Wolfgang Leonhard
Wolfgang Leonhard (16 April 1921 – 17 August 2014) was a German political
author and
historian of the
Soviet Union, the
German Democratic Republic and
Communism. A German Communist whose family had fled
Hitler's Germany and who was educated in the Soviet Union, after World War II Leonhard became one of the founders and leaders of the German Democratic Republic until he became disillusioned and fled in 1949, first defecting to
Yugoslavia and then moving to West Germany in 1950 and later to the United Kingdom. In 1956 he moved to the United States, where he was a popular and influential professor at
Yale University from 1966 to 1987, teaching the history of communism and the Soviet Union, topics about which he wrote several books. After the Cold War ended, he returned to Germany.
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