An upcoming documentary has revealed that Raphaël Glucksmann, a leading left-wing candidate for the 2027 French presidential election, is the grandson of a communist spy who worked on behalf of Joseph Stalin’s totalitarian regime.
The leader of the social democrat Place Publique party and potential presidential candidate for the French Socialist Party in 2027, Raphaël Glucksmann, has been revealed to be the grandson of a Soviet Union spy in an upcoming documentary for the Public Sénat television network in France, TFI reports.
According to the documentary The Glucksmanns: A Family Story, the grandfather of a Member of the European Parliament, Rubin Glucksmann, was recruited by the Comintern (Communist International), originally founded by Vladimir Lenin, to spread leftist revolution and communism throughout the world.
Born to a Jewish family in the then-Austro-Hungarian Empire, in what has since become Ukrainian territory, the elder Glucksmann initially travelled to then-British-controlled Palestine as a Zionist advocate, a philosophy he would later reject in favour of communism. The documentary said he drew the attention of Soviet recruitment agents due to his knowledge of multiple languages.
The Comintern Bolsheviks dispatched him to Germany, where Glucksmann was active in acquiring and sending weapons to communist revolutionaries in the Spanish Civil War. He was also later active as a Soviet spy in France and England, where he was ultimately arrested by the MI5 intelligence service. While the British government attempted to deport him to Canada, Glucksmann died in transit after the ship he was on was torpedoed by Germany.
Rubin’s surviving son, André Glucksmann, who later fathered Raphaël, was also initially drawn to Marxism despite having only been three at the time of his father’s death. A former member of the Maoist ‘Gauche Prolétarienne’ (Left Proletarian) party, André would later become a leading critic of communist totalitarianism as a member of the ‘New Philosophers’ cohort that emerged following the 1968 student revolts and who were heavily influenced by the horrors exposed in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago.
Raphaël Glucksmann has also been a critic of communism, ironically leading to accusations from members of the La France Insoumise (France in Rebellion/LFI) party that he is a secret CIA operative, despite having previously paired with the LFI to form the New Popular Front coalition to prevent Marine Le Pen’s National Rally from taking power in the 2024 legislative elections.
Commenting on the revelations in the documentary to Le Parisien, Glucksmann said of his grandfather: “I’d love to sit with him and listen to his story.”
Glucksmann has been widely tipped as the top establishment left-wing candidate to replace President Macron. Prominent public broadcaster journalists were even caught last year on a hidden microphone allegedly conspiring to coordinate coverage in favour of Glucksmann, whom they saw as the only left-wing candidate with a chance to beat Le Pen’s National Rally.
However, a recent study from the consulting firm Spin & Strategy found that a Glucksmann candidacy would likely just split the centrist vote, dooming his and likely Macronist successor Édouard Philippe’s bids, and leading to LFI radical leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon advancing as the only left-wing option in the second round of voting, during which he would lose to either Marine Le Pen or her deputy Jordan Bardella.
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