Paul Robeson’s Unapologetic Stalinism and the Fate of Soviet Jewry

Besides being a gifted singer and actor and a tireless and eloquent advocate for the civil rights of African Americans during the Jim Crow era, Paul Robeson was also a committed Communist of the Stalinist variety. Even after the Soviet purges began in the 1930s, and as he became aware that all was not well in the workers’ paradise, Robeson continued to defend the regime in public and to toe the party line. His interactions with leading Soviet Jewish figures—he was deeply connected with Jewish circles and often performed Hebrew and Yiddish songs—illustrate much about his attitudes. Describing these relationships in a longer discussion of Robeson’s Communism, Ron Radosh writes:

Despite Robeson’s constant cheerleading [for the USSR], he was privately dismayed by Soviet repression of the Jews. During his 1949 Soviet concert tour, Robeson asked to meet his friends [the Yiddish poet] Itzik Feffer and [the great Yiddish actor] Solomon Mikhoels, . . . whom he had first met in 1943 when Stalin sent them to tour the United States on behalf of the “Jewish Anti-Fascist League.” Little did Robeson know that Mikhoels had since been murdered on Stalin’s orders, on January 13, 1948, in what was disguised as a hit-and-run car crash. Feffer, meanwhile, was being held at the infamous Lubyanka prison in Moscow, having been arrested by the NKVD in December 1948.

The authorities made [Feffer] presentable for the occasion and brought him to meet Robeson in his hotel room. Feffer signaled that the room was bugged, and that they should only make pleasantries but communicate with hand gestures and written notes. Feffer told Robeson about the growing anti-Semitism, and the prominent Jewish cultural figures who were under arrest. Then Feffer put his hand across his throat, indicating that he expected that his days would be short. He was shot to death a few years later.

Robeson was shaken, and to his credit told the audience at his concert in Moscow that night that he was friends with Feffer and Mikhoels and had just met with Feffer. He then sang in Yiddish the Warsaw Ghetto resistance song written by Hersh Glick, a Jewish poet and fighter, Zog Nit Keynmol. It was indeed a bold gesture. By singing this song and mentioning his friendship with Feffer, he signaled his disapproval without having to say anything publicly against Stalin.

Yet when Robeson returned to the United States, he told the waiting press that he had seen Feffer in Russia and saw no traces of anti-Semitism there. . . . Robeson’s denial of Soviet anti-Semitism was the one always [cited] by American defenders of the Stalinist regime.

Nonetheless, writes Radosh, Robeson “was devastated” in the 1950s when he learned of the deaths of Feffer and Mikhoels. Radosh credits this revelation, along with others, as causing Robeson’s 1961 suicide attempt and his eventual, if never complete, disillusionment with the Soviet cause.

Read more at American Interest

More about: African Americans, Communism, Joseph Stalin, Soviet Jewry

 

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF