What could possibly impel a relatively privileged
twenty-four-year-old American -- serving in the U.S. Army in
Germany in 1952 -- to swim across the Danube River to what was then
referred to as the Soviet Zone? How are we to understand his
decision to forsake the land of his birth and build a new life in
the still 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 firsthand the
dislocations wrought by the collapse of the U.S. economy during the
1930s. Widespread unemployment and poverty, CIO sit-down strikes,
and the fight to save Republican Spain from fascism -- all 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 two factories in Buffalo,
New York, and tried to organize their workers.
Fleeing McCarthyite America and potential prosecution, Grossman
worked in the GDR with other Western defectors and eventually
became, as he notes, the "only person in the world to attend
Harvard and Karl Marx universities." Later, he was able to
establish himself as a freelance journalist, lecturer, and author.
Traveling throughout East Germany, he evaluated the failures as
well as the successes of the GDR's "socialist experiment." He also
recorded his experiences, observations, and judgments of life in
East Berlin after reunification, which failed to bring about the
post-Communist paradise so many had expected.
Written withhumor as well as candor, Crossing the River provides
a rare look at the Cold War from the other side of the ideological
divide.
Mark Solomon, a distinguished historian of the American left,
provides a historical afterword that places Grossman's experiences
in a larger Cold War context.
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