Wende to Offer ‘A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee’

Victor Grossman is an American journalist, writer, and popular speaker who defected to the Soviet Union in 1952. He has since lived in East Germany, then in reunified Germany, chronicling life, politics, and humanity. Grossman will speak about his recent book A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee (2019).

Born Steve Wechsler in New York City in 1928, Victor’s political ideology was shaped by his experiences living in America during the Great Depression and the events of the Spanish Civil War. After earning an economics degree from Harvard, his communist ideals led him to earn a simple living as a factory worker. In 1950, in the beginning stages of the Korean War, Victor was drafted and while stationed in Germany, his left-wing past was uncovered by the military. Fearing a court-martial for his beliefs, he sought refuge in the Soviet bloc, changing his name to Victor Grossman and settling among like-minded comrades in the German Democratic Republic.

Lecture: Victor Grossman on “A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee”
Friday, May 31, 2019, 7 p.m.

 

The Actors' Gang

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*