Whittaker Chambers (April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961), born Jay Vivian Chambers and also known as David Whittaker Chambers, was an American writer and editor.
After he was a Communist Party USA member and Soviet spy, he renounced communism, became an outspoken opponent, and testified at Alger Hiss’s perjury and espionage trial. He described both events in his book Witness, published in 1952.
In 1924, Chambers read Vladimir Lenin’s Soviets at Work and was deeply affected by it. He now saw the dysfunctional nature of his family, he would write, as “in miniature the whole crisis of the middle class”; a malaise from which Communism promised liberation.
Chambers’s biographer Sam Tanenhaus wrote that Lenin’s authoritarianism was “precisely what attracts Chambers… He had at last found his church”; that is, he became a Marxist.
In 1925, Chambers joined the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) (then known as the Workers Party of America). Chambers wrote and edited for Communist publications, including The Daily Worker newspaper and The New Masses magazine.
Chambers combined his literary talents with his devotion to Communism, writing four short stories in 1931 about proletarian hardship and revolt, including Can You Make Out Their Voices?, considered by critics as one of the best fiction from the American Communist movement.
Hallie Flanagan co-adapted and produced it as a play entitled Can You Hear Their Voices? (see Writings by Chambers, below), staged across America and in many other countries. Chambers also worked as a translator during this period; among his works was the English version of Felix Salten’s 1923 novel Bambi, A Life in the Woods. Harold Ware …
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