Crossing the River: A Memoir of the American Left, the Cold War, and Life in East Germany [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

As one reviewer has already stated, this book fills in a very important historical gap and deserves a wide readership. Beginning with the author's early life in an America more open to new ideas than the late 1940s, the narrative depicts the ugly days of the blacklist that could have led to Grossman's unjust imprisonment had he not fled to East Germany. However, his book is no blanket apology for the East German system since he keenly notes its flaws and failures to erect a more democratic system of government that could have paralleled the Prague Spring. It had its faults but there were also very important benefits that were lost after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the start of commodification and neo-Nazi movements. Grossman's chronicle involves his struggle with the system in an attempt to find his own way to make it work for both himself and his family. He also introduces readers to figures such as the barely known American activist singer Dean Reed (1937-2006) and Jane Fonda. The book contains a postscript by an American historian providing an interesting and balanced perspective on the events told. This work is important both as a personal history and chronicle of a particular era that has now gone away.

Between the end of World War II and the erection of the Berlin Wall, millions of eastern Germans escaped to what was, or would become, West Germany. There was a lot less traffic in the other direction. This is the story of one man who fled the West and wound up "behind the Iron Curtain" in East Germany. American-born Victor Grossman (né Stephen Wechsler) was literally a card-carrying Communist until he was drafted into the US Army -- a fact he did not disclose on a form asking whether he had ever belonged to any subversive organizations. In 1952, as an American soldier stationed in West Germany, Grossman received a letter requiring him to answer charges that he had lied under oath. Instead, Grossman went to then-occupied Austria and swam across the Danube into the Soviet zone. After being detained by Soviet intelligence, Grossman was given a new life and identity in the "German Democratic Republic."

Grossman was, is and remains a true believer in Communism. Grossman tells us that he got a thrill when he saw his first Soviet soldier, with the red star on his hat. Grossman justifies the building of the Berlin Wall and minimizes the wrongs of the Stasi, who except for dissidents were "unpleasant but less frightening than now portrayed." The book is written from a Communist perspective, which again and again minimizes the wrongs of the GDR and magnifies the wrongs of the United States. Yet, Grossman's argument that German communism did not necessarily preclude democracy collapses upon closer examination. A big problem for the GDR is that it had to live cheek by jowl with a free-market economy. If, as Grossman claims, the Berlin Wall was necessary to prevent GDR-educated professionals from fleeing and GDR-subsidized goods from being sold in West Germany at higher prices, then the GDR would have to remain a closed state to function. And that meant that GDR residents would not have the ultimate freedom to "vote with their feet" and leave. Grossman voluntarily chose to live under communism -- other East Germans did not have that choice. Their "revolution," such as it was, was imposed by the Soviet Union.

Nonetheless, even someone like me, whose political views are 180 degrees opposite from Grossman's, found the book engaging. One reason is that Grossman's story is so unusual. Very few American servicemen fled to East Germany and fewer probably met or interacted with as wide a range of people, including foreign celebrities like Jane Fonda. Additionally, there are very few memoirs written by Communists who came of age in the 1940s: most are written by those from the "popular front" era of the 1930s or the New Left of the 1960s. This book takes the reader to factory life in Buffalo, concerts by Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger, and all over the GDR. And the book is well-written: Grossman makes the most persuasive case possible for the benefits of his adopted country.

My personal opinion is this: As an American, I'm frankly glad that Victor Grossman left the country. Anyone who dislikes the American system as much as he does, and goes AWOL from the US Army to East Germany at the height of the Cold War, should live elsewhere. As a reader, however, I'm glad to have been able to read his book. While the author's views are (in my opinion) wrongheaded, the book never fails to be fascinating.

The book tells a story that few either in East or West are likely to know: How an American fled to the East, and what became of him there. A happy, quite fulfilled, life in the other Germany, which tried to build a socialist society in a fairly advanced, developed, country. Something we should study, unless we believe that capitalism is eternal.