Ronald Radosh
Ronald Radosh | |
---|---|
Born | 1937 (age 86–87) New York City, United States[1] |
Education | PhD (history) |
Alma mater | University of Wisconsin |
Occupation(s) | Writer, professor, historian |
Known for | Rosenberg espionage case |
Spouse(s) | Alice Schweig (m. 1959; divorced) Allis Rosenberg Radosh
(m. 1975) |
Website | www |
Ronald Radosh (
As he described in his memoirs, Radosh was, like his
Radosh turned his attention in the late 1970s to
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
Early life
Radosh was born in the
His maternal uncle, Irving Keith (formerly Irving Kreichman), had trained at the
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
University education
He began attending the
In 1959, Radosh arrived at the
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
In 1963, he returned to New York City with his wife and children.
Vietnam War
After teaching at two
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
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
A second edition of The Rosenberg File was published by
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
The Rosenberg's co-defendant
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
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
- American Labor and United States Foreign Policy. New York: Random House, 1969.
- Debs. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971.
- A New History of Leviathan: Essays on the American Corporate State. Edited with Murray Rothbard. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972.
- Prophets On The Right: Profiles of Conservative Critics of American Globalism. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1975.
- The New Cuba: Paradoxes and Potentials. New York: Morrow, 1976.
- The Rosenberg File: A Search for Truth. Co-authored with Joyce Milton. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983; Reissued with new introduction: New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
- Divided They Fell: The Demise of the Democratic Party, 1964–1996. New York: Free Press, 1996.
- The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism. Co-authored with Harvey Klehr. University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
- Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover Left. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001.
- Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War Co-authored with Mary R. Habeck and Grigorii Nikolaevich Sevostianov. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
- Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony's Long Romance With The Left. Co-authored with Allis Radosh. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2005.
- A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel. Co-authored with Allis Radosh. New York: HarperCollins, 2009.
Articles
- "John Spargo and Wilson's Russian Policy, 1920." JSTOR 1890847.
- "Were the Rosenbergs Framed?" New York Review of Books(Jul. 21, 1983).
- [33] "Books in Review. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression." First Things (Feb. 2000).
- "The Sandbagging of Robert 'KC' Johnson." New York Sun.
- "Why Conservatives Are So Upset with Thomas Woods's Politically Incorrect History Book." History News Network.
- "The Cuba Conundrum: Who Is Attacking Our Diplomats and Spies in Cuba?" Hudson Institute (Oct. 4, 2017).
Book reviews
- "Democracy and the Formation of Foreign Policy: The Case of F.D.R. and America's Entrance Into World War II." Review of F.D.R.'s Undeclared War, 1939 to 1941 by T. R. Fehrenbach. Left & Right, vol. 3, no. 3 (Spring/Autumn 1967) pp. 31–38.
Contributions
- "Preface." As We Go Marching, by John T. Flynn. New York: Free Life Editions, 1973.
References
- ^ Ronald Radosh (2001). Commies; A Journey through the Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover Left. Encounter Books. p. 1.
- ^ Goldman, Andrew (November 22, 2012). "Oliver Stone Rewrites History". The New York Times. Retrieved April 29, 2018.
- ^ "Q&A with Ronald and Allis Radosh | C-SPAN.org".
- ^ Ronald Radosh, Commies; A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover Left, Encounter Books, 2001. pp. 10-11
- ^ Ronald Radosh, Commies; A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover Left, Encounter Books, 2001. p. 1.
- ^ Ronald Radosh, Commies; A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover Left, Encounter Books, 2001. pp. 9-10.
- ^ Commies, Chapter 2, "Commie Camp", pp. 15–24.
- ^ Commies, Chapter 3, "The Little Red Schoolhouse", pp. 25–48.
- ^ Ronald Radosh, Commies; A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover Left, Encounter Books, 2001. pp. 46-47.
- ^ Commies, pp. 47–48.
- ^ Commies, pp. 49–50.
- ^ Commies, pp. 51–52.
- ^ Commies, p. 65–66.
- ^ Commies, p. 69–76.
- ^ Commies, pp. 76–77.
- ^ Commies, p. 77.
- ^ Commies, p. 78–79.
- ^ Commies, pp. 65–82.
- ^ Commies, pp. 89–90.
- ^ Commies, p. 90.
- ^ Prophets on the Right, pp. 11, 13.
- ^ Prophets on the Right, p. 14.
- ^ "About". In These Times. Retrieved March 22, 2015.
- ^ Sol Stern and Ronald Radosh, The New Republic (June 23, 1979).
- ^ "Hudson Institute > Hudson Institute > Learn About Hudson > Staff Bio". www.hudson.org. Archived from the original on October 9, 2002.
- ^ "Queensborough Community College".
- ^ Commies, p. 63.
- ^ Commies, pp. 103–106
- ^ Commies pp. 113, 119–120
- ^ "Allis Radosh from HarperCollins Publishers". Archived from the original on February 7, 2010.
- ^ Nicholas Goldberg (August 8, 2013). "Why scholars are challenging Howard Zinn and Diana West". Los Angeles Times.
- ^ "American Betrayal, an Exchange: Ron Radosh" (January 2014). The New Criterion, vol. 32, no. 5. Retrieved October 10, 2020.
- New Republic. p. 15 – via Central Intelligence Agency.