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LOOKING BACKWARD AUTOBIOGRAPHICALLY  
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Victor Grossman
December 22, 2024
MR OnLine
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_ I still retain sparks of hope that 2025 will not see more gains for
the biblical Four Horsemen—War, Pestilence, Famine and
Devastation—but rather more struggle, at least a little forward and
upward motion. Inshallah! _

Karl Marx und das revolutionäre weltverändernde Wesen seiner
Lehre (Karl Marx and the revolutionary, world changing meaning of his
teachings), (image Credit: Flickr).

 

It’s reached that time again, a time to look forward but also, for
an old geezer like me to look backward. Being 96 for a while yet
(until March), I can permit myself some retrospection (while noting
that those two digits, if only reversed and embodied, might well have
been greatly preferable. Wot-the-hell, while I can still enjoy each
new spring and fall and even a snowy winter (if I ever see one again),
why shouldn’t I review the many happenings I observed or was part of
the worst of them, luckily, from a distance. (But if you’ve read my
“Crossing the River” or “A Socialist Defector” you can skip
all that follows.)

I’m old enough to remember, just barely, the Great Depression: lines
of shabby men waiting for free soup, better-dressed men selling apples
on streetcorners, miles of evil-smelling, self-made shacks in a
Hooverville near Newark. A few years later, with my cousin at Times
Square, I recall collecting money to “Save Madrid!”—and admiring
the Soviets for trying to help do just that, alone (with Mexico) for
two years against all the other countries. (And, also largely alone,
for bypassing the Depression, building the giant Dnepropetrovsk dam
and the model Moscow marble subway stations at New York’s World
Fair. In February 1937 I recall the movie newsreel with happy,
unshaven sit-down strikers at GM in Flint, waving from the factory
windows in a dramatic (Communist-led) victory which changed the USA.

And, in a friendly teacher’s room in September 1938, I recall
hearing Hitler boast of seizing much of Czechoslovakia, with British
and French compliance—and the tears of my Czech classmate Natalie. A
year later, as the only lefty in my class at posh Dalton School, I did
my 11-year-old best to convince classmates that Stalin had to sign the
pact with Hitler to avoid being hit from all sides; Japan in the East,
Germany in the West, with the acquiescence of Chamberlain and Daladier
as in Spain and Munich, hoping they might wreck each other. “The
USSR needs time to strengthen its defenses.”

I triumphed later when Pete Seeger, in one of his first concerts, had
all the kids singing leftwing, CIO songs. June 1941, when the
Wehrmacht stormed in, I felt sure the great USSR would smash them. It
did, but only after years of sacrifice and slaughter, perhaps 27
million dead, untold destruction—while we in safe but darkened,
rationed New York felt deep fear—and then enthusiasm as the tide
turned.

Saddened and worried by the death of the only president I had ever
known, I rejoiced at the photo of the GI-Red Army handshake on a
broken Elbe bridge, not dreaming that, 25 years later, I would be
commemorating that event at the bridge at Torgau.

Grateful that V-E Day against German y and V-J Day against Japan saved
me , at 17, from the draft and the war—and from a fate like that of
my cousin Jerry, taken prisoner at the Battle of the Bulge and, being
Jewish, slaved till his death in a Buchenwald outlier camp in
Thuringia. Spurred by Hiroshima-Nagasaki, post-war racist lynching and
a big CIO strike offensive, I helped build a Communist Party branch at
Harvard, covert in name but active against Jim Crow and in “Win the
Peace” actions, like our anti-atomic weapons parade through staid
Harvard Yard. In the summer of 1946 , in a lone hitchhike to
California and back, I got to know more of my country’s many
beauties—and many problems. I had a trip through France and wrecked
Germany—and six wonderful weeks at the first World Youth Festival in
Prague (1947), with anti-fascist partisan veterans from Europe,
freedom fighters from Greece, Vietnam, Burma, Africa, and new friends
from Tirana, Bucharest, Moscow, Capetown, Prague—and shared with
thousands my hopes for a new-born world.

1948 brought the glorious Henry Wallace/Progressive Party campaign,
collecting ballot signatures and getting to know leftist Italian,
Armenian and Greek communities plus, after the congress in
Philadelphia, with a bitterly-upsetting trip to North Carolina,
meeting folks in neighboring—but divided—Black and White poverty
and misery. Then, at a last Wallace rally in Boston, joining to cheer
Paul Robeson’s moving call, voicing our hopes, some day, for
socialism in America. And then the disastrous election defeat,
breaking all our hearts. During the campaign, I demonstrated against
the draft despite a media-inspired barrage of eggs and tomatoes, a
chipped tooth (with police acquiescence) and several hours in jail and
in court.

Despite my diploma and my mother, my decision to join the labor
movement—as a laborer, in Buffalo. I achieved little but learned a
lot—about fellow Americans and a daily class conflict at every work
bench, with a rise in militancy for a better contract broken by a
corrupt union leadership.

I found a “home away from home” with the Lumpkin family in the
Black ghetto and learned of hardship, joblessness, dope troubles and
police violence—as a witness when one of the family was beaten and
almost shot while protesting Jim Crow discrimination at the Canada
beach trip pier. I was at the great outdoor concert with Paul Robeson
in Peekskill in 1949, part of a crowd of 20,000 which the state police
forced to leave through a woodland sideroad , a gauntlet lined with
fascist gangs with piles of stones, breaking every window in my
bus—and all the busses—then blaming it on Robeson. This was
actually a final attempt to save the labor-left-wing from the 1930s,
but it was now now smashed by the McCarthys at home and the
Dulles-monopoly forces in foreign policy—and ten tough years of
fear, imprisonment and aggression. When the Korean War began in 1950
the draft, which I had marched against, was re-started, and this time
I was not too young. After arrival at the Army base in January 1951 we
had to sign a pledge of our political virginity. But the new McCarran
Act required every member of a leftist “front” to register as a
“foreign agent” or face five years for every day of not signing.
Nobody obeyed this nonsense, but I feared its threat, having been in a
dozen such organizations like the Young Progressives, American Labor
Party, Spanish Relief, Southern Negro Conference and Communist
Party!!! So I lied and signed, hoping that if I kept my nose clean and
my mouth shut I might outlast the two years with no checkup. At first
I had huge luck, getting sent to Bavaria not Korea. I tried to
conform. Only a few times, on weekend passes, I joined leftist youth
in Stuttgart for a meeting marking Women’s Day, spent a short
weekend with an old comrade from Harvard who had married and moved to
Vienna, and had a long talk in a leftist bookshop in Copenhagen with a
woman who had dared to bring anti-Nazi leaflets into soldiers’ bars
in occupied Copenhagen (and, in Tivoli Park, met and fell in love with
a perky, pretty young Danish woman).

But they caught up with me, possibly because of a denunciation to the
FBI by a fellow-student at Harvard, and ordered me to appear before a
military judge the following Monday. I knew that perjury such as mine
could get me up to $10,000 and five years at Leavenworth. But I had
five days left! After destroying all my mail and two leftwing books I
bought in Copenhagen I ate lunch, packed some cigarette cartons for
trading, took the train from Nuremberg to Salzburg, crossed into
Austria (with a forged three-day pass) and trained to Linz where,
after a desperate search and an exhausted nap in the woods I swam
across the Danube River from the USA-Zone and, shoeless and
disheveled, tried to find the Soviet Army HQ on the other side. I
couldn’t, but the Austrian policeman who picked me up could. The
officer there, friendly but reserved, sent me the next day to Soviet
HQ in Austria near Vienna, where I spent two weeks in a cellar cell,
under guard, and read twice through the only books they had in
English, “The History of Scotland” and “Sister Carrie”. After
an unusual drive with Red Army guards, with picnic breakfast when we
reached Czech territory, I was taken for two months to luxurious but
isolated quarters in largely ruined Potsdam, where I got a new name,
which I had asked for but then failed to think up for myself. Then I
landed in the mid-size town of Bautzen, amidst 30-40 other deserters
from six Western countries. I fought to better my German (tie score),
learned to work a lathe and had the supreme luck of meeting my
life-time wife and love, Renate, and her village family, which now
became my own as well. (All genuine anti-Nazis!)

In 1954 I was admitted to the Journalism School of re-named
Karl-Marx-University in Leipzig (founded 1409) and four years learning
about German history and literature, also some Russian, some
shorthand, some journalism, but mainly the GDR lay of the land—and
the ropes. Valuable sidelights: the students’ weeks helping new
cooperative farms with potato harvests and weeding sugar beets or
fixing tracks in immense open pit lignite mines. A sudden shock in
1956; the Khrushchev speech about the crimes under Stalin, causing
hours, weeks and years of regrets and new thinking, but retaining
gratitude for the efforts and sacrifices of millions in the USSR,
above all 1917-1921 and 1941-1945—with renewed hopes for a world
without billionaires, profit-takers or the resulting poverty and war.
My major events: Marriage, honey moon, first son Thomas and the move
to Berlin—in that order.

Four jobs in East Berlin: with Seven Seas English-language book
publisher Gertrude Heym (wife of the author Stefan Heym), then
assistant to John Peet, the former Reuters ace (and Spanish Civil War
vet) whose bi-weekly Democratic German Report offered positive
reporting on the GDR while exposing former Nazis on all levels of West
German society and government, and my learning journalism from an
expert. I missed reportage on new Berlin Wall, being on a Sunday visit
to the zoo—and was luckily unaffected personally by its years of
grave problems. After three years with the North America shortwave
section of Radio Berlin International , I spent 1965-1968 building up
a Paul and Eslanda Robeson Archive at the GDR’s Academy of Arts.

I always got along with colleagues, but never with bosses, so it was a
life-prolonging event when, at 40, I became a free-lance journalist,
occasional English teacher to scientists, film sub-titler but above
all speaker about USA developments. Due to my using humor and avoiding
black-and-white polit-jargon, and my criticism of much GDR
media-coverage I made some people angry, but somehow had a
“jester’s license” and more than abundant gigs all over the GDR
in all kinds of milieu. But after the flourishing 1960s and 1970s I
watched the GDR sliding into the exit ramp, lamed by aged,
out-of-touch leaders and pressures from the USSR but, above all, hit
unceasingly by two of the wealthiest economies in the world and their
masterful spin doctors every evening in TV. Like Fox!

I was happy that the Wall barrier separating families and friends was
gone, but very bitter about the swift, total colonization of what I
still see as a noble experiment which, like perhaps no other country,
almost completely abolished poverty, evictions and homelessness,
payment for medicine, health care, child care, abortion, all education
levels while keeping prices on rent, carfare, food staples and
necessities to a bare minimum. I also saw and despaired the bad sides,
but where are they absent? In 1994 I was finally able to visit my
homeland with my wife, after a short painless briefing at Fort Dix. I
found it not so very different from 43 years earlier. So much was so
very beautiful, I met so many good people (especially the brave ones
on “my side” of still existent barricades), I loved Central Park
with its Ramble full of old bird friends, and the green High Line on a
dismantled elevated train section. I wondered at endless shelves of
toothpaste brands, cereals, cheeses, vegetables, fruits and so many
goodies. But then the shocks: the homeless sleepers on park benches
around Central Park, the man sleeping in a cardboard box a block from
UN HQ , the sad old ladies with all their earthly belongings in a
shopping cart. And the price of a dental treatment or a one-night
checkup in a hospital—price: $5,000. On later trips: I always had
trouble with turnstiles and hideous subway stations and was unhappy
about the super-commercialization of Times Square and its painted,
living statues and stupidly costumed photo-beggars my heart was moved
by what still was my old home-town. But not enough to counteract a
feeling of relief after my return to my slower, quieter, even sleepier
Karl-Marx-Allee boulevard in Berlin. I have two contrasting home
towns.

But, unhappily, I see great problems for both of them, and also for
the countries and continents around them. I see a growing gap between
rich and poor, and if theories of cyclical crises again prove correct,
a possible economic depression ahead, conceivably worse than ever
before. More certainly by far, they all face seeming inevitable
ecological disaster. And worse, far worse and closer, though amazingly
ignored , downplayed or accelerated by some, l see the menace of
annihilating war, even atomic war. And bound up closely with all three
menaces I see the rapid growth of the bloodiest elements of
repression—modern forms of fascism—and already gaining strength in
many countries.

Behind every one of these menaces I see a limited cabal, once of
millionaires, now billionaires, sometimes rivals but united in their
hopes of controlling not half the world’s fortune but all of it,
determining the direction of every government no matter what its
changes and overturns. Clusters of three, six, eight conglomerates now
dominate almost every field of human endeavor in so much of this
world. And they want it all!

Some names have become symbols: Musk, Bezos, Gates, Soros, Murdock,
Springer, Zuckerberg, Disney. But the empires expand with changing
personnel: Merck, Pfizer, Purdue, Coca Cola, McDonalds, Mobil, BP,
Daimler, Toyota, VW, Cargill, Unilever, Amazon, Meta, Vanguard,
Blackstone…. Most dangerous are such as Lockheed Martin, Northrup
Grumman, Rheinmetall, Krupp-Thyssen…. New names show up, also in
North, South, East and West, but a handful dominates each field—and
seeks conquests and expansion. And all are absolutely merciless in
their greed, inhumanity and pressure for expansion!

The world must rid itself of these infections! That is its chance! So
I rejoice at every sign of working people’s rebelliousness—against
Amazon, Starbucks, VW, outside South Korean and Parisian parliaments,
surrounding Trafalgar Square, against French barracks in Niger and
Mali… I hearten to see courageous students at Harvard, UCLA, at
Humboldt University and FU [Freie Universitaet] here in Berlin, daring
to protest genocide and its suppliers. Can the majorities resist
oppression? Can they join hands, regain peace, defying media
demagogues, tear gas, water cannon and far worse? What will the future
hold? I won’t see all too much of it. But I can be grateful that,
aside from losing my Renate far too early, I’ve been lucky to have
had a good, always interesting life, spared from want and disaster but
witness to amazing slices of the world and its history.

And I still retain sparks of hope that 2025 will not see more gains
for the biblical Four Horsemen—War, Pestilence, Famine and
Devastation—but rather more struggle, at least a little forward and
upward motion. I’ll do the very little I can in that direction as
long as I can. Inshallah!

Best wishes to all of you—for good food, good drink, good books,
good times and good health—and peace to all of you in 2025. Keep
kicking!

Shalom! As-salaam alaikum !” No pasarán! Pasaremos!

Victor—or Steve, victorgrossmansberlinbulletin.wordpress.com
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_Victor Grossman is a journalist from the United States 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 University 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 (Monthly Review
Press), is about his life in the German Democratic Republic from 1949
to 1990, the tremendous improvements for the people under socialism,
the reasons for the fall of socialism, and the importance of today’s
struggles. His address is wechsler_grossman [at] yahoo.de (also for a
free sub to the Berlin Bulletins sent out by MR Online)._

_Monthly Review began publication in New York City in May 1949. The
first issue featured the lead article “Why Socialism?”
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Einstein. From the beginning, Monthly Review spoke for a critical
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organization.  Under the current editorial committee, led by John
Bellamy Foster, the magazine continues its long tradition
of analyzing what is new together with the equally vital task of
seeing the longer process. That tradition, as summarized by Paul
Sweezy, is to see “the present as history.” In 2006, MR began a
daily web magazine, MRzine [[link removed]], which
in 2017 was migrated to a new project, MR Online
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between radical activists, writers, and scholars around the world._

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