Paul Robeson: Singer, actor, intellectual and defender of tyranny

By Steven Martinovich
web posted January 19, 2004

On January 20, as part of its long-running Black Heritage series,
the U.S. Postal Service will release a commemorative stamp
featuring Paul Robeson.  He is remembered not just for his
"prodigious talents as a performer but also for his tireless and
uncompromising commitment to civil rights and social justice,"
stated an USPS press release last month.

On the face of it, it's easy to see why Robeson is being honored.
Born into poverty in 1898, he distinguished himself in high school
as both student and athlete. In 1915 he became just the third
African-American to attend Rutgers College and graduated in
1919 as class valedictorian and an All-American football player.
He later graduated from law school at Columbia University and
enjoyed justifiable popularity as a talented actor and singer with
a worldwide reputation.

The smiling visage on the stamp, however, fails to tell the whole
story about Robeson. For all his beliefs in the "oneness of
humankind" and social justice, Robeson championed one of the
most brutal dictatorships the world has ever seen in the form of
the Stalinist Soviet Union. Throughout his long life, Robeson --
even though he was aware of the true nature of Soviet
communism -- continued to back a nation that callously
murdered tens of millions of citizens in its quest for the classless
society.

His commitment to civil rights, as one example, depended on
where you stood ideologically. As a member of the US
Communist Party, Robeson spoke out in favour of the 1940
Smith Act, legislation that threatened prosecution for the
members of any organization that advocated the violent
overthrow of the American government. The party had hoped to
use it -- especially during World War II -- to persecute their
Trotskyist cousins whom Robeson stated were no better than
fascists and Ku Klux Klanmen and deserved no rights. Ironically,
the Smith Act was eventually used to target the party itself --
much to the anger of Robeson.

His many trips to the Soviet Union also allowed him to learn
what Stalinism really entailed, a truth he didn't share with the
American public until decades later. In 1949, he met in Moscow
with the Marxist-Stalinist Yiddish writer Itzik Feffer. At the time
Feffer had been imprisoned for three years and after he was
cleaned up he was brought to Robeson at his hotel. There Feffer
begged Robeson to tell the American people the truth about the
Soviet Union. After returning to the United States, Robeson
calmly told reporters that "I heard no word about" anti-Semitism.
Feffer was later murdered on orders from Joseph Stalin.

Although Robeson argued for greater political freedom for
African-Americans in the United States, he had few qualms
about condemning that same desire for others. During the
Hungarian uprising of 1956, Robeson -- who had received the
Stalin Peace Prize just four years earlier -- compared those
revolutionaries to the "same sort of people who overthrew the
Spanish Republican Government."

Many apologists for Robeson like to argue that his devotion to
communism and defense of Stalin's Soviet Union was the result
of a racist America and Soviet propaganda about its allegedly
discrimination free society. That's easy to buy only if one ignores
the pogroms against Jews, forced collectivization, mass murders,
ethnic genocides and slave labor camps, all of which were
common knowledge in the West at the time. Robeson wasn't a
dupe, an African-American who suffered racism and countered
with a faith in Marxist-Stalinism, he was a man who knowingly
supported the most murderous regime in history -- one that
openly sought the destruction of democracy.
 
Robeson and millions of other African-Americans were victims
of pervasive and institutionalized racism and to deny otherwise
would be a lie against history. Although he had his passport
revoked for several years, was blacklisted and investigated by
both the FBI and CIA, the real victims are the tens of millions
who perished under Soviet communism. While Robeson was
being feted by Stalin in Moscow, not far away the camps ground
human beings into dust. Robeson used his potent mind and voice
to defend a regime whose favored weapon was the gun. The
U.S. Postal Service may be honoring a singer, actor, civil rights
activist, athlete and intellectual, but it is also honoring a man
whose beliefs were an anathema to everything that the United
States stands for.

Steven Martinovich is a freelance writer in Sudbury, Ontario,
Canada.

Enter Stage Right -- http://www.enterstageright.com