French centre-left MEP Raphaël Glucksmann has learnt during the making of a forthcoming family documentary that his grandfather, Rubin Glucksmann, served as a secret agent for the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.
The revelation features in Les Glucksmann, une histoire de famille, a one-hour film directed by journalist Steve Jourdin and scheduled for broadcast on Public Sénat on January 31 at 21:00.
Glucksmann junior is considered the frontrunner of the centre-left in France to run for president in the next elections.
The documentary, which traces three generations of the Glucksmann family, draws on research by German historian Sébastian Voigt, who examined western intelligence archives.
Rubin Glucksmann, born around the 1890s into a poor Jewish family in Czernowitz, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire but now in Ukraine, converted to Marxism early in life.
Initially drawn to Zionism, he emigrated to Palestine, which was then a British administrative territory, at about age 30.
There he joined the Communist Party, adopted an anti-Zionist standpoint and, together with his future wife Martha, became involved in local Communist activities from around 1923.
Recruited by the Comintern (a Moscow-based organisation tasked with promoting the Bolshevik revolution globally that was dissolved by Stalin in 1943), Rubin operated as an agent across Europe.
His activities included arms trafficking in Germany to support the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.
He later moved through France and England on behalf of Soviet interests.
In 1940, British counter-intelligence service MI5 arrested him as a suspected enemy agent.
He was deported towards internment in Canada aboard the SS Arandora Star but the vessel was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the Irish coast on July 2, 1940, and he perished in the sinking.
Rubin Glucksmann was the father of André Glucksmann (1927–2015), named in homage to Etkar Josef André, a senior member of the Communist Party of Germany.
André joined the Communist Party as a teenager but later became one of the leading New Philosophers of the 1970s, a fierce critic of Soviet totalitarianism and Communism.
Before his death in 2015, he completed his intellectual and political career on the Right, notably by promoting the candidacy of Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2007 French presidential election.
André’s son, Raphaël Glucksmann, born 1979, is an MEP for Place Publique, allied with the Socialist Party. He is a vocal advocate for pro-European, Atlanticist and anti-authoritarian positions, including strong support for Ukraine against Russia.
In the film, Raphaël Glucksmann reacted to the revelations about his grandfather with a blend of surprise and reflective curiosity, saying he would have loved to sit down and talk with him and learn his story first-hand.
The discovery has prompted ironic commentary in French political circles, where Glucksmann has occasionally faced accusations from radical-left critics (notably within La France Insoumise) of being overly aligned with western or “Atlanticist” interests.
Secret film recordings have shown French Socialist Party executives held discussions with prominent public service journalists regarding strategy for the 2027 national election and the municipal elections of 2026.
The recordings of apparent collusion caused an uproar in France,… pic.twitter.com/R4lTwKNXEZ
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) September 8, 2025
