Ronald Radosh

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Ronald Radosh
Born1937 (age 86–87)
New York City, United States[1]
EducationPhD (history)
Alma materUniversity of Wisconsin
Occupation(s)Writer, professor, historian
Known forRosenberg espionage case
Spouse(s)Alice Schweig (m. 1959; divorced)
Allis Rosenberg Radosh
(m. 1975)
Websitewww.hudson.org/experts/335-ronald-radosh

Ronald Radosh (

Marxist
.

As he described in his memoirs, Radosh was, like his

Communist Party of the United States of America until the exposure of the truth about Stalinism began during the Khrushchev Thaw. He later became an activist in the New Left against the Vietnam War
.

Radosh turned his attention in the late 1970s to

FBI documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and interviewing their friends and associates, however, Radosh was forced to conclude that the Rosenbergs had indeed committed espionage for the Soviet KGB during the Manhattan Project and the Korean War
, the crime for which they were both executed. When Radosh published his conclusions, despite his efforts to be balanced and objective, the American New Left was outraged.

Radosh credits his subsequent ostracism and cancel culture experience, which he termed at the time "Left-Wing McCarthyism", as the moment when his political views began to shift towards neoconservatism, and his subsequent research as a historian has continued to make him very critical of both Marxism and Communism.[2] Currently employed by the Hudson Institute, Radosh has also published an expose about the covert activities of Joseph Stalin's NKVD and the Red Terror during the Spanish Civil War.

His most recent book, about the foundation of the

State of Israel, was co-authored with his second wife, Allis Radosh: A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel was published by HarperCollins in 2009.[3] The Radoshes are currently writing a book about the presidency of Warren G. Harding, to be published by Simon & Schuster
.

Early life

Radosh was born in the

His maternal uncle, Irving Keith (formerly Irving Kreichman), had trained at the

anti-Stalinist Left were a crypto-Fascist "rearguard" who sought to, "create divisions in the Popular Front".[6]

In the 1940s and the 1950s, he attended the

Like almost everyone else he knew, Radosh was involved in protesting against American involvement in the Korean War and also believed in William A. Reuben's "first conspiracy theory... that the U.S. Government had framed the Rosenbergs and forced the key government witness, Harry Gold, to lie on the witness stand".[9]

On June 19, 1953, Radosh joined

Labor Youth League regalia. He later recalled, "That moment would remain etched in my memory, forever the symbol of what awaited good, progressive Jews who dared to stand up for their beliefs. It would take almost forty years for me to face up to the real meaning of the Rosenberg case for America."[10]

University education

He began attending the

anti-Stalinist Left, which Radosh had been raised to detest.[12]

In 1959, Radosh arrived at the

Iowa City, "boasted one small, dilapidated movie theatre, many bars, [and] few restaurants", "the town also had its bohemian and political fringe". For example, there was already one off-campus "Greenwich Village-style coffee shop" where Radosh regularly met to play folk music with Robert Mezey, Sol Stern, and other fellow radicals with whom he helped found the "Iowa Socialist Discussion Club."[13]

In September 1961, the Radosh family returned to Madison. Radosh had received his masters as a historian, and began working towards his doctorate under William Appleman Williams, one of the founders of the "Wisconsin School" of diplomatic history, who further drew his young protege into the New Left.[14]

Meanwhile, Ronald and Alice Radosh twice hosted, at their studio apartment along State Street in Madison, a young and unknown guitar playing folk singer, who deliberately dressed like and emulated Woody Guthrie and whose name was Bob Dylan. Dylan once told Radosh, "I'm going to be as big a star as Elvis Presley... I'll play the same and even bigger arenas. I know it."[15]

Radosh and Dylan performed together at, "regular, impromptu hootenanny sessions in a small new cafe on State Street, a place modeled after Greenwich Village hangouts". Radosh later recalled, "In the years to come, I often wished someone had been running a tape recorder at these regular sessions."[16]

Despite being raised as a

Labor Youth League, Radosh broke with the Soviet-backed Communist Party USA and continued to become a founding father of the American New Left.[18]

In 1963, he returned to New York City with his wife and children.

Vietnam War

After teaching at two

Committee to Stop the War in Vietnam
. He recalled:

When Norman Thomas died in 1968, I wrote what may have been the only published negative assessment of his life. Most obituaries heralded Thomas as the nation's conscience, a man of principle who had turned out to be right about a great deal. Of course, Thomas was against the war in Vietnam; he had made a famous speech in which he said he came not to burn the American flag but to cleanse it. But for radicals like myself, that proved that he was a sellout. His opposition to the war was so tame, I argued, that he actually helped the American ruling class. I claimed that Thomas' opposition to LBJ's bombing campaign was only a "tactical" difference with the President. Thomas' chief sin, in my view, was to have written that he did not, "regard Vietcong terrorism as virtuous". He was guilty of attacking the heroic Vietnamese people, instead of the United States, which was the enemy of the world's people. My final judgment was that Thomas had "accepted the Cold War, its ideology and ethics and had decided to enlist in fighting its battles" on the wrong—the anti-communist—side.[19]

Soon afterward, Radosh also joined the New York chapter of Students for a Democratic Society.[20]

In his book Prophets on the Right, completed in 1974, Radosh referred to himself as both "an advocate of a socialist solution to America's domestic crisis" and "a radical historian."[21] The book profiles several historical conservative or far-right isolationists, "critics of American globalism," men who were "outside the consensus, or the mainstream... [and] regarded as subversive of the existing order." Radosh's stated aim in writing the book was to "move us... to think carefully about alternative possibilities" to "our current predicament," which was a clear reference to the ongoing Vietnam War.[22]

In 1976, Radosh was a "founding sponsor" of James Weinstein's magazine In These Times.[23]

Second thoughts

While researching his 1978 article The Rosenberg File and expanding it into a 1983 book of the same name, Radosh was forced to conclude that Julius Rosenberg had been guilty of both treason and espionage and that Ethel was aware of his activities.

At the same time, however, Radosh and his two respective coauthors also exposed and condemned multiple acts of

United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights during the era of McCarthyism
.

Radosh also learned, however, that the U.S. Department of Justice had gone for the

Despite his claims of being unbiased and evenhanded as a historian, however, Radosh founded himself subjected to both ostracism and character assassination by the American New Left in an effort to discredit the conclusions in his book. One friend told him, "The facts are irrelevant, we need the Rosenbergs as heroes."[citation needed]

As a result of their 1983 book and the subsequent revelations in the Vassiliev papers as well as decrypted Soviet intelligence communications from the era through the

handler and agent recruiter whose active network of moles and couriers stole highly significant military and nuclear secrets for the Soviet Union during both World War II and the Korean War
.

A second edition of The Rosenberg File was published by

collapse of the Soviet Union
.

Radosh's memoirs, published in 2001 as Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover Left, discussed the various reasons for his disillusionment with Marxist solutions and embrace of

Sandinistas
.

The Rosenberg's co-defendant

spy ring
.

Radosh is now an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C.,[25] and a professor of history emeritus at the City University of New York (CUNY).[26] He was a faculty member at Queensborough Community College and the Graduate Faculty in History at CUNY.

Radosh's writings have appeared in The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, National Review, the blog FrontPage Magazine, and many other newspapers and magazines.

Family

Radosh married Alice Schweig in the summer of 1959. He recalls, "Our wedding was on Labor Day weekend, and after the ceremony we drove into New York to spend one night in town. We celebrated our wedding by watching the annual proletarian Labor Day parade that still marched through downtown New York."[27] They separated in 1969 and later divorced.[28]

In October 1975, Radosh married Allis Rosenberg,[29] who has a PhD in American History and has co-authored two books with him. The couple reside in Silver Spring, Maryland.[30]

Controversy

On 7 August 2014, Radosh reviewed

Western Allies and policies during World War II to favor the Soviet Union. Radosh criticized West's limited knowledge of the scholarly literature and called her thesis a "yellow journalism conspiracy theory."[31]

West published a follow-up book focusing on the attack on her by Radosh and others. The journal The New Criterion had a full-fledged dialogue about the issues that arose because of his critique of West.[32]

Works

Books

Articles

Book reviews

Contributions

References

  1. ^ Ronald Radosh (2001). Commies; A Journey through the Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover Left. Encounter Books. p. 1.
  2. ^ Goldman, Andrew (November 22, 2012). "Oliver Stone Rewrites History". The New York Times. Retrieved April 29, 2018.
  3. ^ "Q&A with Ronald and Allis Radosh | C-SPAN.org".
  4. ^ Ronald Radosh, Commies; A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover Left, Encounter Books, 2001. pp. 10-11
  5. ^ Ronald Radosh, Commies; A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover Left, Encounter Books, 2001. p. 1.
  6. ^ Ronald Radosh, Commies; A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover Left, Encounter Books, 2001. pp. 9-10.
  7. ^ Commies, Chapter 2, "Commie Camp", pp. 15–24.
  8. ^ Commies, Chapter 3, "The Little Red Schoolhouse", pp. 25–48.
  9. ^ Ronald Radosh, Commies; A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover Left, Encounter Books, 2001. pp. 46-47.
  10. ^ Commies, pp. 47–48.
  11. ^ Commies, pp. 49–50.
  12. ^ Commies, pp. 51–52.
  13. ^ Commies, p. 65–66.
  14. ^ Commies, p. 69–76.
  15. ^ Commies, pp. 76–77.
  16. ^ Commies, p. 77.
  17. ^ Commies, p. 78–79.
  18. ^ Commies, pp. 65–82.
  19. ^ Commies, pp. 89–90.
  20. ^ Commies, p. 90.
  21. ^ Prophets on the Right, pp. 11, 13.
  22. ^ Prophets on the Right, p. 14.
  23. ^ "About". In These Times. Retrieved March 22, 2015.
  24. ^ Sol Stern and Ronald Radosh, The New Republic (June 23, 1979).
  25. ^ "Hudson Institute > Hudson Institute > Learn About Hudson > Staff Bio". www.hudson.org. Archived from the original on October 9, 2002.
  26. ^ "Queensborough Community College".
  27. ^ Commies, p. 63.
  28. ^ Commies, pp. 103–106
  29. ^ Commies pp. 113, 119–120
  30. ^ "Allis Radosh from HarperCollins Publishers". Archived from the original on February 7, 2010.
  31. ^ Nicholas Goldberg (August 8, 2013). "Why scholars are challenging Howard Zinn and Diana West". Los Angeles Times.
  32. ^ "American Betrayal, an Exchange: Ron Radosh" (January 2014). The New Criterion, vol. 32, no. 5. Retrieved October 10, 2020.
  33. New Republic. p. 15 – via Central Intelligence Agency
    .

External links