Was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917- 1936.
