Sixty Years Since the Peekskill Riots
Two Decades Before Woodstock, Attacks on Blacks and Jews at a New York Concert
By Jeffrey K. Salkin
The last time I was in Peekskill, New York I was desperate for a Starbucks. Alas, no Starbucks in Peekskill. But that did not prevent me from driving through its streets, catching glimpses of the Hudson River, and remembering that L. Frank Baum, the author of “The Wizard of Oz,” apparently spent part of his youth in Peekskill (as did Mel Gibson, Paul “Pee-wee Herman” Reubens, and former New York governor George Pataki, who has lived there for essentially his whole life and who served as its mayor) and knew of a local yellow brick road that inspired him to write.
Yet, there is something else about Peekskill. There are probably not many people alive today who remember it; perhaps long-time, aging residents or scholars of American social or musical history. It is a story of terror, a cautionary tale for an America in which vituperation barely tries to pass for civilized discourse.
It happened exactly sixty years ago, at the end of August 1949. The prominent singer and actor Paul Robeson (described in those days as a “Negro”), along with other artists such as Woody Guthrie, Lee Hays and Pete Seeger, was scheduled to give an open-air concert in Peekskill. This was not to be the first time that Robeson was to appear in the Peekskill area. Indeed, it was to be the fourth Robeson concert in as many summers. Mohegan Colony east of Peekskill near Yorktown, a cooperative community that served as an experiment in egalitarian living and child rearing, had hosted the concert in 1946. In 1947, the site was Peekskill Stadium, and in 1948 it was in nearby Crompond.
But 1949’s concert was to be different. Guthrie, Seeger and Hays were all prominent leftists. So, famously, was Robeson. In the years following World War Two, his politics had moved farther to the left, as he used his considerable public voice to protest fascism, as well as the American failure to fully integrate its society in the aftermath of the war in which so many black servicemen had given their lives. Two months before the concert, Robeson had said at the Paris Peace Conference: “It is unthinkable that the Negro people of America or elsewhere…would be drawn into war with the Soviet Union,” because it was the only nation in the world to outlaw race discrimination. As anti-Communist agitation grew in America, so, too, did the rage against Robeson’s perceived Communist loyalties. The slur was common: Robeson owed allegiance to the Soviet Union. Apparently, in a contest for thickness and thoroughness, Robeson’s FBI file would have put John Lennon’s to shame.
The demography of Peekskill and its neighboring northern Westchester Hudson River communities was mixed, even schizophrenic. On the one hand, there were the summer people and weekenders, many of whom were middle-class Jews with left-of-center leanings. On the other hand, there were the year-round residents, more working class and conservative, whose resentment, and even open hostility to the “summer people” had been steadily growing.
In the event, screaming local mobs blocked the entrance to the concert area and harassed concertgoers. The veterans’ groups paraded along the highway, automobile horns blared, and patriotic bands played. Attackers screamed: “We’re Hitler’s boys — here to finish his job.” A crowd of drunken locals attacked the people who were setting up for the concert. One of their leaders, according to journalist Howard Fast, was a prominent businessman in Peekskill.
The mob increased to five hundred, then to a thousand. A little after eight o’clock in the evening, the attackers burned a twelve-foot cross on the picnic grounds. From burning a cross they progressed to burning books, sheet music and chairs, while the performers and concert-goers, arms linked together, sang such songs as “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “God Bless America” and “Solidarity Forever.” The concertgoers, artists and organizers tried to defend the concert site, but by the time the evening was over, every defender had been injured.
A wave of hatred and panic spread through northern Westchester. Up and down the Hudson River towns, signs and bumper stickers appeared: “Wake Up America — Peekskill Did!” “Communism Is Treason. Behind Communism Stands — the Jew! Therefore, for my country — against the Jews!” Vacationers and weekend visitors fled — many forever, abandoning the area as a vacation spot because of the outbreak of “fascist influences.” A summer colony in the area organized a round-the-clock vigil against outside attack. Local Jewish residents were terrorized; it was, according to some, like living through a pogrom.
Apparently undeterred, the organizers re-scheduled the Robeson concert for Sunday, September 4. It was to be held at two o’clock in the afternoon at the Hollow Brook Country Club, about a half-mile from the earlier concert site, three miles northeast of Peekskill. Twenty-five thousand people attended. Many of them were trade union members; about forty percent of the crowd was women, and one local resident estimate that about eighty percent were Jews.
The program opened with music by Liszt, Mozart, Bach, Verdi and Chopin. Then, Guthrie, Seeger and Hays appeared, singing American folk songs and topical songs. Then, Robeson came on, singing a medley of songs ranging from Spanish Civil War melodies to civil rights anthems. He performed the last aria from “Boris Godunov,” and finished up with his famous rendition of “Old Man River.”
The concert ended at around four o’clock in the afternoon. As cars and buses started to depart from the concert grounds, police routed the vehicles through the northern Westchester woods and up a steep, winding road. There, crowds of men and boys were waiting. As if on cue, they hurled rocks at the vehicles. More than fifty buses and countless cars had their windows smashed; at least fifteen cars were overturned. Bus drivers abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot, leaving about a thousand of their passengers stranded.
The violence overflowed even to people who had not attended the concert. Some men and boys noticed a bus of blacks travelling along the highway, on their way back to New York from a field trip to visit the Roosevelt home in Hyde Park and attacked it. At least one hundred and fifty people were injured badly enough to warrant medical attention.
Leslie Matthews, a staff correspondent for the now-defunct black newspaper New York Age, offered this eyewitness account:
I hear the wails of women, the impassioned screams of children, the jeers and taunts of wild-eyed youths. I still smell the sickening odor of blood flowing from freshly opened wounds, gasoline fumes from autos and buses valiantly trying to carry their loads of human targets out of the range of bricks, bottles, stones, sticks.
Years later, Pete Seeger would meet a young man folk singer who admitted to the elder statesman of American folk music that his father had been a police officer in Peekskill. The young man told Seeger: “You know, that riot was all arranged by the Ku Klux Klan and the police…They had walkie-talkies all through the woods. They had that place surrounded like a battlefield.”
The hatred became contagious — even entrepreneurial. Bill Hendrix, a Klan activist in Tallahassee, used the Peekskill opportunity to extend his newly created empire, the Original Southern Klans, Inc., which had split off from the Association of Georgia Klans. The Associated Press quoted him as saying that the Peekskill violence was “only the beginning. The crosses will begin to burn north of the Mason-Dixon Line tonight… as soon as the order gets through.” He lost no time. On the night of the Peekskill concert, six burning crosses had already appeared in Tallahassee. Each cross had a sign on it: “We protest Paul Robeson and Communism.”
James Edward Smythe, chairman of the Protestant War Veterans of the United States, Inc., who had been accused of Nazi collaboration in 1944, warned that the “Jewish race has worn out its welcome in this country” and that “some of your highest officials and big business executives” in Westchester would join the Klan in its fight against “Judeo-Communism.”
The riots contributed to a small but significant chapter in American political history. Former vice-president Henry Wallace had run for president on the leftist Progressive Party ticket in 1948, with Robeson and Seeger’s help. Shaken by the riots, and afraid that the Progressive Party had drifted too far to the Left, Wallace left the party, and it soon folded. Moreover, the Peekskill riots would become the musical prelude to the anti-Communist career of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Within a few months of the riots, McCarthy would raise the specter of Communist infiltration into the State Department: a haunting fear whose repercussions and implications would last for decades.
It’s a notable event in American history even if it is mainly remembered in folk music history. Pete Seeger, who turned ninety years old this year, along with the late Lee Hays, immortalized the event in the song “Hold The Line”:
Let me tell you the story of a line that was held,
And many brave men and women whose courage we know well,
How we held the line at Peekskill on that long September day!
We will hold the line forever till the people have their way.Hold the line!
Hold the line!
As we held the line at Peekskill
We will hold it everywhere.
Hold the line!
Hold the line!
We will hold the line forever
Till there’s freedom ev’rywhere.
Words by Lee Hays; Music by Pete Seeger (1949)
The concerts at Peekskill happened twenty years, almost to the day, before Woodstock. Its aftermath was the anti-Woodstock. But is there any reason for a new generation to care about this sixty year old event in American history? The words of Leslie Matthews echo in our ears: “I still hear, smell and feel Peekskill.” Is there any reason why a new generation should hear, smell and feel what happened in Peekskill?
In several significant ways, the memory of Peekskill gives us pause. It reminds Jews and blacks that we have always had common enemies. It reminds us of the naïve Communist flirtations, and more, of the old Left — flirtations which led some to embrace Stalin and to only begrudgingly, if ever, denounce his homicidal policies. On the back of his 1966 live album “Phil Ochs In Concert,” the late troubadour reproduced the poetry of Mao Tse-Tung – poetry which is admittedly electric in its beauty – and asks: “Can this really be the enemy?” In fact, yes, Mao really could have been the enemy, and he really was. It turns out that even poets can be mass murderers.
Moreover: the heat and volume of the health care debate in America today, a debate in which labels like “Communist” and “socialist” are cast around gratuitously, reminds us that the virus of anti-Communist hysteria has hardly passed out of the American body politic. It reminds us that the “Communist” card and the race card are always available to be played. It reminds us that rage is seductive and that demagoguery is a perennial temptation.
Finally: As a forebear of the politics of vilification, the Peekskill event reminds us that words have consequences. And not only on the wooded back roads of northern Westchester County.
Jeffrey K. Salkin is a rabbi, teacher and writer who lives in Atlanta, Georgia. His most recent book is The Modern Men’s Torah Commentary (Jewish Lights).
Below, Pete Seeger discusses the Peekskill Riots with Majora Carter.
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we forget how strong anti-semitism was in the US during the 1920s through much of the 1940s. It was not until Israel won several wars against the Arab nations aimed at destroying the infant state that Jew hatred diminished here and even longer for hatred of Black Americans to disappear. Now, as Israel seems weak, the almost dead hatred of Jews has had a rejuvenation.
While I have no use for the KKK or other rioters at Peekskill, it does not follow that it was a "slur" to denounce Paul Robeson's devotion to Stalinism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson_and_communism eg. defending show trials and shootings, and lying about Stalin's persecution of Jews. If he had his choice, I suspect Solomon Mikhoels would have preferred being persecuted the way Robeson was.
Instead of whitewashing Robeson's Stalinism, it is better to observe that (1) it does not detract from his artistic talent, and (2) it deserves more pity than condemnation, as a trauma of the Jim Crow era. Other Black intellectuals of the time, however, recognized that Stalin's opposition to racism was no more reliable than his opposition to Hitler (vid. the 1939-1941 alliance) and to antisemitism.
In response to Mr. Cunningham: You are incorrect in every statement you make.
* Robeson and others were quite right to defend the Show Trials. There is plenty of evidence from the Soviet Archives, and of course from the trial transcripts, to show that the defendants were guilty of those crimes to which they confessed. See, for example, Furr and Bobrov, "Nikolai Bukharin's First Statement of Confession in the Lubianka", at http://clogic.eserver.org/2007/Furr_Bobrov.pdf
* Not only did not Stalin persecute Jews; Stalin was strongly opposed to antisemitism, as famous Soviet dissident Zhores Medvedev stated in 2003 (Stalin i evreiskaia problema).
* Solomon Mikhoels was indeed killed by somebody -- but the documents purporting to prove that he was killed on Stalin's order are forgeries, and crude ones at that.
* The Soviets were not in any way "allied" with Hitler in 1939-1941. Nonaggression treaties are not alliances. The Munich Agreement involving Great Britain, France and Hitler's Germany to partition Czechoslovakia is more accurately termed an "alliance."
When Hitler occupied all that remained of Czechoslovakia in 1939 the Chamberlain government permitted the Bank of England to give the Czech government's gold reserved to Hitler. Now THERE's collaboration for you!
* If by "Stalin's shootings" Mr Cunningham means the "Ezhovshchina" or "Great Terror", this was carried out by the Rightist conspirators, of whom Ezhov, head of the NKVD, was one. Ezhov and his lieutenants confessed to killing as many innocent civilians as possible in order to create discontent with the Soviet system and facilitate an invasion by Japan and/or Germany, during which they hoped to seize power. This too is lavishly documented by evidence from the former Soviet archives.
In 1949 the Communist movement was in the forefront of fighting for workers' rights and against racism. Robeson and others who supported the Communist Party were right to do so.
The worst that can be said about the C.P. -- and it is a devastating criticism -- is that they still had many illusions about the U.S. government, and capitalists generally, for which they paid dearly.
And still, unfortunately Black Americans have forgotten our sacrifices on their behalf. Witness the reverse racism, anti-semitism, and "acting stupidly" behavior of one Barry Hussein Sotero Obama, "son" of Jeremiah Wright, enemy of Israel, bosom buddy of Senator Robert C. Byrd, a Klan member in good standing at the time of Peeskill, and for decades he never changed his affiliation or admiration of his "past??" organization.
Interestingly enough this same Obama who breaks bread with anti-Semites, who ignores the bloodbath in Iran but goes ape over Jews living on their own land, he dissed Abraham Lincoln for years, until it became politically convienent for him to "admire" a man whose boots he'd never be fit to shine. But to buss the butts of Wright and Byrd, he'll go-a-running.
p.s. for Furr and for Lennie
Who Hired Yezhov in the first place?
Hint - it wasn't Trotsky nor the murdered General Tuchashevsky.
That too many of the generation of the '30s and '40s supported and defended Stalinism in the name of Socialism or anti-Fascism (including members of my own family) was tragic and wrong; that Grover Furr continues to do so is ludicrous. However, that someone (with the name, Alan, no less!)seeks to make that rather obvious point by maligning the lamentably-late Harry Fisher is foolish and ignorant. I was lucky enough to know Harry. We disagreed on many aspects of this general subject, but a finer, more decent and honorable human being didn't, and doesn't, exist.
Alan,
Sorry that you misunderstood me.
I actually had much respect for Harry Fisher when he chose to fight Fascism in Spain. To me, those guys were heroes, and he was definitely up there - then.
However, to sign on to a Party that embraced Hitler right after Spain was lost, to work for TASS for 50 years, even through some of the worst Soviet anti-Semitism, is to me, the sign of a "true believer" - and damn where you came from. Harry wrote in "Comrades" about his pride in being a Jew - well, the glorious, sunny-side up Soviet Union was as vicious as the Czars were towards Jews, and while Stalin was alive, really not much better than Hitler - Stalin had he lived was planning a mass deportation of Soviet Jews to Siberia, and exterminating in many, if not most cases - even Soviet historians have acknowledged that. It was only his death that prevented this atrocity -remember, Harry stayed loyal to that party EVEN AFTER 1956.
I suppose Alan, you've heard of Bill Herrick. If you have, you probably don't like him - but I do suggest you read his memoir "Jumping the Line" which really tells the truth about Spain and the Communist Party. I'd admire Harry more had he demonstrated some more independence of intellect, he chose not to do so, which is a pity. Bill Herrick, though did.
Re:
"The old revolutionaires, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin were NOT counterrevolutionaires nor Nazis."
We have lots of evidence now from the former Soviet archives. ALL of it, as well as their own confessions, supports the hypothesis that the Opposition was indeed conspiring with the Germans and Japanese, and much more.
In general, it sustains the confessions the Oppositionists gave at trial and that they repeated in their appeals of their sentences, secret till 1992.
Bukharin et al. were indeed collaborating with the Germans, as Bukharin and others insisted over and over again in documents never intended to be made public.
Re: "...Koba who insisted Hitler was his buddy..."
Stalin never made any such statement. Quite the contrary!
Re: "...every objective study on the murders of Mikhoels..."
There are no such "objective studies." My Russian colleague and I have an article pending publication on the crude forgeries framing Stalin for Mikhoels' assassination.
Re: "...Bergelson, Markish and Feffer..."
I said nothing about the 1952 trial of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which is quite distinct from the January 1948 murder of Solomon Mikhoels.
It was Lavrenti Beria who revealed that Feffer and the other JAFC defendants had been framed. This was the very day before his arrest by Khrushchev et al.
In this frameup Beria implicated Ignat'ev, former head of the MGB at the time. During Beria's tenure Ignat'ev had been dismissed. It was Khrushchev who reappointed Ignat'ev.
The judge at the JAFC trial later (1990s) confessed that he condemned them despite feeling that they were innocent. This was indeed a crime - by the judge.
There is no evidence that Stalin, ill and only intermittently active by 1952, had anything to do with this trial.
Re: "...nor the murdered General Tuchashevsky."
We have overwhelming evidence that Tukhachevsky and the other high-ranking military officers tried and executed with him on June 11-12, 1937, were guilty of conspiring with the Germans, and much else.
We have evidence that they were collaborating with Leon Trotsky in this conspiracy as well.
Tukhachevsky et al. were contemplating a military alliance with Nazi Germany. It's clear that their trial and execution saved Europe from facing a much stronger Nazi Germany.
In short, "Stalin" -- the Soviets -- saved Europe from Naziism not once, in the war, but TWICE -- in stopping Tukhachevsky et al.
Re: "...that Grover Furr continues to [defend Stalinism...]."
This is false, no matter how "Stalinism" is defined.
I try to defend the truth, which has to be determined by the best evidence, which I try to obtain and study.
Re: "Every one of Furr's arguments, or what you call a case, can be laughed, or seriously put down."
"Laughing" is no "refutation"; it's the admission of one's inability to refute.
"Seriously put down". I challenge you to do so. I know you can't.
I don't claim knowledge about subjects I have not studied. I've studied the matters above. The truth, as determined by the best available evidence, is as I've outlined it above.
"Belief" is irrelevant, as is "laughing" and, of course, insults and name-calling. The truth can't be established by any other means than by a careful study of the available evidence, which is often hard to find and to interpret.
It is obvious that those whose remarks I've quoted above have not done this.
All the insults -- "Stalinist", "Useless idiot and stooge", "stupid, asinine sorry excuse", and so on -- constitute a tacit confession that those who have recourse to such language cannot defend their preconceived ideas with evidence and logic.
Re: "...Stalin had he lived was planning a mass deportation of Soviet Jews to Siberia, and exterminating in many, if not most cases - even Soviet historians have acknowledged that."
This is completely false.
Just the opposite is true. Gennady Kostyrchenko, a fanatic anticommunist and Zionist Russian historian, has determined that this fairy-tale is a fabrication.
The name of Kostyrchenko's article is: "Deportatsiia - mistifikatsiia." You don't need to know Russian to translate that!
(Actually he has published several different articles with differing titles, all of which give more or less the same evidence.)
Re: "... well, the glorious, sunny-side up Soviet Union was as vicious as the Czars were towards Jews, and while Stalin was alive, really not much better than Hitler ..."
This is completely false. The USSR was perhaps the ONLY country in the world, during the 20s through '40s, where antisemitism was officially punished.
A great many general-rank officers, high-ranking Party and government members, and leading members of society in every sphere were Jews.
This was not the case in any Allied country, all of which were rife with official antisemitism.
Zhores Medvedev (Stalin i evreiskaia problema, 2003) and more recently he and his brother (The Unknown Stalin) have acknowledged that Stalin was NOT antisemitic.
Who hired Beria, Furr?
Who ordered German and Satellite deserters shot hours before Operation Barbarossa for "spreading lies"?
Who demanded Klem Gottwald prosecute Slanksy and other die-hard Czech Stalinists as "Zionists"...and personally did so, according to Eugen Loebl, Artur London and Heda Margolis Kovaly.
Much more, but I've given the truth - where's yours?
P.S. - Furr, What happened to the Jews in the Soviet Union and the Bloc Countries after 1945 - and before March 5, 1953, Grover? Hint: You can't blame Khruschev, Beria, Gomulka, Novotny, or anyone else for the orders originally issued and signed off on by your Georgia hero.
Re: "...your Georgia hero."
Wrong yet again. I'm not 'defending' Stalin, much less making a "hero" out of him.
I'm standing up for the truth, as demonstrated by the best evidence and research.
So should you do.
Re: "Who hired Beria, Furr?"
In 1938, evidently, Stalin wanted Malenkov, but others suggested Beria.
After 1945 Beria had nothing to do with the NKVD-KGB until the day Stalin died. On March 5 1953 Beria was appointed the head of the newly-united MVD and MGB by vote of the Presidium: Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich, Khrushchev, and others.
Between 1945 and 1953 Beria headed the Soviet A-bomb project.
Re: "Who ordered German and Satellite deserters shot hours before Operation Barbarossa for "spreading lies"?"
No one. I have never seen any evidence that such shootings took place.
Re: Loebl, London, and Kovaly. They were in no position to know who took what decisions, or what happened during Politburo discussions.
However, like yourself, I have never studied these specific cases in detail.
Unlike yourself, I do not pretend to know things I don't.
Re: "...I've given the truth."
On the contrary, you've done nothing but state falsehoods.
Re: "...What happened to the Jews in the Soviet Union and the Bloc Countries after 1945 - and before March 5, 1953?"
Nothing happened.
On the contrary, antisemitism continued to be vigorously prosecuted. Example: the swift punishment of those responsible for the Kielce pogrom in Poland.
Konstantin Simonov records that Stalin spoke sharply against antisemitism in a private meeting he attended after the war. Malyshev, one of the industrial ministers, recalls that Stalin said, at a Presidium meeting in late 1952: "Antisemites have turned up in the Central Committee. This is a disgrace."
I have already mentioned that the Medvedev brothers conclude Stalin was not an antisemite at all.
Jews won a vastly disproportionate number of Stalin Prizes in virtually every field in the postwar period. Stalin didn't pretend to know about all these different fields, but he certainly could have stopped such awards had he wanted to.
Stalin strongly opposed antisemitism. Menachem Begin, imprisoned for a time as a Zionist, says in his memoirs that the Soviets were consistently "anti-anti-semitic."
I have never studied the Eastern Bloc countries closely. I concentrate on the USSR. But every Eastern European communist party had Jews in its leadership (as, of course, did the Soviet party). This was not true in any of the capitalist countries.
It's absurd to assert that this could have all happened had Stalin, and the Soviet Party leadership, been antisemitic.
* * * * *
So far, every single statement you have made concerning the USSR has been factually incorrect.
You should not making assertions based on no evidence.
If you are really interested in Soviet history you should study the evidence and base your opinions on it.
Otherwise, you will continue to believe, and repeat, lies and nonsense.
No Grover, it is you who continue to spread lies and falsehoods - and yes, you are defending Stalin as much as David Irving defends Hitler. I'm sure you love being compared to a Holocaust denier, well, unfortunately you do remind me very much of Irving - to him, Hitler didn't give the orders for the Holocaust, it was done by his minions - to you, Stalin never gave the orders to slaughter the cream of the Soviet high command, or made deals with Hitler, or arranged for the hiring of the Yezhovs and Berias, it was always done by minions.
And sorry, Mr. Furr, but you're very wrong. I've studied Soviet History, in fact I have an A from one of the best professors of Soviet History and Foreign Policy, David Cattrell, and what I learned from him and others is the truth.
Funny you say Loebl, London and Heda Margolis have nothing to say because they weren't involved in politburo decisions. Of course NOT, they were imprisoned by Gottwald on Stalin's orders - Loebl and London two of only three main survivors of the Slansky purge - which was VICIOUSLY anti-Semitic and approved wholeheartedly by Stalin.
Also - I've read "White Nights" by Begin, and he said absolutely nothing in defense of Stalin and the Soviets. On the contrary, he was imprisoned by them! Again, Grover, like David Irving, you twist facts and turn them into lies. Yes, he hated Hitler more than Stalin, but his rabid anti-Communism came directly out of his experiences in the Soviet Gulag, which no doubt stunned those in the Israeli Labour Party, whom many were very sympathetic to Russia.
I had this book, which unfortunately I no longer have - a true account by a Jew and former Russian Navy Submariner who having risked his life, came home in 1945 to fear and virulent anti-Semitism. I will try to find the title - and it is something you need to read with an open mind, for he said from 1946 on through 1953 he and his family were in constant fear of deportation and worse - because THEY WERE JEWS. He stayed in Russia after Stalin's death, hoping things would change - they never did, and he emigrated to Israel. I did have the memoirs of Peretz Markish's wife, and she clearly points the finger at Stalin for the murder of her husband and the others in the JAFC. She also writes vividly of the persecution she and her family endured after her husband was executed - because they were Jews. I do have Leopold Leib Trepper's Memoirs - he was the head of the maligned-by-Stalin Red Orchestra and he writes of how after he helped save the Soviet Union by providing information about Panzer movements prior to Kursk, he was imprisoned in the Lubyanka - orders of Stalin, Beria, et. al.,
READ TREPPER - I have. READ THE MARGOLIS-KOVALY AND LONDON MEMOIRS - I have. That's the truth, not your made up nonsense that smacks of Agit-Prop.
So you blatantly lie when you say "nothing happened" to Jews in Russia between 1945 and 1953. If "nothing happened", then why were so many, many - and documented - in fear; why did so many want to leave a country that you claim was so benevolent to them - a leader whom you insist was NOT an anti-Semite.
Your turn Grover - you're the liar, not I.
Mr. Furr,
That book was entitled: "Hostages" by Gregory (Grigor) Svirsky. Svirsky was a Jewish submarine commander in the Red Navy, and he writes vividly of the fear, hate (no jobs for him after 1946), and persecution he and his family faced thanks to Uncle Joe and company. He writes vividly of the terror, the fear of imprisonment and deportation especially after the murder of Mikhoels, the imprisonment of Feffer, Bergelson, Markish...and the Doctor's Plot.
I don't have that book anymore - but I DO have the memoirs of Margolis-Kovaly, of Trepper...and what my late friend, Bill Herrick, a hero's hero wrote, and you couldn't refute them in a million years.
If Stalin was so unaware of all this - then he was a bigger fool and nincompoop than you would make him out to be. After all, Irving also insists Adolf wasn't aware of Auschwitz either.
One mistake on my part - and for clarification only.
Svirsky was NOT a submariner - however he was a naval air pilot for the Soviets and based in the North by the submarine bases. He knew the famous Jewish submariner Rosanovich (?) who died in action, and other fellow Jews whom the Soviet government (led by who, Grover?) refused to acknowledge as Jews even though they openly acknowledged the origins of others.
Just read "Hostages" - and those other books I cited.
Re: "to you, Stalin never gave the orders to slaughter the cream of the Soviet high command..."
Wrong again! I never wrote such nonsense.
What I did write was that Tukhachevsky & Co. were guilty on the evidence -- and we have a huge amount of it now.
In nipping this pro-Nazi conspiracy in the bud the USSR -- "Stalin", to you -- arguably saved Europe from Naziism the first time. The second time was in WW2.
Re: "...arranged for the hiring of the Yezhovs and Berias..."
Yezhov was certainly "hired" by Stalin to head the NKVD, and Stalin certainly approved Beria too, in 1938.
Stalin was dead when Beria was appointed head of the combined MVD-MGB on March 5, 1953.
As I pointed out Beria was the man who blew the whistle on the frameup of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Give the man some credit!
The Medvedev brothers believe it was Stalin who STOPPED the "Doctors' Plot" investigation-persecution. Stalin's daughter wrote that her father did not believe these charges.
However, Stalin was very ill, and less and less politically active, after WW2.
In February 1951 the Politburo began to use a rubber stamp of Stalin's signature and authorized its members to use it. So "Stalin" signed things that Stalin the person never saw.
This makes it difficult to determine just what Stalin knew and did, and what he didn't. Of course, lack of documents doesn't help!
Re: "...main survivors of the Slansky purge - which was VICIOUSLY anti-Semitic and approved wholeheartedly by Stalin."
As I stated earlier, I have not closely studied the Eastern bloc countries. So I haven't seen the evidence one way or the other.
Obviously you haven't either. So you are stating things as facts which, in reality, you do not know to be facts.
You are "believing" things you have heard or read. Here you are fundamentally wrong.
"Belief" is irrelevant to establishing the truth. Only evidence is relevant, together with logic and experience.
Re: "I've read "White Nights" by Begin, and he said absolutely nothing in defense of Stalin and the Soviets."
You raise a straw man. I note you don't deny what I wrote -- that Begin did, in fact, state that the Soviets were "anti-anti-semitic."
Re: "...came home in 1945 to fear and virulent anti-Semitism."
There was certainly lots of antisemitism in Russia, and always had been. There was lots of it in the USA too. Witness Peekskill!
Antisemitism was illegal in the USSR during Stalin's time, and was in fact punished. Stalin was personally very much opposed to antisemitism. I've cited some evidence; there's more.
Re: "I did have the memoirs of Peretz Markish's wife, and she clearly points the finger at Stalin for the murder of her husband and the others in the JAFC."
She was not in a position to know how these decisions were reached.
I wrote about the JAFC trial in a previous post. Stalin seems to have had nothing to do with it.
But SOMETHING was going on here! with the JAFC trial, the "Doctors' Plot". Then there was the whole frameup of Beria & Co.
Something was indeed very rotten in the leadership of the Soviet state. My guess is that Khrushchev was at the bottom of it. But we don't know for sure.
Re: Trepper. Who'd ever deny that miscarriages of justice took place in the USSR? They take place in every country!
I've read Trepper's memoirs too. Some of his statements are clearly false, and a lot is just rumor.
But the main problem is we have only Trepper's account. We don't have the investigative records.
Memoirs are by definition self-serving. That doesn't mean Trepper was lying, or wrong, in everything. But his memoir cannot possibly be taken as an objective account of what happened.
To repeat: Trepper may have been the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Or, maybe not. We don't know.
The same strictures apply to the other memoirs you cite. Memoirs are not objective history. It may be that these people, and others, were railroaded on fabricated charges. But we can't validly conclude they were based solely on their own accounts.
I take no position on events in Eastern Europe, since I've never studied them closely.
I don't have the langages, for one thing - and that's essential, a sine qua non.
If you don't read these languages, you will never know about these events either. You'll be forced to "believe" somebody else's account. "Belief" is not evidence, much less proof.
Re: "...what my late friend, Bill Herrick, a hero's hero wrote..."
Herrick's memoirs are filled with utter fabrications and falsehoods. I discovered this while investigating his account of the death of Oliver Law. I discovered that Herrick had made it all up.
He also made up the account of being taken to witness the executions of some captives.
Some time ago I proposed to write a thorough review of Herrick's memoirs. The response I got was, basically, this:
"Herrick is a very minor figure; his memoirs are of little interest; and you have already proven that he lied shamelessly in them. So we are not really interested in a thorough review of his memoirs."
I have to agree! But I may do it anyway.
Herrick is really an object lesson, a person who spent much of his life lying about the communist movement. Of course lots of others have done the same thing.
BTW, if one objects to calling Stalin a "hero" -- I certainly have not done so -- one ought to object to calling Herrick a "hero". Except in the sense that all the International Brigade volunteers were "heroes."
Re: "If Stalin was so unaware of all this..."
All of what?
* * * * *
It's perfectly clear that there were lots of problems in the USSR at any period you want to name.
It's clear too that Stalin, and other Soviet leaders, made lots of mistakes. No human endeavor is without error!
IF you want to understand Soviet history -- whether you're sympathetic or not makes no difference -- you need to forget about demonizing, or celebrating, individuals and concentrate on:
1. Discovering what happened, through studying the best evidence we have;
2. Identifying and studying systemic factors and developments.
Khrushchev pretended that the problems with Soviet socialism were due to Stalin personally. This was a self-serving lie on Khrushchev's part.
It's PAST time to see through this and focus of systemic issues, which Khrushchev of course did not wish to do.
Demonizing Stalin or anybody else makes poor history, though it may make effective anticommunist propaganda. It has certainly fooled you!
The trouble with you, Grover, is that you are indeed another Irving...willing to make all kinds of excuses for a murderous despot.
I HAVE studied those Eastern Bloc Trials, ESPECIALLY the Czech ones. I HAVE the memoirs of London and Margolis-Kovaly and read them regularly. I had those of Markish's widow, of Svirsky's, and Loebl's. I know what was stated there, and what the survivors had to say about Koba and his sycophants.
Your insult - and I do hope Lenny and Alan Barnes are reading this - of Bill Herrick, who by the way if he were alive you're NOT fit to shine his shoes - and the continued lies about Oliver Law being so brave truly fits in the warped worldview of a Stalinist. Law was incompetent - even Steve Nelson before he died hinted at this to Paul Berman; I could regurgitate the probable truth of his death, where after leading troops into two ambushes, they had had enough and basically "fragged" him, but you couldn't handle the truth.
"Herrick made it all up"??? - too bad Doug Roach, Joe Gordon, or Morry Mickenburg weren't still alive to tell you otherwise - or even a Yale Stuart, who slimed his best friend Mickenburg who saved his life at the Ebro - then 15 years later, sickened by the Doctor's Plot, left your wonderful party and became a Zionist, working until he died for Israel Bonds - quite unlike the Fisher who chose TASS.
Herrick, on the other hand, was right up on the frontlines at Jarama, manning a machine-gun provided through Stalin's "aid" that promptly jammed. When he tried to fix it, he received that bullet. He was "unwise" to make critical comments about the Soviet Union and Stalinism to a girlfriend who turned out to be the wife of a high Comintern official (perhaps Laszlo Rajk), and was taken out to witness the murder of dissidents - yeah, those oh-so-bad POUMists and Anarchists who were fighting the Fascists as much as the Interbrigadiers were, perhaps even more so. Herrick was spared a purge, only because the official handling his case was an old friend of his family's. The same could not be said for Harry Perchik, Marvin Stern, Albert Wallach, Vernon Selby and several other Americans murdered in Spain courtesy of the purge mentality that had spread from Moscow to Madrid.
He came home, disillusioned, and when your wonderful "non-aggression" pact was signed, promptly had the courage to march through the Garment District with a placard - "Veteran of the Spanish Civil War-Victim of the Hitler-Stalin Pact", whereupon your fellow excuse-makers spat on him and tried to knive him.
Herrick was a man's man - not an Oliver Law.
As for Tuckhachevsky, again, you spread falsehoods about his treason - no factual basis whatsoever, Furr. I will grant you one thing, you at least have the honesty to claim Trepper "may have been a victim of a miscarriage of justice" - but otherwise, you are a credit to your fellow excuse-maker Irving.
Re: "I'm sure you love being compared to a Holocaust denier..." and "...you are indeed another Irving..."
I disagree with YOU, and you compare that to Holocaust denial?
What chutspah!
Re: "I HAVE studied those Eastern Bloc Trials, ESPECIALLY the Czech ones...."
I've repeatedly said that I have not studied them. So I would not make any statements about them.
Given your behavior in this discussion I would never accept YOUR account of them or of any other event!
Re: Oliver Law, Herrick's multiple, contradictory versions of his death (which Herrick admitted he had no direct knowledge of anyway), the question of "ambushes", etc.;
Those interested may read my study "Anatomy of an Anticommunist Fabrication: The Death of Oliver Law, An Historiographical Investigation", in _reconstruction_ vol. 8 No. 1 (March 2008), at http://reconstruction.eserver.org/081/furr.shtml
That Herrick certainly lied in this story doesn't depend on what I think, but upon the evidence, which is overwhelming.
Re: "...and was taken out to witness the murder of dissidents."
Consider:
* Herrick's two accounts of this supposed "event" contradict each other.
* Unlike his "Oliver Law" fabrications which began in the 1950s, Herrick never even mentioned this supposed "murder of dissidents" until 1986, 49 years after the alleged event.
* In addition to his lies about Oliver Law, Herrick made a great many other false statements in his memoir.
* In any case there is an elementary historiographical principle: that a single witness is insufficient to establish an alleged event as factual.
Verification is always needed and the more independent, the better.
In this case -- of course -- there is none.
Re: "...Harry Perchik, Marvin Stern, Albert Wallach, Vernon Selby..."
Read Peter Carroll, _The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade_, on these figures. His study strikes me as objective, as opposed to partisan.
I haven't made a special study of the fates of any of these men. Neither have you, obviously. Therefore, neither of us can say with any authority what happened to them.
Re: "...when your wonderful "non-aggression" pact was signed,..."
All the really good Western scholars of the period agree that the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact was completely defensible.
See, for example, the three quotations from Jonathan Haslam, Geoffrey Roberts, and Michael Carley at the bottom of this page: http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/research/mlg09/should_the_ussr_have_permitted.html
I've recently published an extensive article online with 20+ pages of evidence. See "Did the Soviet Union Invade Poland in September 1939? (The answer: No, it did not.)", in _Cyrano's Journal_, http://www.bestcyrano.org/filesdepot/?p=1753
You can also access the article itself and the 20+ web pages of evidence directly at http://www.tinyurl.com/furr-mlg09
Re: "As for Tuckhachevsky, again, you spread falsehoods about his treason - no factual basis whatsoever,..."
There is a huge factual -- evidentiary -- basis for concluding Tukhachevsky was guilty! Naturally I can't cite all this stuff here.
* A small part of Tukhachevsky's confessions were published in English translation in 1997 by Steven J. Main in _The Journal of Slavic Military Studies_ vol. 10 No. 1 (March 1997), pp. 151-195.
* A huge amount more has been published in various Russian-language sources.
I have some additional evidence in a forthcoming article detailing the evidence that Leon Trotsky did in fact conspire with the Germans and Japanese. This was perhaps the most serious charge made against Trotsky during the Moscow Trials. There's a lot of evidence now that substantiates these charges.
Re: "...you at least have the honesty to claim Trepper "may have been a victim of a miscarriage of justice"
I say that he may, or may not, have been -- that I do not know, because I have not researched it.
You, on the other hand, affirm that he was even though you have not researched it either!
You "believe" Trepper, "believe" Herrick. In general, you do a LOT of "believing."
You will never discover the truth about anything until you admit to yourself that you do not already know the truth.
Belief is not just irrelevant to establishing the truth. "Belief" is a positive hindrance to discovering the truth.
The truth can only be established through the careful identification, collection, and study of evidence.
That's what I do. All the insults, vituperation, name-calling, Red-baiting, and "believing" is irrelevant.
Re: "Trepper and Herrick I believe not only because they were personally courageous and honest about their experience - they tell the truth."
This is circular reasoning:
* You claim "they tell the truth" because "they were ... honest."
* How do you know they were "honest"? Because "they tell the truth."
Others can see the fallacy in your reasoning, even if you cannot.
Re: "Trepper and Herrick ... were personally courageous..."
A person's "personal courage" is irrelevant to whether or not they are "telling the truth." Many Nazis were personally courageous.
Re: your not accepting my account. I have never suggested that you should do so.
Rather I have been arguing that you should stop "accepting accounts" altogether.
I have pointed out that we can learn the truth only through careful research using primary-source evidence.
You say: "Trepper and Herrick I believe..."
That is your problem -- "belief."
You cannot make a statement true by "believing" it.
Neither can you make a statement false by calling it "Stalinist", "silly", or any other name.
I suspect that, in your better moments, you realize this yourself.
The story is not about Paul Robeson so much as it is about Christian America's hate filled actions and violent nature. I believe that such hatred is less than skin deep. It is bubbling forth in the right wing's festering desire to rid America of the man in the White House because he has the wrong skin color and a minor taint of freign feel because his father was not an American.
To those so called Americans there is no such notion as fairness when it comes to anyone they were taught to hate & devalue. They see our current president as stain on America's white christian honor. They may use euphemisms to try and obscure their feelings but such sentiments burst forth clearly to anyone who has looked on America as a naturalized citizen and heard Americans speak forth their fears and hatreds in diners and bars across the nation.
I remember clearly reading small town newspapers after Lennon was murdered. The hatred was overwhelming, persistent and disgusting. Such feeling always will be.
A p.s. to the above.
Mr. Furr says he never studied the fates of Lincoln battalion members Vern Selby, Marvin Wallach, Harry Perchik, and Albert Wallach...and claims "neither have you, obviously"...
Well, once again a Communist lie.
I did study their fates while researching my Masters Thesis on Jewish participation in the International Brigades. While I only lightly touched upon what quite possibly - and probably happened to them in my thesis, I still have the communications from Lincoln vets Robert Gladnick, a friend of Perchik, who states quite unequivocally that Perchik was murdered by the battalion version of the GPU, i.e., trusted soldiers sent out by Brigade Commissars to deal with disaffected "unreliables". This has been confirmed by a relative of Perchik's who wrote me over a year ago when I brought this up in a discussion about the Lincolns.
In the cases of both Selby and Al Wallach, they were taken to the Interbrigade prison at Castelldelfels (sic)outside Barcelona at the time of the retreats. It is claimed they were American spies, for Selby had been a West Pointer and Wallach a National Guard member before departing for Spain. Never mind that Selby helped save a number of high-ranking Party Commissars during the retreats, or that Wallach, who did desert, had been sick and had a rupture. They were handed over to Communist thug (later turned Mafioso) Tony DeMaio, the prison warden, and disappeared forever (in Eby, letters from both Bob Gladnick and Bill Herrick, and "American Commissar" by Sandor Voros).
Marvin Stern, a dedicated Party member and unit Commissar in the first Lincoln contigent at Jarama, had been unwise to keep a diary and be openly critical of the military and political leadership of the Lincolns, in particular, Bob Merriman (the ostensible non-Party leader of the battalion). Shortly after Jarama, he was summonded to headquarters and transferred to a French penal battalion - soldiers sent out ahead of the battalion to cut down barbed wire or remove mines - and like the other aforementioned three subsequently disappeared. His widow asked Herrick, who knew him, what had happened to him. He couldn't give her an answer.
A real Communist leadership, or one that expressed interest in humanity, would have at best tolerated a sick individual like Wallach, or an "unreliable" like Perchik or even a former West Pointer like Selby,(after all, they tolerated incompetents like Oliver Law and David Doran) but no, not Stalin's boys. If you were like them, said something wrong, or made a mistake, you paid the ultimate price. I actually have Yale Stuart's papers - and even a dedicated Communist (in Spain) like him, someone who personally approved the purging of friends in the VALB after the war, was deemed a "unreliable" several times by Brigade command. Sickening. But I'm sure Furr will come up with an excuse for this, too.
Re: "...I've read your turgid, baloney nonsense..."
Name-calling reflects upon the name-caller. It says nothing about the subject.
It does not constitute a refutation, or evidence, or anything useful.
Often, as here, it is simply a form of denial.
Re: "...your justifications for Uncle Joe.."
I do research. I try to discover the truth. You don't like what I've discovered.
Your dislike doesn't add to our knowledge. It's not a critique of my research.
Your dislike is irrelevant.
Re: "...your typical Communist smearing of heroes like Trepper, Herrick, Tuckhachevsky,..."
Herrick is a liar, and Tukhachevsky guilty, not in the least because I say so, but because the evidence clearly demonstrates it.
Either you want to learn the truth, or you want to hold on to your preconceived ideas.
If you want to learn the truth, you have to be prepared to be disillusioned; to discover that your preconceived ideas, even those most precious to you, are false.
If you're not prepared for that, then you want to persevere in your illusions. You will never learn the truth.
Re: "The fact that men like Yezhov (in the beginning), Beria, Khrushchev, Budenny, Malenkov, Molotov and others whom you claim did the dirty work..."
Ezhov was responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. That is certainly about as "dirty" as "work" can get.
Khrushchev did little besides lie. His famous "Secret Speech" at the 20th Party Congress was virtually 100% lies! I know this because I did the research and wrote the book on it.
I have never claimed that any "dirty work" was done by Beria, Budenny, Malenkov, or Molotov.
I did write that Beria exposed the frameup of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, because that fact is well documented.
Re: "...you resort to disingenuity, falsehoods, and smear."
This is completely false. I have stated the results of my research.
The problem is that you do not like to be told that your preconceived ideas and prejudices are false.
But they are. Not because I say so, but because the best evidence demonstrates that they are.
You have not researched these subjects. Yet you claim to know the truth about them!
To speak plainly -- that's nonsense.
Re: "...Margarete Buber-Neumann..."
I have not researched her specific case. Neither have you, evidently.
That's why neither of us can say -- with any honesty, that is -- whether she was unjustly imprisoned by the Soviets or not.
Re: "Only a Communist would agree that some Nazis were personally courageous ..."
It is stupid to deny it.
Re: "Herrick, Trepper, Loebl, London, Heda Margolis, Svirsky, Natan Sharansky, they tell the truth,..."
You cannot possibly know that.
You are "convinced" they are truthful. You "believe" them.
Your conviction and belief are irrelevant to whether or not they told the truth, or lied.
Of the persons you just named I have done research on Herrick. He was a very evident liar. It's easy to prove it.
I read Trepper's memoirs years ago. He makes some statements that cannot possibly be accurate. As for the rest, I don't know. I haven't checked up or verified his memoirs.
Neither have you. So you don't know either.
Your claim to know Trepper was telling the truth is a mere pose. It fools no one.
In any case,
* a memoir is by definition not an objective work of history;
* a single witness is always insufficient to establish an event as a fact. If it were not, anybody could invent any lie, and it would constitute a fact.
I never claimed to have done any research on the others. So I never claimed they were truthful, or liars, or anything.
You, however, have also never done any research on them. Yet you claim they are truthful!
You are blowing smoke. You cannot possibly be right. No one can know the truth without studying the evidence.
Re: "But then again, you're a Communist - and a Communist always behaves like a Fascist."
Please refer to what I wrote above.
Red-baiting and name-calling reflects upon the name-caller.
Re: "...Lincoln battalion members Vern Selby, Marvin Wallach, Harry Perchik, and Albert Wallach.... I did study their fates while researching my Masters Thesis on Jewish participation in the International Brigades."
If you did, you did. I have not done so, so I'm in no position to make any statements about them.
If you did, then you recognize the value of doing research, reviewing evidence, and coming to conclusions solely on the basis of research and evidence.
So you cite research when it suits your purposes, as here. That's good!
But then you reject research when it does not support your preconceived ideas.
You even claim it isn't necessary to do research to find out the truth. You have written time and again that "belief" is enough.
Obviously you know very well that "belief" is irrelevant -- or you would not have bothered to do research on these Lincoln battalion members.
You can't have it both ways.
The ONLY way you or any of us can find out the truth is by doing the kind of research you claim you have done on these Lincoln battalion members.
Therefore, you must realize that most of what you have written during this discussion cannot possibly be valid, since it is not based on your research, as you claim these remarks are.
That is my point in these discussions. Research, using primary source evidence, is essential to discovering the truth.
Anything else is bluster and nonsense.
* * * * *
I've read a lot about the Lincoln Battalion and related units.
I have never read any account, even those by communists, that excuses all the executions they believe occurred.
The International Brigades were organized and led by Europeans. All European armies, and British "colonial" armies like Canada's, executed deserters and those who disobeyed orders under fire.
During the Great War Canada executed 25 soldiers - I think this is the number. The British executed almost 400. France, Germany, and the other powers did likewise.
But no American soldier was executed for these reasons (as opposed to crimes like murder, rape, etc.) between the Civil War and the infamous execution by shooting of Pvt Eddie Slovik in January 1945.
So executions of soldiers in extreme situations appears, to us Americans, to be a terrible thing. Not so to European military men.
I'm not inclined to excuse any such executions. Neither did Harry Fisher, in his memoir.
You discovered nothing but typical Stalinist lies, falsehoods, and twists,(ironically lies, falsehoods, twists that can easily be substituted for Hitler by your fellow "historian" Irving) Grover. If you cannot accept the atrocities committed by your hero, I suggest you go back to your crayons because you, like Ward Churchill and those who support disvestment from Israel, are "academia" poster children for the return of McCarthyism.
Once again though, you smear. Selby and Wallach were accused of being American military agents even though the battalion had former U.S. officers like Allan Johnson, Doug Seacord, and Royce in their ranks. They never were accused, but a Selby, who led the remnants of those survived the ambush that Merriman and Doran led them into, was - and he was murdered. Not as a deserter. Wallach did desert in part because of a ruptured appendix he had incurred in the sinking of the Ciudad Barcelona. Sandor Voros saw him in a penal battalion, similiar to the one Marvin Stern ended up in - still cheerful, before he tried to flee one more time in Barcelona and ended up in the hands of DeMaio. As for Perchik, a high ranking Communist commissar was involved in his execution, something he later apparently regretted, according to both Gladnick and Herrick.
Yes, the executions were European-oriented, courtesy of the Stalin you make so many excuses for. The trouble is, Americans (and this was a people's army, remember, not the U.S. Army Slovik deserted from) caught the GPU bug. Merriman, Dave Doran, and even, sadly Johnny Gates who later regretted much, went along with the execution program in some cases (i.e., Dave Doran) with glee.
I stand by my assertions, my facts, and the truth. You stand by Stalin. You couldn't face the truth, Furr if Stalin himself came back alive and admitted he did it. And it is too bad Bill Herrick isn't alive to refute your smears and lies...but I do have his, Gladnick's, Yale Stuart's, and Johnny Gates' correspondence.
Case closed.
Re: "Case Closed..."
I agree. It's pointless to try to discuss anything with you.
The Condor legion did outstanding work in giving the red scum a good working over.
One more note for both Richard and for Mr. Furr.
Fuentes Del Ebro, October 1937. Ever hear of it? An example of Soviet incompetency, stupidity, stinginess, and a colossal waste of American lives.
Fuentes Del Ebro was the last stop to the major city of Zaragosa. If the Republicans could push through, they'd reach Zaragosa and be in a position to split Franco's holdings in half. However, the plains leading to that town were criss-crossed with deep irrigation ditches. Nonetheless, Sergei Kondraytev, the "brilliant" Soviet tank commander Stalin had sent (remember, he had just murdered Tuckhachevsky and the Cream of the Soviet High Command on Grover's assertation that they were Nazis!) insisted that the Soviet "Christie" tanks could "fly" across the ditches. He also expressed the confidence that American and Spanish soldiers could board the tanks and move along with them...One or two of the Soviet officers, including ironically enough former Lincoln Battalion member Robert Gladnick who had been co-opted as a result of his Russian birth and ability to speak the language to the Soviet Tank unit, pointed out to Kondraytev about the dangers of the terrain, but he just smiled and insisted on going through with the operation.
So, in the early dawn of October 15, 1937 the tanks, about 50 of them, the largest demonstration of Soviet tanks on the 15th Brigade's front, moved forward. Almost immediately they encountered the deep ditches, and quite a few overturned, others that managed to go forward were sitting ducks for the 88mm guns (Nazi) of the Fascists. Gladnick himself endured a bone crushing ride, got stranded in a ditch for a time, but somehow managed to drive back to the start lines (his correspondence to me). In their wake, the newly formed "Canadian" - mainly American Mackenzie-Papineau battalion started forward, right into the face of concentrated machine gun and cannon fire. Their Commissar, Joe Dallet, already under severe criticism from command, went forward almost alone and was killed almost immediately; others dropped like flies on a battlefield reminiscent of Pickett's Charge, Cold Harbor or Franklin during the American Civil War.
Half of the Soviet tanks were destroyed. About half of the newly-formed Mac-Paps were slaughtered, and casualties were heavy in other Interbrigade units that had also gone forward, including the British Battalion, who lost their commander, former British Army officer Harold Fry. The Republicans never got to Zaragosa, this was their high-water mark.
As for Kondraytev, he was almost immediately summonded back to Moscow. Thankfully for once Stalin recognized a mistake he made and rewarded the stupidity he sent to Spain with a bullet in the neck at the Lubyanka.
Does Grover think that the millions who were sent to the Gulags never to return were also "guilty?"
Or does he have a case of "gulag denial?"
Just wondering.
Jackie "we forget how strong anti-semitism was in the US during the 1920s through much of the 1940s. It was not until Israel won several wars against the Arab nations aimed at destroying the infant state that Jew hatred diminished here and even longer for hatred of Black Americans to disappear. Now, as Israel seems weak, the almost dead hatred of Jews has had a rejuvenation."
excellent post, jackie.
Alan The victory at fuentes del ebro was a great day for spain.
Related to the story - and something Grover could never refute in a million years.
Robeson was a party member, as was Seeger. If he wasn't he was only cheating the party of its dues. A gifted man, but a sad schmuck, just like the Jews like Sam Wanamaker and others who thought Communism would unite the world and end all prejudice. Trouble is, the Russians were even worse to Jews than the nativist fascist scum at Peekskill were, and Blacks weren't treated much better, save for the ANC, which suited Moscow's purposes in Africa.
But back to Robeson. As many know he was a welcome guest in Russia for years. Troubled by the rumors he heard about persecution of Jews, he went to Russia after Peekskill to find out for himself. He specifically asked about Itzik Feffer, whom he had met when the leadership of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee came to America during the war years. He knew Feffer was also a Colonel in the Red Army (unbeknownst to Robeson, though it probably wouldn't have mattered, Feffer was also a stoolie for the GPU, though that didn't save his hide for he was arrested in the wake of the murder of Solomon Mikhoels).
Well, Robeson arrives in Russia, and starts asking questions about the JAFC, and specifically his friend Feffer. The Soviet officialdom, understandably nervous because Feffer was already rotting away in the Lubyanka awaiting execution, told Robeson he was in "the country" and unavailable for the moment, but go ahead with your tour, and you will see him. Well, for a week or two Robeson toured Russia, while the GPU "fattened" Feffer up like an animal awaiting slaughter and told him to say not a word about his being tortured and imprisoned, otherwise his family would pay dearly.
Well, the moment came towards the end of the tour when Robeson was told to meet Feffer at a hotel in Moscow, I believe. The room was, as you might guess, bugged. Even so, Robeson was shocked when he saw, despite the "fattening up" how gaunt and sunken Feffer looked. Feffer, to his credit and courage, tried in gestures to express what was really going on...whether Robeson took it in and believe it, well...
Weeks later, Robeson was visiting friends, including the writer Howard Fast, recently released from incarceration due to his Communist beliefs and refusal to provide the HUAC the records of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee (no relation to the JAFC). Fast, Johnny Gates, then a major U.S. Communist leader, and others asked Robeson about Feffer. "Oh, he's fine and sends his regards" said Robeson. A few years later, when the truth came out that Feffer and other JAFC leaders were murdered ON STALIN'S ORDERS about a year or so after the Robeson visit, Fast's horror turned to disgust towards Robeson, whom he thought better of.
All this and much more can be found in Fast's courageous memoir - "Being Red"...Like Bill Herrick, he too, spoke the truth when the time came. The same cannot be said for Paul Robeson, or for Grover Furr.
Alan Now surely you see that a nationalist victory was better than letting lying bolshevik murderers takeover.Hitler and Stalin could not have committed their crimes without the help of many others both jewish and gentile.Capitalism,Communism all work great in theory not so great in real life.Franco's Spain evolved into a decent society long before any communist state did.
If a bunch of Hitlerites and a bunch of Stalinites want to fight, I go by the Kissinger idea-too bad why they both can't lose.
As I understand it, in the meeting with Robeson Feffer drew his finger across his neck to indicate his fate. There was no doubt in Robeson's mind as to what that meant, but he could not bring himself to denounce the Soviet Union. This was confirmed to me by Robeson's son in a phone conversation some twenty years ago. A terribly shameful moment for a man who had been fearless in speaking out against Jim Crow and repression here at home. According to Paul Jr. he was haunted by it for the rest of his life. He should have spoken out, no doubt, and not doing so must be thrown on the scales, but the man should not be judged solely by that one act, nor does it outweigh the great deal of good he did do.
Richard shows his astonishing ignorance. There was nothing decent about Franco's Spain. Right to the end he was hunting down, imprisoning, and executing those tainted by association with the Republic. Some 250,000 executed, executions that continued well after the war was over. They are still discovering mass graves. It was a repressive society right to the end, the economy in shambles, dominated by feudal landowners, a bitterly medieval church, and the Guardia Civil, which by personal experience I can tell you were Franco's thugs, corrupt, arrogant, and violent. Spain only became a "decent society" after the SOB finally died and the Left returned to power.
And there is no reason to believe, as the extreme right would have it, that if the Republic had won Spain would have turned into a Stalinist nightmare. As to who betrayed Spain I suggest reading George Orwell's essay "Looking Back on the Spanish War" published in 1943. Orwell clearly was no admirer of the Soviet Union and in the essay he makes that clear once again, addressing in detail all the charges against the USSR in Spain, no different than the charges today. But what he states openly is that the Republic needed to triumph for the good of Spain and the rest of us, that the worst one could accuse the Soviets of was "clumsy opportunism" and that the betrayers of Spain were the English ruling class, who were "only too happy to turn Spain over to the Fascists" and the French. I would add Standard Oil to the list, who supplied Franco with all the oil he needed on credit from the start, Ford Motors, who supplied the trucks (after the war Franco's second-in-command was asked what was the single largest factor in their victory. He replied simply, "Mr. Ford's trucks."), and American munition manufacturers who supplied Germany and Italy with all the bombs they needed, knowing, as all did, they were being dropped on Madrid, Barcelona, and the forces of the Republic. FDR came to regret supporting the embargo which only aided the Fascists stated it was the worst decision he ever made.
the worst one could
For Grif,
The Negrin government which took over from the Moderate Socialist Largo Caballero after the Stalinist-instigated May 1937 Barcelona Uprising was riddled throughout with Stalinist agents. Negrin himself was a Socialist who favored accomodation with the Communist, his foreign minister, Julio Alvarez Del Vayo, was ostensibly a Socialist who was in reality a Communist agent who if not actually a party member, was cheating the party of its dues. He faithfully parroted the party line in exile. Most of the Generals were either Communist, or like the famed General Miaja, were co-opted into the Communist Party. Lister, Modesto, El Campesino (who later broke with Communism) were all hardened Stalinists as were practically all of the International Brigade commanders. The SIM, the Spanish Secret Police in the Republic was Communist-led, and they were used to crush opposition, whether it be the Anarchists, the POUM, or Democratic dissidents. They wouldn't have it any other way.
Grif, you're wrong. Even someone as close to the Stalinists as you could get but later changed his views as the heroic Johnny Gates knew Spain would have been turned - even under Negrin (who probably would have become another Cyrankiewicz (the Polish Socialist who embraced the Communist-dominated People's Democracy of Post-war Poland)into an Eastern Europe People's Democracy satellite. He said as much in a letter he wrote to me back in 1975 when I was working on my Master's Thesis. Johnny Gates had no reason to lie; in fact, he and others on the ground then knew the score, but refused to face it until it cascaded on them - the crushing of Democracy in Eastern Europe, Titoism, the murder of the JAFC, the Doctor's Plot, Hungary, and the rest of Koba's crimes against humanity, not to mention his collaboration with Hitler.
Why was my post responding to Alan removed? Does the Forward no longer believe in commentary in the reader's comments?
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