Brust, Bill, 1919-1991

Bill Brust was born in Budapest, Hungary on May 20, 1919. As a result of his father's participation in the failed 1919 Hungarian revolution, Brust's family emigrated to Minneapolis in 1920. He graduated from Minneapolis North High School in 1937 and entered the University of Minnesota the same year. During world War II Brust left the university and served in the Army Air Corps and Army Infantry (1942-1945). During his military service he was able to continue his education and received his baccalaureate from the University of Minnesota in 1944.

After the war Brust returned to Minneapolis and went to work at the Armour meat packing plant (1946-1949). He entered graduate school at the University of Minnesota in 1950 and obtained a master of arts degree in German with a minor in French in 1953. Unable to find a teaching position, Brust worked as a manager of the insurance division of Tilsenbilt Homes, Inc. in St. Paul (1953-1959). He returned to the University of Minnesota in 1959 to work on a Ph.D. in German, which he received in 1968. During this period he worked at the University as a teaching assistant and instructor in German (1959-1964) and accepted a teaching position at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota (1965).

Throughout his life Brust was an active socialist. He joined the Young Communist League at the age of 18, became a member of the Trotskyist youth movement called the Young People's Socialist League in 1938, and a member of the Socialist Worker's Party (SWP) in 1939. Brust played a leading role in the 1946 and 1948 national strikes against the meat packing industry. After being expelled from the SWP in 1964 for his opposition to the party's repudiation of Trotskyism, Brust joined the newly formed American Committee for the Fourth International, which became the Workers League in 1966. He served on the League's central committee and as a member of the party's control commission.

During the 1980s Brust reported on numerous strikes and labor issues in the Midwest. In 1986 he ran as a candidate of the Workers League for governor of Minnesota. As part of his political work Brust made several trips to Europe, including a final trip in 1989 to participate in the joint election campaign of the German and British sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICIF) for the European parliament.

Brust met Jean Tilsen inside the Trotskyist movement and they were married in 1948. The couple had three children: Cynthia Moore, Leo Brust, and Steven Brust. Bill Brust died on September 15, 1991.

Biographical data was taken from Brust, Jean, ed. Defending Principles: the Legacy of Bill Brust (Southfield, Michigan: Labor Publications, 1993), and from the collection.

From the guide to the Bill Brust papers., 1937-1993., (Minnesota Historical Society)