The Cold War and the Mystery of An Anti-Stalinist Intellectual: Josef Guttmann's Two Lives

S354, CGIS South Building
1730 Cambridge St.
Cambridge
Mon., Apr. 20, 2026, 4:30 – 6 p.m.



Jacques Rupnik's book delves into the mystery of Josef Guttmann, a Marxist intellectual and a leading figure in the Czechoslolvak Communist Party, who split with the party over the Soviet Union's strategy that helped bring Hitler to power in1933. The Czech historians who in 1968 helped rehabilitate Guttmann's name had no idea of what had happened to him after he left the country at the end of 1938. Nor did exiled historians from Czechoslovakia know anything about his fate when they were asked about him in the late 1970’s and early 1980s. Conversely, U.S. scholars of Soviet affairs and Guttmann’s former colleagues at the Library of Jewish Information of the American Jewish Committee in New York, where Guttmann worked as a researcher during most of his life in the United States, had no idea about Guttmann's role as a member of the Czechoslovak Communist Party leadership in the early 1930’s.

Gazette Classification: Humanities, Lecture, Social Sciences
Organization/Sponsor: Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
Speaker(s): Jacques Rupnik, Center for International Research, Sciences Po (Paris), Mark Kramer, Director, Cold War Studies Project, Davis Center
Cost: Free
Ticket Web Link: www.eventbrite.com…
Contact Info: [email protected]
Harvard Key Required: No
More info: daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu…