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  • Monthly Review Essays

About Victor Grossman

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).
  • Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

    Political Renewals: Berlin Bulletin No. 234, May 19, 2025

    Victor Grossman

    Germany, long a synonym for economic brawn and muscle, is beginning to recall words like lumbago or sciatica instead. Though still leading in Europe, and fourth in the world, it faces an economic mess, a political mess, and a mood of general stress. Schools lack repairs and teachers, clinics and hospitals lack staff, its key […]

  • Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

    The Oval Room, Kyiv and the Kremlin: Berlin Bulletin No. 232, March 14, 2025

    Victor Grossman

    Some world events can look different to those of us onthis side of the Atlantic, also, more precisely, in Berlin. God knows, here too I’m frightened at what Trump, Vance and Musk are doing and planning. Nor do I love Putin. But what I hate above all else is war—and is closer over here. I’m […]

  • Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

    Laughter and fears: Berlin Bulletin No. 231, February 18, 2025

    Victor Grossman

    For good people these are times to weep, rage and, above all, to fight back!

  • Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

    USA Israel Germany: Berlin Bulletin No. 230, January 31, 2025

    Victor Grossman

    2025 started off with many a bang.

  • Karl Marx und das revolutionäre weltverändernde Wesen seiner Lehre

    Looking backward autobiographically

    Victor Grossman

    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.… 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.

  • Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

    Nursery rhymes and politics: Berlin Bulletin No. 229, November 16, 2024

    Victor Grossman

    Billions were spent both on aid to the Zelensky government…as an urgent defense necessity to counter “the Russian threat.” This threat has appeared and reappeared in Germany in 1914, the 1930s, after 1945 and now again, louder than ever, with similar barked Prussian commands: “Achtung! Die Russen kommen!” as dangerously false as ever, and often followed by eastward expansion, invasion and, far too often, catastrophe, with atomic annihilation an added danger this time around.

  • Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

    Boots and Boosts: Berlin Bulletin No. 228, November 28, 2024

    Victor Grossman

    While so many in the world hold their breath for Harris or Trump it would also be wise to keep an eye on Germany. A sharp eye!

  • Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

    Teetering and tears: Berlin Bulletin No. 227, October 11, 2024

    Victor Grossman

    Despite all the many years, those who hated the GDR still hate it today. Indeed, they seem to fear it, and continue almost daily to revile its memories—like kicking an old horse cadaver which might yet bite or strike out with a hoof or two.

  • Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

    Disgusted voters: Berlin Bulletin No. 226, September 24, 2024

    Victor Grossman

    Most worried of all are the people in eastern Germany, the one-time German Democratic Republic founded so hopefully almost exactly 75 years ago, October 7, 1949, and buried—triumphantly for a large number—41 years later, on October 3, 1990.

  • Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

    East German election trimmings: Berlin Bulletin No. 225, September 5, 2024

    Victor Grossman

    Is the AfD a fascist party? Björn Höcke, its boss  in Thuringia, one of its three best-known national leaders and its main rabble-rouser, has never concealed his admiration for Germany’s days of swastika glory.

  • Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

    Squaring circles for peace and war: Berlin Bulletin No. 224, July 11, 2024

    Victor Grossman

    One can hate or admire any of the gentlemen now involved [in the push for peace in Ukraine]; I would endorse Satan himself if he could help end this God-awful war and move towards the urgently-needed peace in the area—and elsewhere.

  • Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

    Germany and Netanyahu: Berlin Bulletin No. 223, June 7, 2024

    Victor Grossman

    Far from water-logged Bavaria, immensely worse destruction is bloodily wrecking two million lives, and with Germany, though so distant, deeply involved. Of course I mean Palestine, especially Gaza. For decades the media has distorted or ignored what has been happening there. After October 7th ignoring it was no longer possible, here or anywhere.

  • Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

    Humboldt and Gaza: Berlin Bulletin No. 222, May 4, 2024

    Victor Grossman

    It was May 10th in Germany’s terrible year 1933, Hitler had been in power for hardly three months, when students and staff emptied the university libraries of forbidden books and threw them, an estimated 20,000 books by over a hundred authors, into the flames of a giant bonfire.… No books were burned this time in early May. But there were ironic parallels, some all too alarming!

  • From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee: The Experiences and Reflections of an American Communist in East Germany

    Zhao Dingqi and Victor Grossman

    In this interview with Zhao Dingqi, Victor Grossman reflects on his life as an American communist in East Germany.

  • Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

    Taurus and the bullfighters: Berlin Bulletin No. 221, March 23, 2024

    Victor Grossman

    Weapons, weapons, weapons—the more the better! With ever louder talk about “the foe” and “protective measures”, as if Putin were amassing troops or maneuvering warships along German borders—instead of just the opposite taking place in the Baltic and Lithuania…The blitzkrieg-laden spirit of 1941 Germany is all over the media.

  • Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

    Split on the Left: Berlin Bulletin No. 218 – November 21 2023

    Victor Grossman

    Is it a tragedy or a new hope? After months, in fact years of inner-party squabbling in Germany’s LINKE party (The Left), the die has been cast, the Rubicon crossed, and Sahra Wagenknecht, with nine other Bundestag deputies, has quit the party and announced their decision to found a new party in January.

  • Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

    Historic events past and present: Berlin Bulletin no. 217

    Victor Grossman

    Again the USA marked Veterans’ Day. Now all leading German parties also want such a “Veteranentag”—to honor all those past patriots who wore uniforms, voluntarily or not, and certainly to inspire many more reluctant young men or women to put on army boots and shoulder arms.… Not so many may recall that the earlier “Armistice Day” marked the end of World War One.

  • Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

    Gaza and the world: Berlin Bulletin no. 26

    Victor Grossman

    If I were in Israel today I might well have fears from above, but immensely worse ones if I were in Gaza. Or the West Bank. As for Trump, I do still have fears of a come-back, despite his legal troubles. But my fears for world peace: are they unfounded, perhaps nightmare products of an upset stomach?

  • Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

    Othello and the War: Berlin Bulletin, September 11, 2023

    Victor Grossman

    The war in Ukraine, a horrific tragedy for the people of that unhappy country, fateful as well for many young Russians and potentially menacing for all the world, with burnished weapons of every size and destructive power waiting in silos or submarines for a slip, a blunder, a provocation.

  • Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

    Schism and Faschism: Berlin Bulletin no: 214, August 16, 2023

    Victor Grossman

    Again Victor Grossman turns to his faded history books, and to the uprisings—and then the defeat of divided leftists between 1919 and 1933. Where today is the LINKE, the party of peace, anti-fascism, anti-imperialism, socialism? It is in a crisis!

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Also By Victor Grossman in Monthly Review Magazine

  • Germany’s Hidden Social Crisis April 01, 2019

Books By Victor Grossman

  • A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee March 05, 2019

Monthly Review Essays

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    Sam-Kee Cheng A late 1940s Soviet poster showing a US military service member lounging on top of a German factory, smoking a cigar. The text beneath reads DER DOLLARIMPERIALISMUS [dollar imperialism].

    1. Introduction The predominance of US economic, political and military power in the world was established at the end of the Second World War.1 With just 6.3 percent of global population, the United States held about 50 percent of the world wealth in 1948. As the only power which had used nuclear weapons on civilian […]

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