Richard Greeman (born August 11, 1939, in New York City) is a Marxist scholar long active in human rights, anti-war, anti-nuclear, environmental and labor struggles in the U.S., Latin America, France, and Russia. Greeman is best known for his studies and translations of the Franco-Russian novelist and revolutionary Victor Serge (1890–1947). Greeman also writes regularly about politics, international class struggles and revolutionary theory. Co-founder of the Praxis Research and Education Center in Moscow, Russia, and director of the International Victor Serge Foundation, Greeman splits his time between Montpellier, France and New York City.
Early life and education
Greeman describes himself as a ‘Red-diaper grand baby’ who inherited the socialist books and ideas of his maternal grandfather, Sam Levin, an immigrant Russian-Jewish tailor from Hartford, CT. His father, Edward Greeman, was a decorated World War I ambulance driver, 1948 American Labor Party candidate for N.Y. Assembly, and a Veterans Against the War in the Vietnam era. Richard graduated from Mamaroneck High School in Mamaroneck, N.Y. in 1957 and entered Yale College, where as a Freshman he became active in the George Orwell Forum and joined the Young People's Socialist League (YPSL).
During his 1959-60 Junior Year in Paris, Greeman participated in the anti-Algerian war movement as a member of the group Socialisme ou Barbarie (Socialism or Barbarism). Returning to Yale in 1960, he helped found the New Haven chapters of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Greeman encountered Raya Dunayevskaya after reading her Marxism and Freedom and joined her Marxist-Humanist organization News & Letters Committees, where he remained active until 1973, when he was ousted by the central leadership after being denied a hearing.
In 1961 Greeman enrolled in Columbia University, where as a graduate student and French teaching assistant, he was active in CORE, the Independent Committee Against the War in Vietnam, and Students for a Democratic Society. Greeman participated in the 1968 Columbia rebellion as a Junior Faculty member in support of the Strike Committee, and he received his Ph.D. at the ‘Counter-Commencement’ on the student-occupied campus.
Academic and political career
During 1963-64, Greeman returned to Paris with a French Government scholarship, took courses at the Sorbonne, began his research on the life and works of Victor Serge (1890–1947) whom he admired both as a novelist, a revolutionary witness, and a libertarian socialist thinker. In Paris Greeman was befriended by Serge's son, the Russian-Mexican painter Vlady, who encouraged his research and authorized him to translate Serge's fiction into English. To date, Greeman has translated and introduced five Serge novels, most recently Unforgiving Years, voted one of Time Out New York's "Best of 2008." Greeman has also prefaced and edited a number of Serge's books in French.
From 1964 to 1970 Greeman taught French and Humanities at Columbia College, then at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT where he was active in anti-war, labor and Black Panthers’ defense groups and helped organize the May 1970 Student Strike which occupied the University. In 1973 he was denied tenure in a controversial case. In 1975 he became the father of Jenny Greeman, and joined the faculty of the University of Hartford in West Hartford, CT. Greeman was active in the Hartford Coalition for Justice in Central America, with CISPES and Nicaragua Network and in the defense of the Macheteros -- Puerto Rican Socialist Party defendants in the famous West Hartford Wells Fargo ‘Robin Hood’ robbery. Greeman also traveled to Sandinista Nicaragua in the summer of 1984 to observe the elections and join Witness for Peace during the Contra war on the border of Honduras. Twice rejected for tenure at the University of Hartford, he won on appeal and retired to France in 1997 to devote himself to writing and political work.