Eugene Lyons

Eugene Lyons (July 1, 1898 – January 7, 1985) was an American journalist and writer. A fellow traveler of Communism in his younger years, Lyons became highly critical of the Soviet Union after several years there as a correspondent of United Press International. Lyons also wrote a biography of President Herbert Hoover.

Eugene Lyons was born July 1, 1898, to a Jewish family in the town of Uzlyany, now part of Belarus but then part of the Russian empire. His parents were Nathan Lyons and Minnie Privin. His parents emigrated to the U.S., and he grew up among the teeming tenements of the Lower East Side of New York City.

"I thought myself a 'socialist' almost as soon as I thought at all," Lyons recalled in his memoirs. As a youth he attended a Socialist Sunday School on East Broadway, where he sang socialist hymns such as "The Internationale" and "The Red Flag." He later enrolled as a member of the Young People’s Socialist League, the youth section of the Socialist Party of America (SPA).

In 1916, Lyons enrolled in the College of the City of New York before transferring to Columbia University the next year. During his school years he worked as an assistant to an English teacher in an adult education course.

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