Child of the revolution

by Wolfgang Leonhard

Translation of: Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder. "This English translation ... has been abbreviated from the original by the omission of some passages likely to be of less interest to English than to German readers"--P. 6. Includes index. (Source: WorldCat / http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/6065362?...)

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Russia, Autobiography, German Literature, Germany

447 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

German political author, publicist, and historian.

A former communist who fled to the Soviet Union in 1935, he became part of the "National Committee for the liberation of Germany". In 1945, he came back to East Germany as part of the "Ulbricht group", a special command of politicians and instructors.

In 1949, Leonhard defected from the Soviet Union and fled first to Yugoslavia and later to West Germany. Later he became a lecturer for the Columbia University and the Yale University as an expert on the Soviet Union.

In 1950 he co-founded the short lived Titoist Independent Workers Party Germany (UAPD) which has funded by Yugoslavia.

Reviews

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Memoirs of Wolfgang Leonhard who moved to the Soviet Union in his youth, got removed to Kazakhstan during the war, moved back to East-Germany with Group Ulbricht after the war before fleeing to Yugoslavia.

Interesting insides into the Soviet and GDR apparatus. Also interesting were his comments on the early anti-communist propaganda from the west which was very unconvincing to the East-Germans.

[Gerrit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Viel Neues gelernt, politisch sehr interessant, sehr kurzweilig - was will man mehr

[Flo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spannender Zeitzeugenbericht über ein höchstinteressantes Thema. Obwohl die Geschehnisse sowohl zeitlich als auch politisch weit weg liegen, kann man die Gedanken und zunehmenden inneren Konflikte des Autors genau nachvollziehen.

[Max Linden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed his style of writing and gaining a new perspective on how life in communism was. Looking through the lenses of a passionate socialist is an enriching experience. Bonus point for the nickname „Linden“ + shoutout to Kai for borrowing the book

[Jördis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Udssr immer sehr spannend, rhetorisch fand ich es kein Meisterwerk (aber ist auch hart wenn man viel Stalin, die kpdsu und sed funktionäre zitiert) aber habe nochmal viel über die anfänge der ddr und die sowjetunion gelernt

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leonhard’s memoir shines light on how one became and remained a true believer. As a non-utopian, laissez-faire type, I find communism fascinating, especially the Russian Revolution and the Stalin years. In 1935, Leonhard’s German communist mom took him, happily, to Moscow to escape the Third Reich. Bad idea. Mom ends up in the gulag after about a year and remains for a decade or so. A teenaged Leonhard raises himself with great success during those oh-so trying times. He manages to accept his mother’s disappearance and forced labor as a necessary thing for the good of all despite knowing she is not guilty of any wrongdoing. I suppose he’s gone native and taken on Russian fatalism to add to his childhood political indoctrination. The leadership must have reasons for these arrests. What can you do? He moves up the ranks around the Soviet Union without tripping up. Eventually he helps “lay the political groundwork for further developments” by broadcasting for Free German Radio in the Soviet Zone of early post-war Berlin. Along the journey, he interacts with a Who’s Who of prominent German communists, especially the more powerful exiles returning to Germany from the USSR to participate in the post-war government.
Then Leonhard escapes alone (with a little help from the outside) to Yugoslavia, ultimately settling in the US! The guy had superpowers. I would’ve ended up against the wall or frozen to death in a camp.

I like that Leonhard writes, as best he can, without over-inserting hindsight. He remains a believer throughout the book but decides that Stalinism is not socialism at all. He prefers Tito.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Das Buch gehört auf jeden Fall in die top 5 der besten Biografien, die ich jemals gelesen habe und zu einem der besten Bücher über kommunistische Regimes. Leonhard wuchs als Deutscher in der Sowjetunion auf und genoss die ersten Jahre große Vorzüge gegenüber der sowjetischen Bevölkerung. Bereits in jungen Jahren musste er miterleben, was es bedeutet in einem Staat zu leben, der immer totalitärer wird und Menschen mit abweichenden politischen Einstellungen verfolgt. Nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg ging Leonhard zurück nach Deutschland und war dort Teil des SED Zentralkomitees in der Abteilung Agitation und Propaganda. Aber auch dieses Regime entwickelte sich immer deutlicher hin zu einem totalitären Regime.

Auch, wenn er nach Jugoslawien floh und später in den Westen Deutschlands übersiedelte, so hat er mit der Idee des Kommunismus nie gebrochen.

Im Hinblick auf die derzeitige Ukraine Krise bietet dieses Buch viele Einblicke, wie die Sowjetunion aufgebaut war und wie es für Spitzenpolitiker im jetzigen Russland gewesen sein muss in der sowjetischen Zeit aufgewachsen zu sein. Man wurde auf politische regierungstreue getrimmt und Propaganda stand auf der Tagesordnung.
Natürlich möchte ich in keinster Weise verharmlosen, was die russische Regierung gerade in der Ukraine veranstaltet, aber man kann manche Entscheidungen durchaus besser verstehen, wenn man von einem Zeitzeugen vor Augen gehalten bekommt, wie es war in der UDSSR aufzuwachsen.

[Kai · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books Ii've ever read. Great storyteller

[Antonín Ptáček · Rating 5 out of 5]

Das erste Mal hörte ich von diesem Buch in den 70er Jahren in der Mittelschule. Damals leider nicht im Rahmen des Unterrichts, sondern von einem Mitschüler welcher im Deutschunterricht das Lesen anregte. Dazu ist es leider nicht gekommen. Schade, ich bin überzeugt, es sollte Grundstoff sein. Einige Jahre später habe ich es zum Ersten Mal gelesen und seither viele Male. Jeder politisch Interessierte sollte es kennen! Zumal der Autor Politisches mit Biografie mixt, und das in einem gutem Verhältnis.

[Johannes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is probably the best memoir about life under communism. The man lived through almost all of the communist era and experienced just about every facet of communist life from exile in Kazakhstan to working directly under the East German dictator Walter Ulbricht. If you are interested in this part of history, read this book.

[Laena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeder, der sich mit der Funktionsweise eines totalitären Systems auseinandersetzten will, sollte dieses Buch lesen.
Wolfgang Leonhard berichtet ehrlich und aus eigener Erfahrung und kann überdies sehr gut schreiben.
Hat mir super gefallen, auch wenn ich viele historische Begriffe erst einmal nachschlagen musste.

[Felix Holzapfel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Child of the Revolution was one of the favorite books of my grandmother. She was born in Germany in 1911 and experienced all ups and downs of German and European history in the twentieth century first-hand. We talked about politics every day when we had lunch together after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the CCCP/Sowjetunion. That was the time when she gave me the book. I read it back then, being a teenager and one more time a couple of years ago being an adult. I enjoyed the read both times because it's an outstanding piece of contemporary history. Wolfgang Leonhard describes how he left Germany after the Nazis came into power, how he went to the Sowjetunion and experienced Stalin's dramatic clean-up operations (his mother, his teachers, and friends got arrested), how he became a student of the Komintern school, and part of the communist elite, and how he was sent back to Germany after World War II to rebuild the former GDR (East Germany). His memoirs are really history to touch. Not only for Germans (like me), but I guess for everyone who wants to learn from history trying to avoid history repeating...

[Lexi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Flohmarktfund, aber was für einer. Ganz schöner Klopper aber keine Längen. Tolles Zeitwerk (1955) über einen jungen deutschen Kommunisten, der in er Sowjetunion unter Stalin aufwuchs, Funktionär wurde und in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone die DDR mit aufbaute - bis er vor der SED nach Jugoslawien floh. Spannende Perspektive auf eine spannende Zeit. Absolute Leseempfehlung auch 2022 noch.

[Mothwing · Rating 4 out of 5]

My mother told me about this book in the mid-nineties and it's been on my TBR list ever since, and much like Wolfang Welsch's autobiography, this one sends cold shivers down my spine at what humans are capable of.

[Nathaniel Flakin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wolfgang Leonhard grew up in the Stalinist Soviet Union. His mother fled Berlin for Moscow in 1935, but she was arrested just one year later. Leonhard was therefore raised in an orphanage, and eventually studied at the Comintern University. He was the youngest member of the "Gruppe Ulbricht," a small group of German Stalinists who returned to Berlin in 1945 to set up a new state. Leonhard played a number of leading roles in the creation of the Socialist Unity Party and the German Democratic Republic. But when during the Tito-Stalin split, he became very sympathetic to the Yugoslavian side. He defected to Belgrade in 1949, and soon resettled in West Germany.

This book, originally titled "The Revolution Fires Its Children," was a huge bestseller around the world – something like 600,000 copies were sold in West Germany alone. It gives a firsthand account of the zigs and zags of Soviet politics from the perspective of a young, committed Stalinist. What was it like to hear that 70% of the German antifascist exiles in the Soviet Union, including one's own mother, were in fact Gestapo spies? And then to learn, not much later, that Hitler was actually an ally? What was it like to be deported to central Asia along with everyone whose passport said "German"? And what was it like, while studying at the Comintern school, to learn that the Communist International founded by Lenin had been dissolved with no advanced warning?

Leonhard's critique of Stalinism is totally contradictory. He sees many of the problems with bureaucratic rule: the cult-like techniques to suppress free discussion and workers' democracy. But his only recipe is that each Stalinist state should have national autonomy — as a Titoist, that's basically his entire program. It's a shame Leonhard never had a chance to study the original Communist opposition to Stalinism. At the Comintern school, they were given original texts by Nazis in order to study them. But they never got to see a single line by Trotsky, Bukharin, or any other oppositionist, even though they were constantly being denounced. Leonhard managed to surreptiously skim a few articles by Trotsky while hastily sorting the Comintern archives in 1945 so they could be returned to Moscow — apparently the CPUSA files had a few copies of the Militant.

With such a weak theoretical framework, Leonhard soon broke with any kind of socialism became a professional anticommunist. But I still really enjoyed this book and would recommend it as an eyewitness account to Stalinism.

[DoctorM · Rating 5 out of 5]

I discovered "Child of the Revolution" long ago--- a used paperback purchased on impulse late in high school. It seemed intriguing: the autobiography of a man who'd been a communist, educated in Soviet schools, and who when he broke with Stalinism at the end of the 1940s, fled to Yugoslavia rather than the West. Much later, I had the opportunity to takes classes at New Haven with Leonhard, and learned a great deal from him about eastern Europe, about Soviet history and politics, and about the evolution and decay of Marxism. He was a fine lecturer who was easily accessible to his students, and I hope his autobiography stays in print, even in these post-Soviet days.

"Child of the Revolution" offers a well-written, deeply-informed account of growing up in Stalin's USSR. Leonhard was the child of German Communists who'd fled Hitler and who, after his mother vanished into the gulag, was raised in Soviet orphanages and then selected for a fast-track education by the Party. Despite being exiled to the Kazakh wastes as a German when the war began, he was soon back in Moscow, moving among the cadre of Party members putting together a postwar Communist government for what would become the DDR. His account of his life both in the Soviet Union and in Ulbricht's new satellite East Germany and of his disillusionment is powerful, thoughtful, and worth considering. Even in the late 1970s Leonhard remained committed to the hope of a Marxist humanism and to the kinds of social criticism being developed by figures such as the Budapest Circle.

I'm quite prejudiced here, I'll admit. I loved this book at sixteen, and I was thrilled to be able to take classes with Leonhard. But this is a fine work of autobiography as well as an insightful look into the early history of the eastern bloc states. Very much worth reading.

[Patrisya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Child of the Revolution by Wolfgang Leonhard became one of my favorite books ever. Probably the best memoir about life under communist regime.

Since early childhood, Wolfgang Leonhard was exposed to Marxist ideology. His mother was a member of communist party, and introduced her son to the system. When they escaped to Soviet Russia, she became victim of Stalin’s purge and was sentenced to 12 years forced labor.

After his mother had been sent to the gulag, Leonhard joined one of the Soviet schools. He caught attention of The Party and was selected for the fast- track training. Consequently, he became a member of the Soviet intelligentsia. He then came back to East- Germany with the ''Ulbricht group'' to pave the way for communist state. Finally he understood that his vision of socialism was different from Stalin's plan for the world.

Although the system took his mother from him, he still was blindly believing in the rightness of the system. On one hand, he was suffering, on the other he believed that was the way it should be because the communist system could not be wrong. Individual lives could not compromise the communists’ vision for the world order.

Leonhard offers deeply- informed account of every facet of life under communist regime. The book is a vivid picture of evolution of Marxist ideology, rules of Soviet communism, indoctrination and political blindness. Despite manipulation, brainwashing and omnipresent fear, Leonhard was able to break up with Stalinism and to choose his own vision of socialism.

I would recommend this book to everyone who is interested in history and communism. This highly informative book not only gives insight into life under communist regime but also shows the mechanism of political indoctrination in general. I wish The Child of Revolution received more coverage because it truly deserves it.

[Rainy Rebo]

Dieses autobiographische Werk von Leonhard habe ich als Hörbuch gehört. Diesmal ein guter Einblick von innen in die Fehler des Stalinismus. Die Behandlung aus eurokommunistischer Sicht gefällt mir in diesem Werk und man merkt auch die Anteilnahme an menschlichen Schicksalen. Ideologische Diskurse werden belegt dargelegt und es mutiert niemals zu einer kühlen Beschreibung der Umstände. Besonders das Hervorheben des jugoslawischen Wegs hat weitere Interessen geweckt. Ich sollte mehr mich mit dem Titoismus und dem Staat und der Gesellschaft Jugoslawiens beschäftigen.

[Mollie]

In English this is called "Child of the Revolution". It's a fascinating autobiography of this man's experience growing up in communist Russia during WWII and eventually defecting to the U.S. He paints vivid pictures of his experiences, personal beliefs, State beliefs and propaganda, and is able to incorporate a macro worldview as well, as its written after he defected and could research the rest of the worlds position during his experiences. Very well written.

[Johannes · Rating 5 out of 5]

"This book is probably the best memoir about life under communism. The man lived through almost all of the communist era and experienced just about every facet of communist life from exile in Kazakhstan to working directly under the East German dictator Walter Ulbricht. If you are interested in this part of history

[Madlen Chen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolut lesenswert!