Entertainer and activist Paul Robeson's political philosophies and outspoken views about domestic and international Communist countries and movements were the subject of great concern to the western mass media and the United States Government, during the Cold War. His views also caused controversy within the ranks of black organizations and the entertainment industry.
Robeson was never officially identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), domestically or internationally. Robeson's beliefs in socialism, his ties to the CPUSA and leftist trade unions, and his experiences in the USSR continue to cause controversy among historians and scholars as well as fans and journalists.
First visit to the Soviet Union (1934) Robeson journeyed to the Soviet Union in December 1934, via Germany, having been given an official invitation. While there, Robeson was welcomed by playwrights, artists and filmmakers, among them Sergei Eisenstein who became a close friend. Robeson also met with African Americans who had migrated to the USSR including his two brothers-in-law. Robeson was accompanied by his wife, Eslanda Goode Robeson and his biographer and friend, Marie Seton. He and his wife Eslanda were nearly attacked by Nazi Sturmabteilung at the stopover in Berlin.
Soviet constitution and anti-racist climate Robeson recounted how Russian children and strangers approached him in the streets and offered to shake his hand. Robeson quickly became captivated with the Soviet experiment and its leadership, also declaring that African-American spiritual music resonated to Russian folk traditions. He told the press:
Here, I am not a Negro but a human being for the first time in my life ... I walk in full human dignity.
Robeson also took great interest in Article 123 of the Soviet Constitution which unlike the laws of the US at the time, effectively barred racial discrimination.
During this time Robeson also commented about the recent execution after court-martial trial of people described by The Daily Worker as "counter-revolutionary terrorists":
From what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot!
1930s–1940s Through his writings and speeches during the mid-to-late 1930s, Robeson would go on to champion the cultural and political revolutions of the Soviet Union especially, as Robeson put it, "its national minority policy as it operates among the peoples of Central Asia." Robeson also advocated the similarities he found between blacks all over the world and the Russian people, urging African Americans to look towards the Soviet Union for inspiration in gaining full citizenship within the United States. Robeson also hoped that African countries would follow the example of the USSR and embrace socialism. Robeson studied Russian language and Russian history intensely during the inter-war period.David Levering Lewis, Artist and Citizen: Paul Robeson the USSR, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1999.
Paul Robeson's laudatory remarks for the socialist revolutions and decolonization of Africa and Asia were not considered controversial during this pre-Cold War era partially because Robeson himself publicly stated that his interest in the Soviet Union was "non-political" and because the USSR was not yet considered an enemy of the US. Robeson would eventually have his son educated in Moscow, widely announcing to the press that he did not want his son to face the "same discrimination that he had faced growing up in the United States."
When Robeson was given the news of Stalin's 1939 non aggression pact with Hitler, also known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, he saw the agreement as having been forced on the Soviets by the unwillingness of the military forces of Great Britain and France "to collaborate with the Soviet Union in a real policy of collective security". He personally wrote in his journal that an Anglo-Russian pact "would have stopped Nazi aggression" and thus leaving the USSR with no alternative choices in shoring up its borders.
In 1946, Robeson was questioned by the Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in California, informally known as the Tenney Committee. When he was asked whether he was a member of the Communist Party, Robeson replied that he might as well have been asked whether he was a registered Democrat or Republican—in the United States the Communist Party was equally legal. But, he added, he was not a Communist. There is no clear evidence that Robeson ever was a member of the Communist Party. According to records released under the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI believed that Robeson might have joined the Party under the name "John Thomas" but "his Communist Party membership book number is not known". Robeson's biographer, Martin Duberman, concludes that "he was never a member of CPUSA, never a functionary, never a participant in its daily bureaucratic operations". Paul Robeson, Jr. has also stated on numerous times that his father was never a member of the CPUSA.
Robeson opposed anti-communist legislation. In 1948, he opposed a bill calling for registration of Communist Party members and appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Questioned about his affiliation with the Communist Party, he refused to answer, stating "Some of the most brilliant and distinguished Americans are about to go to jail for the failure to answer that question, and I am going to join them, if necessary."Bay Area Paul Robeson Centennial Committee, Paul Robeson Chronology (Part 5) . (The bill was ultimately defeated in the Senate.) In 1949, he spoke in favor of the liberty of twelve Communists (including his long-time friend Benjamin Davis, Jr.) convicted under the Smith Act, which criminalized various left- and right-wing activities as seditious.Bay Area Paul Robeson Centennial Committee, Paul Robeson Chronology (Part 6) .
Robeson endorsed Henry A. Wallace of the Progressive Party in the 1948 United States presidential election. He served as co-chair of the Henry Wallace for President Committee and toured the country making speeches in favor of his campaign.
Itzik Feffer meeting and concert in Tchaikovsky Hall (June 1949)
In June 1949, during the 150th anniversary celebration of the birth of Alexander Pushkin, Robeson visited the Soviet Union on a major tour including a concert at . Concerned about the welfare of Jewish artists, Robeson insisted to Soviet officials that he meet with Itzik Feffer a few days earlier. Robeson had first met Feffer on July 8, 1943, at the largest pro-Soviet rally ever held in the United States, an event organized by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and chaired by Albert Einstein. Robeson then also got to know Solomon Mikhoels, the popular actor and director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater. Mikhoels also headed the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the Soviet Union with Feffer as his second. After the rally, Robeson and his wife Essie had entertained Feffer and Mikhoels.
According to an account by Paul Robeson Jr told to Robeson biographer Martin Duberman, in the 1980s, Robeson was disturbed as to why he could not find his many Jewish friends when he returned to the U.S.S.R. in June 1949. After several inquiries, Feffer was brought to Robeson's hotel room by the State Police. He and Feffer were forced to communicate through hand gestures and notes because the room was bugged. Feffer indicated that Mikhoels had been murdered in 1948 by the secret police and intimated that he also was going to be killed. Feffer in fact was executed along with 14 other Jewish intellectuals three years later. After the talk with Feffer, Robeson would ask his friend Pete Blackman to "stick around" him during their stay in Moscow, and he would also caution Blackman to "watch what he said" around party officials.
Accounts of the meeting There were no eyewitnesses who went on record, so the meeting of Paul Robeson and Itzik Feffer in Moscow has been given several varying interpretations. In recent years, Paul Robeson, Jr. has been quoted as saying that his father "tried to contact Soviet officials to see if anything could be done to release Feffer and other Jewish intellectuals." This conflicts somewhat with his first account to Martin Duberman, which stated that his father did not act to speak out on Feffer's behalf to Soviet officials. Solomon Mikhoels' daughter published an account that is nearly identical to that of Paul Robeson Jr., with Robeson specifically requesting to see Feffer except that places the meeting in 1951 which would not have been possible, given that Robeson was without his passport.Mikhoels-Vovsi, Natalya. Vremya i mwi, Tel-Aviv 1976, p. 190 A second and more angry account by composer Dimitri Shostakovich denounces Robeson for "staying silent", claiming the meeting was in a restaurant with Feffer accompanied by police agents.Shostakovich, Dimitri. Testimony, Harper Row 1979 pp. 188–189 In The Long Journey by Slavic anthropologist Esther Markish, the author writes that Feffer, following orders from the Soviet secret police, carefully said nothing to Robeson about the purges.Markish, Esther. The Living Journey, 1978.
Robeson's speaks publicly of Feffer Robeson spoke during his concert in Tchaikovsky Hall on June 14, about his close friendship with Feffer and the recently deceased actor Solomon Mikhoels prior to singing the Vilna Partisan song "Zog Nit Keynmol" in both Russian and Yiddish. The concert was being broadcast across the entire Soviet Union.Robeson, Paul Robeson, Jr. 2008, The undiscovered Paul Robeson: quest for freedom, 1939-1976 p. 152, into The Eye of the StormLewis, David Levering 1998, Paul Robeson:Artist and Citizen p. 226, Paul Robeson and The U.S.S.R Historian and Robeson biographer Martin Duberman writes:
Robeson's spontaneous translation of the Yiddish text of the song of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Russian and his personal tribute to Mikhoels and Feffer were censored from the tapes of the 1949 broadcast.
Silence on Stalin Upon returning to the United States, he denied any persecution of Jews or other political prisoners, stating: "I met Jewish people all over the place... I heard no word about it."
According to Joshua Rubenstein's book, Stalin's Secret Pogrom, Robeson also justified his silence on the grounds that any public criticism of the USSR would reinforce the authority of anti-Soviet elements in the United States which, he believed, wanted a preemptive war against the Soviet Union. A large number of Robeson biographers, including Martin Duberman, Philip S Foner, Marie Seton, Paul Robeson Jr., and Lloyd Brown, also concur with Robeson's own words, that he felt that criticism of the Soviet Union by someone of his immense international popularity would only serve to shore up reactionary elements in the U.S., the same elements that had lifted his passport, blocked anti-lynching legislation, and, according to Robeson, maintained a racial climate in the United States that also allowed Jim Crow, impoverished living conditions for all races and a white supremacist domination of the US government to continue. Robeson is on record many times as stating that he felt the existence of a major socialist power like the USSR was a bulwark against Western European capitalist domination of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.
Jackie Robinson's testimony to HUAC (April 1949)