Ronald Radosh | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1937 (age 86–87) New York City, United States[1] |
| Education | PhD (history) |
| Alma mater | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| 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 (/ˈreɪdɒʃ/ RAY-dosh; born 1937) is an American social conservative writer, professor, historian, and former Marxist.
As he described in his memoirs, Radosh was, like his Ashkenazi Jewish parents, a member of the 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 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, whom he had believed for decades to have been the innocent victims of judicial murder by a kangaroo court. After studying declassified FBI documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and interviewing their friends and associates, however, Radosh came to the conclusion 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 what he considered to be his efforts to be balanced and objective, the American New Left was outraged.
Radosh describes his subsequent experience, which he termed at the time "Left-Wing McCarthyism", as the moment when his political views began to shift towards neoconservatism, and states that 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.