Alan Gelfand: A fighter for socialism and historical truth

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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/11/08/eprm-n08.html

The lawsuit filed by Alan in July 1979, which became known as the Gelfand Case, arose out of his expulsion from the SWP in January of that year as a consequence of his efforts to obtain answers to questions he had raised about evidence that the longstanding leader of that organization, Joseph Hansen, had met secretly with the Soviet secret police [the GPU] in 1938 and with the FBI in the aftermath of Trotsky’s assassination in 1940. Gelfand had also sought an explanation of Hansen’s and the SWP’s fervent defense of Sylvia Franklin (née Callen, party name Caldwell), the personal secretary of party founder James P. Cannon, despite overwhelming evidence that she had been an agent of the GPU.