Comrade Huppert: A Poet In Stalin's World

After discovering the autobiography of the Austrian communist and writer Hugo Huppert (1902-1982), historian George Huppert became absorbed in the life and work of this man, a Jew, perhaps a relative, who was born a few months after George's father and grew up just miles away. Hugo seemed to embody a distinctly central European experience of his time, of people trapped between Hitler and Stalin. Using the unvarnished account found in Hugo's notebooks, George Huppert takes the reader on a tour of the writer's life from his provincial youth to his education and radicalization in Vienna; to Moscow where he meets Mayakovski and where he is imprisoned during Stalin's purges; through the difficult war years and return to Vienna; to his further struggles with the communist party and his blossoming as a writer in the 1950s. Through all the twists and turns of this story, George remains a faithful presence, guiding the way and placing Hugo's remarkable life in context. Comrade Huppert is a story of displacement and exile, the price of party loyalty, and the toll of war and terror on the mind of this emblematic figure.

• | Author: George Huppert
• | Publisher: Indiana University Press
• | Publication Date: Mar 14, 2016
• | Number of Pages: 168 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover/Biography & Autobiography
• | ISBN-10: 0253019788
• | ISBN-13: 9780253019783