Leibel Bergman

Leibel Bergman (1915–1988) was an American communist activist. A member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) from the 1930s to the 1950s, he was later involved in the founding of the Maoist Bay Area Revolutionary Union and its successor organization, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). Between 1965 and 1967 he lived in China, where he met and married fellow activist Vicki Garvin. After Mao's death in 1976 he left the RCP, co-founding the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters. Bergman represented a link between the prewar CPUSA and the New Communist movement of the 1970s. He was a target of FBI surveillance for decades.

Life and career Bergman was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota in 1915, into a religiously observant Jewish family. He earned a degree in mathematics at the University of North Dakota, graduating at the age of 19. The couple had three children together.

In 1960 he was called to testify before HUAC, where he refused to provide any information, telling the committee "I am here against my will." He returned to the US in 1967, with Garvin following a few years later. At the time, an FBI informant inside the organization described Bergman as its "dominating factor." Bergman continued to help lead the BARU as it grew into a national organization and changed its name, first to the Revolutionary Union and then (in 1975) to the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP).

After Mao's death in 1976, Bergman supported his successors, who Avakian and others in the RCP viewed as betraying Mao's legacy and moving China towards capitalism. With Mickey Jarvis, Bergman left the party to form the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters, taking about a third of the RCP's membership with them.

Bergman and Garvin eventually divorced—the date is unclear from publicly available sources.

Bergman died in 1988 after a long illness.

Bergman's son Lincoln Bergman is a poet and journalist. He was poet laureate of Richmond, California. His daughter Miranda Bergman is a muralist. During the early years of the Revolutionary Union, the Bureau used an informant to try to convince H. Bruce Franklin that Bergman himself was an FBI informant.

Books I Cannot See Their Faces and Keep Silent. Saint Paul, MN: Prometheus Press, 1946. Will We Remember? Poems by Leibel Bergman. Chicago: Friends of Leibel Bergman, 1984.