Victor has died

Don’t tell me you never heard of him?

Really?

I mean,

Shouldn’t you know about a 96-year-old American communist, Harvard educated,  US military defector, political propogandist, living for decades on Karl Marx Alee in East Berlin?

Well, let me tell you a bit about him.

After being introduced by my friend Kurt Stand, I first met Victor in 2017 at his 6^th floor rent- controlled apartment in East Berlin, joined by my East German friends, just minutes away from the Brandenburg Gate.

He had resided there since the days of the days of the GDR (German Democratic Republic) and had forsaken his US name, Stephen Wechsler.

I haven’t spoken to him for a couple years, but I have regularly received his well-respected BULLETIN. Just this February I read Issue # 231, with his comments on Germany’s recent special election.

Now, how many of us have continued to issue widely read, up-to-date, internationally respected political commentaries for close to 75 years?  

You know what I mean?

After serving us drinks and fruit he told us his story.

The essence of it is that he defected from the US military in 1952 to the post war Soviet controlled section of Austria during the height of the cold war by swimming across the Danube. (See his book-A Socialist Defector, published by Monthly Review.)

After noticing that my friends and I were sitting there with our jaws dropped, he continued.

He had been drafted after graduating from Harvard during the Korean War and was stationed in West Germany. 

But he had made an error in judgement. He told the army he wasn’t a Party member, and they found out that he lied and were about to court marshal and maybe imprison him.

So, he took the short cut to the Soviet Union for amnesty, by way of the Danube in Austria; what any red-blooded American would do in that situation.
Needless to say, the Soviets were shocked and suspicious. This was not an everyday occurrence, so they threw him in jail. 

But Victor’s charm and sophistication won their trust, and they sent him to work in a factory in East Germany, not a bad start in learning about a communist country.  Other prominent artists and intellectuals like Bertolt Brecht joined him there.

He loved to brag that he was the only person who had graduated from Harvard and Karl Marx University. And that, after many years, Harvard had him back as a special guest speaker and their reunions.

He married, raised two children and became a journalist, living there through the fall of the East German Wall.

And he kept on rolling until December 2025.

He was charming, warm, engaging, strongly opinionated and intellectually curious. You had to love him.

So, we talked for hours and went out to dinner.

He loved to argue that life in the GDR, although far from perfect, was without the anxieties of the West: healthcare, daycare, abortion, education etc., were all free. Imagine, he pondered, if that were the case in the US?  What choice would most people make if they had a choice-a secure life in the GDR or the wild unpredictability of capitalist US?

You couldn’t shake him from his view and having lived the privileged life of a Harvard grad before his life in the GDR, he knew whereof he spoke.

We met again on his US book tour in 2019 and in Berlin in the spring of 2023, over lunch with my East German friends. After agreeing about Palestine, we argued about Ukraine. He wouldn’t let NATO’s provocations off the hook in explaining the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I got his point, but did that mean Putin magically got off the hook?  He didn’t budge, but that didn’t interfere with the pleasure of engaging with this most engaging man. He left his mark on me and so many others.

He was the kind of guy you never forget. 

Thank you, Comrade, we will long remember you.

Oh, and thank you for your service.

Gene Bruskin

…

Also see a bio of Victor on Portside