Daniel Singer

Europe Correspondent

Daniel Singer, for many years The Nation's Paris-based Europe correspondent, was born on September 26, 1926, in Warsaw, was educated in France, Switzerland and England and died on December 2, 2000, in Paris.

He was a contributor to The Economist, The New Statesman and the Tribune and appeared as a commentator on NPR, "Monitor Radio" and the BBC, as well as Canadian and Australian broadcasting. (These credits are for his English-language work; he was also fluent in French, Polish, Russian and Italian.)

He was the author of Prelude to Revolution: France in May 1968 (Hill & Wang, 1970), The Road to Gdansk (Monthly Review Press, 1981), Is Socialism Doomed?: The Meaning of Mitterrand (Oxford, 1988) and Whose Millennium? Theirs or Ours? (Monthly Review Press, 1999).

A specialist on the Western European left as well as the former Communist nations, Singer ranged across the Continent in his dispatches to The Nation. Singer sharply critiqued Western-imposed economic "shock therapy" in the former Eastern Bloc and US support for Boris Yeltsin, sounded early warnings about the re-emergence of Fascist politics into the Italian mainstream, and, across the Mediterranean, reported on an Algeria sliding into civil war.

The Daniel Singer Millennium Prize Foundation was founded in 2000 to honor original essays that help further socialist ideas in the tradition of Daniel Singer.

 

The American Nightmare The American Nightmare

It should surprise no one that the European revolutionaries are not inspired by the American dream. Nobody, after all, expected the fighters for national liberation in the post-N...

Aug 23, 2001 / Feature / Daniel Singer

Poland–The Taste of Ashes Poland–The Taste of Ashes

From your very first encounters at the modernized Warsaw airport you know that you have entered the kingdom of private enterprise. The operator at the money exchange hands me $30...

Aug 23, 2001 / Feature / Daniel Singer

Europe: Is There a Fourth Way? Europe: Is There a Fourth Way?

If Western Europe is to be independent it must defend its welfare state.

Oct 19, 2000 / Feature / Daniel Singer

Sartre’s Roads to Freedom Sartre’s Roads to Freedom

Asked where he was coming from, my friend's son replied, "From the demo against the death of Sartre." It was April 19, 1980, and the definition fitted perfectly, for Sartre's fun...

May 18, 2000 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Singer

Seattle From the Seine Seattle From the Seine

"Le monde n'est pas une marchandise"--the world is not a commodity--proclaimed the large banner in the Parisian demonstration against the WTO.

Dec 15, 1999 / Daniel Singer

Exploiting a Tragedy, or Le Rouge en Noir Exploiting a Tragedy, or Le Rouge en Noir

The author of this review is the son of a zek: My father barely survived his deportation to a Siberian camp in Vorkuta.

Nov 25, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Singer

When the People Took the Stage When the People Took the Stage

At the beginning of June 1989, I was sitting in the bar of the Hotel Europejski in Warsaw and reassuring Tadeusz Mazowiecki that his decision to stay on as editor of Solidarity's m...

Oct 14, 1999 / Feature / Daniel Singer

A Haunted Journey A Haunted Journey

After the war life will begin to stir once again, but we won't be here, we will have vanished just as the Aztecs have vanished.

Sep 9, 1999 / Feature / Daniel Singer

Third Way–Dead End? Third Way–Dead End?

In the week preceding the European parliamentary elections, Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder produced a joint declaration, called "Europe, the third way, die neue Mitte" (t...

Jun 17, 1999 / Daniel Singer

Europe’s New Divide Europe’s New Divide

How can you doubt the progressive nature of NATO missiles when they are blessed by Europe's socialists and the radical heroes of the sixties?

May 20, 1999 / Daniel Singer

x