Victor Grossman

Victor Grossman is a journalist from the U.S. now living in Berlin. He fled his U.S. Army post in the 1950s in danger of reprisals for his left-wing activities at Harvard and in Buffalo, New York. He landed in the former German Democratic Republic (Socialist East Germany), studied journalism, founded a Paul Robeson Archive, and became a freelance journalist and author. His latest book, A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee, is about his life in the German Democratic Republic from 1949 – 1990, the tremendous improvements for the people under socialism, the reasons for the fall of socialism, and the importance of today's struggles.

LATEST ARTICLES BY Victor Grossman

Opinion

Germany’s pyrrhic victory over the Berlin Wall
November 12, 2019 By Victor Grossman
In the end, the odds were against the GDR. But its defeat doesn't mean the system it was building, socialism, was proven false.
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Politics

Thirty years later the Berlin Wall is again being “remembered”
October 15, 2019 By Victor Grossman
Why does the right wing all around the world continue to beat up on the long-gone German Democratic Republic (East Germany)?
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World

Impeachment is the first, not final, move to defeat Trumpism
September 30, 2019 By Victor Grossman
What’s really at stake is democracy, peace, progress, and survival at home and around the world.
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Culture

Will musical and film triumphs spill over into German politics?
September 18, 2019 By Victor Grossman
On August 24, the famed Berliner Philharmoniker (the Berlin Philharmonic) offered an amazing performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at Brandenburg Gate.
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World

Fascist AfD gains, but fails to enter governments in German elections
September 3, 2019 By Victor Grossman And John Wojcik
A path forward exists to keep the extreme right out of the state senates in Saxony and Brandenburg.
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World

Germans brace for fall showdown with their new breed of fascists
August 13, 2019 By Victor Grossman
While Trump attacks immigrants in America Europe’s fascists push for electoral victory in several German states.
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News

Playing tug-of-war in world politics can make everyone lose
July 25, 2019 By Victor Grossman
The resistance to war and fascism is beginning to win a few battles, however.
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Opinion

How could we ever bring ourselves to join the Communist Party?
July 22, 2019 By Victor Grossman
Victor Grossman, a Cold War exile from McCarthyism, responds to Kevin Baker's New York Times book review of "A Good American Family."
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