David Dallin
| David Dallin | |
|---|---|
| Born |
David J. Dallin 1889 Rogachev, Russia |
| Died | 1962 (aged 72–73) New York |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | writer and lecturer |
| Spouse(s) | Eugenia, Lilia Estrin Dallin |
| Children | Alexander Dallin |
David J. Dallin (1889 – February 21, 1962) was a one-time Menshevik leader and later a writer and lecturer on Soviet affairs, who helped Victor Kravchenko defect in the 1940s.
Dallin was born in Rogachev, White Russia, in 1889.
He studied at the University of St. Petersburg from 1907 to 1909, when he faced arrest and imprisonment for anti-tsarist political activity. After two years of imprisonment, he fled Russia to Germany. He studied at the University of Berlin and obtained his doctorate in Economics from the University of Heidelberg in 1913.
Following the February Revolution of 1917, Dallin returned to Russia. He won election to the central committee of the Menshevik group of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and represented the group on the Moscow City Soviet from 1918 to 1921. The Bolsheviks arrested him a first time in 1920, and he avoided a second arrest in 1922 by fleeing back to Germany. He stayed in Germany until the Nazis forced him to leave in 1935, when he settled in Poland. He stayed in Poland until the outbreak of World War II in 1939, when he moved to the United States.
Through a friend of his wife Lilia, Dallin came to welcome Victor Kravchenko in their home in New York in January 1944. The next day, Kravchenko revealed his wish to defect from the Soviet embassy. Dallin encouraged Kravchenko to defect. He approached the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, William C. Bullitt, whom he had known in Moscow, for advice. (Bullitt had also been involved with another Soviet defector, Walter Krivitsky.) Bullitt called Attorney General Francis Biddle and then extricated himself from the matter. Biddle brought in the FBI. In March, Dallin met Kravchenko in Pennsylvania, where the latter had an official trip. Dallin advised Kravchenko about his contact with the FBI. Kravchenko followed his advice and contacted the FBI, who interviewed him three times in Washington before the end of the month. Dallin and his wife then met Kravchenko when he arrived in New York again in April as a defector. Dallin advised Kravchenko to tell his story to the New York Times as soon as possible: Kravchenko began drafting his story that first night. The next day, Dallin brought New York Times labor journalist Joseph Shaplen to meet Kravchenko. When Shaplen and Kravchenko did not get along, Dallin turned to a former United Press correspondent to Moscow, Eugene Lyons, by then editor of The American Mercury. He also introduced him to Isaac Don Levine and Max Eastman. (Levine had been Krivitsky's co-writer of the memoir In Stalin's Secret Service.) Lyons, Levine, and Eastman would form the core group of co-writers and co-editors of Kravchenko's best-selling memoir, I Chose Freedom; Dallin would form part of a second tier of supporters.
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