John L. Spivak

John Louis Spivak (June 13, 1897 – September 30, 1981) was an American socialist and later communist reporter and author, who wrote about the problems of the working class, racism, and the spread of fascism in Europe and the United States. Most of his writings date from the 1920s and 1930s. He lived under a pseudonym during the 1950s and 1960s, emerging again to publish his autobiography in 1967 and work as a journalist in the 1970s.

As a boy Spivak worked in a number of industrial factories in his hometown of New Haven, Connecticut.

He was attracted to leftist ideas in his teenage years and later wrote that writing was "more to me than just a trade I liked; it was a weapon." He claimed he never joined the Communist Party. In his 1967 autobiography, he described how the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact temporarily shook his faith in the Soviet Union as the guardian of radical ideals until he decided that the Soviet Union's survival justified it.

Along with many of his contemporaries, Spivak experimented with new forms of reporting in which the reporter appeared in his stories as an investigator and witness, drawing the reader into his experience. He used the "exposé quotation" technique to underscore differences between his subject's words and actions and presented himself as a confrontational interviewer. He dramatized his own research efforts and search for facts on the reader's behalf. He also was up front and open in making clear his political world view so as to disarm the reader's objections to his lack of objectivity. The foremost student of 1930s journalism recognized his achievement: "A large share of the period's exposé s were his."

Spivak cooperated with the predecessors of the Soviet KGB in the 1930s, perhaps from as early as 1932. KGB reports indicated that the Soviets particularly valued information he obtained from sources at U.S. Congressional committees. He obtained material that included details about the German government's financing and sponsorship of Nazi activity in the U.S. as well as documents related to munitions and chemical weapons research. The KGB also used Spivak as a source of information about [Trotskyists], its ideological enemies on the left. The KGB appears to have changed its mind about his usefulness more than once, so Spivak's relationship to the KGB was intermittent for more than a decade.

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