Many know of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg—and their subsequent trial and execution for spying on the United States and attempting to reveal secrets to the Soviet Union—but few really know the people behind the controversy, and what their lives were like before they became one of the most sensationalized stories in modern US history. With the recent success of the television show The Americans, interest in the lives and motivations of people who lived during this tumultuous time has increased. David Evanier’s Red Love is not only an examination of the political beliefs that led to the fateful event, but also the love between two people at the center of it all.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were born to Jewish families in New York City in the 1900s. They met when they were both members of the Young Communist League and married in 1939. Julius worked as an engineer-inspector for the Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories from 1940 to 1945, when he was fired for his communist ties. It was later suspected he joined the NKVD in 1942 and supplied them with thousands of documents and reports relating to nuclear secrets. When David Greenglass, Ethel’s brother, was arrested under suspicion of espionage he implicated Julius as well as Ethel, for not revealing her husband’s dealings and typing documents for him.
Julius was arrested in July 1950, and Ethel in August. Their trial lasted less than a year and they were found guilty of their crimes in March 1951. They were sentenced to death and executed by electric chair on June 19, 1953. Their conviction would eventually give power to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s investigations into un-American activities within the United States. Others were fiercely against the convictions, claiming it amounted to a witch hunt that violated civil liberties and set the precedent for future trials and investigations.
Evanier shared his fascination with the Rosenbergs and his inspiration for writing the novel:
I came up with the idea for Red Love in the 1980s. I had been very close to the Communist Party as a young man in the 1960s and was haunted by my memories of the party and the Rosenberg case. I had attended rallies for the Rosenbergs (who had already been executed) and Morton Sobell. I returned to my old turf in order to write a novel that I hoped would capture the ambience and aspirations of a vanished time and truly understand the figures on the posters at those grotesque rallies.
This is the true story, told with compassion but also irreverence and humor as a way of demystifying a history that had slid into iconic mythology. I had access to some of the key players in the case, including Morton Sobell, indicted with the Rosenbergs, and his wife, Helen Sobell, both of whom I interviewed at length. I wanted the human story behind the men and women in handcuffs featured in blaring headlines. Red Love is a passionate journey into a time and place that still burns in the memory, a time when McCarthyism was rampant and American Communism was a source of innocent hope for those seeking a better, kinder world. It explores how a handful of idealists let themselves be recruited as spies by the Soviet Union because they thought it was a workers’ paradise.
No matter what your political stance, you will be intrigued by David Evanier’s surprisingly heartwarming account of the Rosenberg’s story. Evanier takes a case that centers on fear and treason, and turns it into an examination of the human condition and the complexity of relationships.
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