Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Munzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals

by Stephen Koch

Overview

Double Lives explores the subterranean role of Stalin’s propaganda agents. Ernest Hemingway, Lillian Hellman, André Malraux, Maxim Gorky, and Andre Gide are among a host of great writers who were the targets of Soviet propaganda toward intellectuals. The book describes the key role played by Willi Münzenberg in recruiting and manipulating them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781929631209
Publisher:	Enigma Books
Publication date:	08/01/2004
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	442
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Stephen Koch is chairman of the Writing Division of the School of Arts at Columbia University, New York. He lives in Manhattan.

Editorial Reviews

When the first edition of this book appeared in 1994, scholars were just beginning to delve into the murky world of Soviet espionage as revealed in the newly opened Soviet archives. In the intervening years, we have had multiple works on domestic spying by the Russians during the 1930s and 1940s, as well as new biographies of Whittaker Chambers by Samuel Tanenhaus and of Hiss by G. Edward White. As a result, we now know a great deal more about Soviet espionage activities on American soil. Koch's new edition is an updated version of his basic 1994 text, incorporating some of the new scholarship but keeping his main points basically intact. It remains a valuable contribution to this vibrant literature. At the center is Willi M nzenberg, who played a vital role in spreading Lenin's Communist message to the West through the Comintern and the Popular Front of the 1920s and 1930s until his mysterious death in a French forest in 1940. Koch shows how Western intellectuals became enamored of the Soviet message through M nzenberg's clever propaganda and joined the cause as fellow travelers in the era before World War II. With an updated bibliography and a streamlined text, Koch's new edition remains an essential treatment of how sophisticated the Soviet message could be and how susceptible Western intellectuals were to its claims. For academic and large public libraries. Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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