John Louis Spivak (June 13, 1897 – September 30, 1981) was an American socialist and later communist reporter and author, who wrote about the problems of the working class, racism, and the spread of fascism in Europe and the United States. Most of his writings date from the 1920s and 1930s. He lived under a pseudonym during the 1950s and 1960s, emerging again to publish his autobiography in 1967 and work as a journalist in the 1970s.
Early life and overview As a boy Spivak worked in a number of industrial factories in his hometown of New Haven, Connecticut.Syracuse University Library: Syracuse University Spivak Papers, accessed December 12, 2010
He was attracted to leftist ideas in his teenage years and later wrote that writing was "more to me than just a trade I liked; it was a weapon."John L. Spivak, A Man in his Time: An Autobiography (Horizon Press, 1967), 166, 284, 287 He claimed he never joined the Communist Party. In his 1967 autobiography, he described how the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact temporarily shook his faith in the Soviet Union as the guardian of radical ideals until he decided that the Soviet Union's survival justified it.Spivak, A Man in his Time, 465
Along with many of his contemporaries, Spivak experimented with new forms of reporting in which the reporter appeared in his stories as an investigator and witness, drawing the reader into his experience. He used the "exposé quotation" technique to underscore differences between his subject's words and actions and presented himself as a confrontational interviewer. He dramatized his own research efforts and search for facts for the benefit of the reader. He also was up front and open in making clear his political world view so as to disarm the reader's objections to his lack of objectivity. One of the foremost students of 1930s American journalism recognized his achievement: "A large share of the period's exposés were his."William Stott, Documentary Expression and Thirties America (University of Chicago Press, 1973), 33-6, 54, 173-4, 179, 183-6, quote 34n
Spivak cooperated with the NKVD, predecessors of the Soviet KGB, in the 1930s, perhaps from as early as 1932. NKVD reports indicated that the Soviets particularly valued information he obtained from sources at U.S. Congressional committees, and the NKVD described Spivak as an "agent" in intercepted cables. He obtained material that included details about the German government's financing and sponsorship of Nazi activity in the U.S. as well as documents related to munitions and chemical weapons research. The KGB also used Spivak as a source of information about [Trotskyists], its ideological enemies on the left. The KGB appears to have changed its mind about his usefulness more than once, so Spivak's relationship to the KGB was intermittent for more than a decade.John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press, 2009), 161-7, 476
Career
Spivak landed his first job as a police reporter for the New Haven Union. He moved to New York where he worked at the Morning Sun, Evening Graphic, and The Call, the paper of the American Socialist Party. His first major story came when he covered the Battle of Matewan in West Virginia. He then served briefly as a reporter and bureau chief in Berlin and Moscow for the International News Service.New York Times: "John Spivak, Reporter And Political Crusader," October 3, 1981, accessed December 10, 2010 Upon his return to the United States, he became a feature writer for leftist newspapers and magazines such as the Communist Party USA's Daily Worker, Ken, and the New Masses.
In 1930, in a case known as the "Whalen Papers," Spivak used his position as a journalist on behalf of the Soviet Union. When documents detailing Soviet propaganada efforts came into the possession of the New York City Police Department, Spivak quickly demonstrated they were forgeries. Only years later did it transpire that the documents were supplied by the Soviets so that Spivak, alert to the scheme, could discredit them and thereby undermine Congressional efforts to investigate Communist propaganda in the United States.Martin J. Manning with Herbert Romerstein, Historical Dictionary of American Propaganda (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), 317-8
Spivak traveled throughout the South in the early 1930s interviewing prison camp officials and photographing camp practices and punishment records. His novel, Georgia Nigger (later retitled, Hard Times on a Southern Chain Gang,) depicting the brutality of peonage labor and chain gangs, was serialized in several newspapers, including the Daily Worker and the Des Moines Tribune.New Georgia Encyclopedia: Georgia Nigger, January 14, 2005, accessed October 30, 2021 Soon after it appeared in 1932, an academic study called it "a second Uncle Tom's Cabin, an indictment of peonage and convict-labor in Georgia, powerful enough to put to shame all the rhapsodists of the folk Negro's happy state."Sterling A. Brown, "The Negro Awakening," in James A. Emanuel, ed., Dark symphony: Negro Literature in America (NY: Free Press, 1968), 170; Sterling A. Brown, "Negro Character as seen by White Authors," Journal of Negro Education, vol. 2 (1933), 202-3 Another reviewer thought it posed "a moral challenge" but disliked its exaggerations and the author's "superciliousness."Ben N. Azikiwe, review of Georgia Nigger in Journal of Negro History, vol. 18 (1933), 216-20 The book carried an appendix with photographs and documents designed to document the novel's descriptions of torture.New York Times: "Prof. Huxley Here; Talks on his Verse," September 30, 1932, accessed December 14, 2010 "Thus his novel," wrote one reviewer, "in addition to the dramatic force of an interesting and well-told story, has the weight and authority of a sociological investigation."New York Times: "Miss Latimer's Stories and Other Recent Works of Fiction," October 16, 1932, accessed December 14, 2010 Just a few weeks after the book appeared, Spivak testified with other experts on the Georgia penal system in a successful attempt to persuade New Jersey Governor A. Harry Moore to refuse to extradite a fugitive from a Georgia chain gang.New York Times: "Burns Extradition Refused by Moore," December 22, 1932, accessed December 14, 2010
In 1934, some of Spivak's New Masses articles on anti-Semitism in the U.S. were reprinted as a 93-page pamphlet called Plotting America's Pogroms.William W. Brickman, The Jewish Community in America: An Annotated and Classified Bibliographical Guide (NY: Burt Franklin & Co., 1977), 224: "A Marxist interpretation of organized anti-Semitism in the United States in the light of the class struggle."
His 1935 exposé in the Communist Party's New Masses charged a congressional committee with deliberately suppressing evidence of an offer made to retired Marine General Smedley D. Butler by Wall Street financiers (the Business Plot) to lead a military coup against the U.S. government and replace it with a fascist regime. Butler was supposedly, "offered $3,000,000 to organize a fascist army with a promise of $300,000,000 more if it became necessary."COAT: John L. Spivak, "Wall Street's Fascist Conspiracy" (photographic reproduction), New Masses, January 29 and February 5, 1935, accessed December 15, 2010; John L. Spivak, "Wall Street's Fascist Conspiracy Part 1", New Masses, January 29, 1935], accessed December 15, 2010 Spivak wrote, "The anti-semitic character of Nazism has been abundantly demonstrated in these pages; nevertheless this article, and succeeding ones, will reveal Jewish financiers working with fascist groups which, if successful, would unquestionably heighten the wave of Hate-the-Jew propaganda." He referred specifically to Felix Warburg, the McCormack–Dickstein Committee, and certain members of the American Jewish Committee in collusion with J. P. Morgan. Hans Schmidt concludes that while Spivak made a cogent argument for taking the suppressed testimony seriously, he embellished his article with his "overblown" claims regarding Jewish financiers, which Schmidt dismisses as guilt by association not supported by the evidence of the Butler-MacGuire conversations themselves.
Most of Spivak's work was dedicated to supporting communism, exposing capitalism, fascism and underground Nazi spy groups in Central America, Europe, and the U.S. In March 1935, the last issue of the American Spectator gave its award for "best reporting" to Spivak for his articles in New Masses on Nazi and anti-Semitic activity in the U.S.Time: "Press: Retiring Spectators," March 11, 1935, accessed December 14, 2010
Spivak announced the thesis of America Faces the Barricades (1935) in the preface: "I think that the capitalist system in this country still has some distance to go before it falls....We are in for a period of great unrest, organized and unorganized revolts and bloodshed; a period, I think, which will continue until the present economic system has been completely changed."John L. Spivak, America Faces the Barricades (NY: Covici-Friede, 1935), viii-ix Time provided its readers with a brief description of : "Misleadingly titled collection of sober reports on conditions and states of mind among the unemployed, California migratory workers, Southern sharecroppers and other distressed groups, written by one of the ablest of U.S. radical journalists."Time: "Fiction: Recent Books: Aug. 12, 1935", accessed December 14, 2010 Another review said Spivak "used to be a first-class reporter," and while granting that "One does not doubt Mr. Spivak's facts," said that "It is the pattern that seems overdrawn."New York Times: John Chamberlain, "Books of the Times," August 6, 1935, accessed December 16, 2010; Chamberlain compared Spivak's work in Barricades unfavorably to James Rorty's Where Life is Better a few months later; New York Times: John Chamberlain, "Books of the Times," January 17, 1936, accessed December 16, 2010For a negative response that calls Spivak a "rather clever and unscrupulous propagandist" and resents his focus on Nazi anti-Semitism in America, see Arthur C. Inman, The Inman Diary: A Public and Private Confession (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), Daniel Aaron, ed., 647 (August 9, 1935) A more appreciative reviewer found Spivak "natively fair-minded and realistic," but doubted his conclusions, especially his assessment of the threat of domestic Nazism and anti-Semitism: "[He] seems to take fools too seriously. Mr. Spivak is in danger of being as credulous of the claims of counter-revolution as some of our eminent citizens are of the claims of revolution."New York Times: R.L. Duffus, "The American Worker Today," July 28, 1935, accessed December 16, 2010
Spivak toured parts of Europe and produced a portrait of the continent in Europe under the Terror (1936). Time found it interesting enough to summarize at length, country by country: "Italy's tyrants, suggests Spivak, are clowns, its people poltroons."; "Germany's tyrants Spivak describes as super-efficient grafting gangsters, its people dolts."; "Poland's tyrants, according to Spivak, are amiable, intelligent playboys, its people hopeless serfs." In sum:Time: "International: Dictators Dissected," May 25, 1936, accessed December 15, 2010
Europe Under the Terror, like the peasants' potatoes, must be taken with a little salt. Readers will be considerably baffled to know how this U.S. investigator, who speaks only English and German, managed to evoke such dangerous confidences from the most illiterate classes in Italy, Poland and Czechoslovakia through interpreters. Author Spivak is a shade too ready to forecast the collapse of tyrannies, to overestimate the potency of the rebellious spirit. His book is valuable as a document of a kind that rarely emerges from the censored murk of dictatorship.