On Being Attacked By The Left
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 3, 2001
by Ronald Radosh
URL: http://www.frontpagemag.com/columnists/radosh/2001/rr07-03-01p.htm
IT HAD TO TAKE PLACE, and was only a matter of time. Since publication of
my memoir Commies: A Journey through the Old Left, the New Left and the
Leftover Left, I received favorable and even enthusiastic reviews in the
usual conservative publications - including National Review, The Weekly
Standard, The Wall Street Journal and Commentary, as well as numerous
editorial comments by different columnists. I also was on scores of
alternative radio talk shows, usually hosted by conservative or
libertarian hosts, including Milt Rosenberg in Chicago, David Brudnoy in
Boston, and this site's own columnist Lowell Ponte. I cannot complain. I
have received far more coverage than I thought would be the case, and most
of it has been sympathetic and supportive.
But when and where would the response from the political Left appear? The
answer was to come this past Thursday, when The Nation magazine posted two
pieces from its July 16 issue on their web site. In addition, one of their
magazine's regular columnists, John Nichols, wrote his own screed, which
appeared on the eve of my visit to Madison, Wisconsin, in that state's
major paper, The Capital Times. According to Nichols, my views changed
because I wished to "follow the intellectual winds of each moment." In
making that claim, Nichols carefully avoided all the reasons I set forth
in my memoir about what events led me to change, as well as the reality
that my academic career came to a grinding halt because I no longer held
the acceptable politically correct views. He also accuses me of attacking
Pete Seeger for "the consistency of his commitment to peace and social
justice," ignoring that what I argued is that Seeger's only consistency
was to the current Communist Party line; that in fact, Seeger was antiwar
during the period of the Nazi-Soviet Pact; pro-war after the Soviet Union
was the ally of the United States; and anti-war during the years of the
Cold War and Vietnam. To Nichols -- a rather dense left-winger -- it is
good form to acknowledge that perhaps "Stalin was a bad guy," and then
simply get over it, and move on to campaign for very American socialist
causes.
Martin Duberman's lengthy review in The Nation, however, aims for a more
balanced response. Duberman, himself a noted historian and playwright,
realizes that the crude polemics of a John Nichols will not be taken
seriously. Indeed, he begins his discussion by even chastising the regular
Nation readers who hate David Horowitz and I so much that they simply
think anything we write can be dismissed by calling us turncoats. Indeed,
he even starts by praising me for writing a memoir that he finds at times
"vivid and charming," one with "closely reasoned arguments" and hence
presenting a "critique that must be dealt with." They may not "convince,"
he writes, but "they do trouble the waters." This is as good as one can
expect from any quarter of the far Left^and already^ some website
discussions find entries from Leftists who condemn Duberman for the
terrible crime of being soft on me and even affording my ideas some
limited credibility. So let me begin by thanking Martin Duberman for his
effort, and even attempting to come up with some answers about what I have
to say.
These, however well intended, collapse after close examination. As the
biographer of Paul Robeson, Duberman is most upset at my comment that the
brilliant African-American singer "squandered his early success by
dedicating himself relentlessly to a vigorous defense of the Soviet Union
and Joseph Stalin." Duberman admits that by not saying anything after the
Khrushchev report about Stalin's crimes in 1956, he can to a "degree" be
said to have indeed squandered his career. But after acknowledging this,
Duberman continues to apologize for Robeson's behavior, just as he did in
his biography of the singer. Duberman argues that at the time Robeson
failed to criticize the Soviet Union, he already was the subject of a
vendetta by J. Edgar Hoover, who determined to bring the singer down not
because he was pro-Soviet, but because he insisted on "black rights" and
"socialism," as well as because he had an "outspoken critique of American
imperialism."
Duberman thinks I should have mentioned this, believing that these reasons
exculpate Robeson. To Duberman, I let the U.S. government's "colonialist
policies and vicious racism" off the hook. In using this language, indeed
in citing this as an excuse for Robeson, Duberman himself is engaging in
precisely the use of the Stalinist logic long used by American Communists
and fellow-travelers in the 40's and 50's. It used to be common, when
those dreaded Trotskyists, not to speak of Cold Warriors, tried to bring
up the Soviet gulag, the response would be "what about the lynching of
black people in the South?"
In his essay, Duberman fails to bring up Robeson's reprehensible behavior
regarding Stalin's impending pogrom against Soviet Jews, which the singer
learned about when he traveled to the USSR for a concert tour in 1949.
There, Soviet Jewish friends told him how bad things were for Jews in
Soviet Russia, as Joshua Rubinstein writes in his new book, Stalin's
Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist
Committee, (Yale University Press, 2001). Robeson asked to see the
imprisoned (and soon to be executed) poet Isaac Fefer, whom he had met in
the United States in 1943. The poet understandably asked Robeson to keep
quiet about his fate, fearing that if he spoke out, retribution would be
taken on his family.
When Robeson returned to the United States, he denied all reports of any
Soviet anti-Semitism, claiming- and lying- that he had met "Jewish people
all over the place" and had heard not one "word about it." Rubinstein,
echoing Duberman, acknowledges that Robeson justified his silence on the
group that "any public criticism of the USSR would reinforce the authority
of America's right wing," but he notes that Robeson "did not even alert
his friends in the [Communist] party to what he knew, or search for other,
discreet ways to help Fefer once he decided not to make a public appeal.
As one party comrade said to the writer Howard Fast, 'If you and Paul
Robeson had raised your voices in 1949, Itsik Fefer would be alive
today.'" As always with the Stalinist Left, the interests of the USSR and
Stalin came before those of us who were oppressed, tortured and murdered
by the dictator. The Soviet Union was perceived and evidently still is
by Duberman - as being on the "right side of history," and hence any of
its sins had correctly to be covered up, since nothing would be worse than
serving the interests of "American imperialism."
Nothing, however, is more silly in Duberman's response to my memoir than
his cheap shot accusing me of racism, by somehow only finding "generous
things to say about any number of whites" but nothing equal about "any
black people." It may not be clear to Martin Duberman, but I do not think
in racial terms when I criticize those I disagree with. I am responding to
their ideas, and not to their skin color. Thus he criticizes me for
viewing the late John P. Davis, once a prominent fellow-traveler and head
of a CP front group, as a "terse martinet" (his words). Davis was, in my
estimate, a vile individual, and this is based on my memory of him, and
has nothing to do with his status as an African-American. It is apparent
that it is my criticism of their politics, and not race, that bothers him.
Thus, he follows by noting that I view Johnnetta Cole "egregiously, as
someone who cast in her lot with the cause of 'Communist
totalitarianism.'" But this is indeed what Cole has done, and anyone can
learn this by simply looking at her record. Evidently, her status as a
prominent African-American intellectual and educator (miseducator is what
I would more appropriately term her) excuses her nascent Stalinism.
Finally, I do have nice things to say about the late Bayard Rustin, whom I
have praised many times in print. But Rustin, a moderate social-democrat
and tough anti-Communist, evidently does not muster inclusion in
Duberman's list of "African-American cast of characters." Perhaps in his
eyes, only apologists for Stalinism are true black people.
Readers of Commies already know that there are three major episodes in my
life that forced me to reconsider my political views the Cuban
revolution, my work on the Rosenberg case, and my travels to Central
America during the decade of conflict in the 1980's. Duberman discusses
only Nicaragua and the Rosenberg case, and strangely, completely leaves
out my chapter on and views about Fidel Castro and Cuba. I suspect this is
because Duberman agrees with me on this issue, and prefers not to let
Nation readers know this. How do I know this? A good part of my discussion
of the Cuban revolution relies upon an account I first published back in
the 1970s after my return from Cuba, and which I included in an anthology
I edited in 1976, The New Cuba: Paradoxes and Potentials, now out of
print. I began the collection with a selection from none other than Martin
Duberman, called "The Questions Raised by Cuba." In that essay, Duberman
wrote that the Cuban revolution, whose advances he took for granted, "has
yet to find institutional means for ensuring that the people can have a
direct and continuous voice in deciding national policy." And he asked the
fundamental question. Believing at the time that Cuba had made "impressive
headway" against disparities in income, job opportunity, health services,
diet and education a list which today I and others would challenge ^
Duberman asked whether "other kinds of costs; [i.e., political repression
and lack of democracy] seem to overbalance the material gains." As I
suggest in Commies, I think we know by now the answer to his mid 70's
question, and it is a solid yes.
Turning to Central America and the Sandinistas, Duberman begins by noting
that he is "not a Latin American expert." That, of course, did not stop
the rest of the entire American Left- from Stalinist to Trotskyist to
"democratic socialist" to some social-democrats, from unabashedly and
uncritically giving their total support to Daniel Ortega and his attempt
to install a Marxist-Leninist state in Nicaragua. On El Salvador, he
writes that my argument "is in part persuasive," and responds that Jose
Napoleon Duarte was, despite his good intentions, a proxy of the far
right-wing. That is a fair argument, although I think he is wrong. But his
claim that the FMLN guerrillas were not a pro-Soviet revolutionary group
is not based, as he writes, on my belief that they did not "inspire
massive and sustained support from El Salvador's poor," but on the record
of their politics and information that has appeared since the fall of the
USSR showing the close connection of the Salvadoran rebels with the
Soviets, East Germans and Cubans.
As for the Sandinistas, Duberman argues that my view of the commandantes
as hard-line Marxists is shortsighted, and that, in fact, many
left-liberals saw that view as exaggerated, since many democrats were in
their ranks. Here, it is Duberman and the left-liberals he cites,
including Irving Howe, who were misguided, and whose views constantly
neglected frank confrontation with the Nicaraguan reality. Duberman,
however, is going to find, I predict, sharp letters of attack from Nation
readers for his saying I am partially correct. Indeed, he even goes to a
man he calls a "respected expert" on the region, Professor Laird Bergad of
the City University of New York, to read my pages on Nicaragua, and to
obtain a response. Readers fully expect Duberman, and Bargad to say I am
wrong. But the quote virtually leaps out, as the Professor tells him
"Radosh is right. There were too many Stalinists among the leadership. By
following the Castro model they did submerge democratic impulses, and
their attack on the Miskito Indians was a huge blunder." Duberman, of
course, says that the ousted "Somoza dictatorship [was] far worse than
that of the Sandinistas," when in fact, it was comparatively moderate and
merely authoritarian compared to what Ortega and company were instituting.
But I must give Martin Duberman credit for praising me for having
"valuably reminded the left in this country that we have all too often ^
uncritically ^ turned a blind eye to mounting evidence of repression," as
well as resorting to what he calls "ethically dubious slogans" to excuse
the repression. For Nation readers, this is strong stuff.
Finally, to the Rosenbergs. Here, Duberman is out of his league. His
historical work is not concerned with things like the Rosenberg case, and
his discussion reveals it. First, he repeats the canard that I, Harvey
Klehr, John Haynes and Allen Weinstein have all asserted that the CPUSA
was merely a "fifth column" for Soviet espionage, and hence the
"implication that the anti-Communist crusade undertaken by McCarthy and
others was therefore justified." No matter how many times Klehr, Haynes
and I have gone to great lengths to show this to be false, it is still
repeated, this time by Martin Duberman.
So let me make it clear. I agree with Klehr and Haynes, who wrote that for
McCarthy, "anticommunism was a partisan weapon used to implicate the New
Deal, liberals and the Democratic Party in treason." McCarthy, they write,
used material "that was exaggerated, distorted and in some cases utterly
false." They also write, and I concur, that the relations between the
CPUSA and the Comintern "does not justify or vindicate McCarthyism." And
moreover, they have pointed out many times that while the CPUSA was a
recruiting ground for Soviet spies, it is obviously wrong to view it just
through that lens. Nevertheless, Duberman, and his colleague Victor
Navasky (who I will answer next week) continue to repeat what has already
been answered time and time again.
As for the Rosenbergs, Duberman says that my co-author Joyce Milton and I
uncritically accepted the reports of FBI agents at face value." But rather
than deal with the Rosenberg case, he spends paragraphs about the various
inaccuracies of personal agents' comments on people and events he was
researching, including inaccuracies about Paul Robeson. (He says that FBI
reports erroneously said that Robeson had taken out formal membership in
the Communist Party. But he does not comment that during the recent
anniversary of Robeson's death, the CP leadership claimed in print that
indeed this is precisely what Robeson had done!)
Duberman is correct that FBI agents often did not get things right. But in
writing our book, we never blindly accepted claims and theories of agents.
Instead, we used the files in conjunction with much other material, often
challenging and citing FBI errors, while at other times using the files
and showing how other data corroborated material found in the files. Most
of the files we used were not the type of file in which individual agents
cited individual impressions as simple truth. His criticisms therefore are
not apt and are beside the point.
As for the Venona files, here Duberman shows his further ignorance. That
Eric Foner, whom he phoned, can say Venona only has led him to accept "the
possibility" that Julius Rosenberg "may have engaged in some sort of
low-level espionage" is itself pathetic. Foner, who despite all evidence
cannot bring himself to acknowledge that Rosenberg was a master spy, is
obviously, like Duberman, not really familiar with what the Venona files
have to reveal about the Rosenberg spy ring. Readers of my introduction to
the 1997 reissue of The Rosenberg File, as well as readers of Klehr and
Haynes' Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, know however that
lots of detail is indeed offered as to what their ring gave to the
Soviets. In no way was the result of Julius Rosenberg's efforts
"low-level." Rather, the Soviets were provided with such material as the
design for the first MIG jets, the latest data on radar and sonar, as well
as the "proximity fuse" used later by the Soviets to shoot down Gary
Powers' U-2 during the Eisenhower presidency. So Duberman, who has clearly
not looked at this new material, is plainly wrong when he writes that "we
can't even be sure of the nature of that information" supplied to the
Soviets by Rosenberg.
Finally, like Ellen Shrecker, Duberman resorts to the illogical and
embarrassing apologia that even if they did spy and give the Soviets top
secrets, we have to "feel compassion and extend some understanding" toward
these spies, since they betrayed our nation "at enormous personal
sacrifice," they believed - erroneously- that the Soviet Union stood
"alone among the great nations in the 1930s and 40s, for antiracist,
anticolonialist principles." In other words, they meant well and after
all blacks were being lynched in the South! Yes, he really offers that
up, and writes "gleeful crowds in the American South were still enjoying
the community spectacle of a burnt, lynched black body." The old
anti-Communist joke, it seems, is still relevant! For Duberman, what
counts is their motivation those who spied for the Soviets did so not
for "material consideration but humanitarian ones." For him, the
motivation excuses everything; for me, the results, and not the
motivation, is what should count. I could care less what good principles
those who betrayed our country thought they were serving when they spied.
Their actions harmed our country; their words and their thoughts only
revealed their stupidity.
Duberman ends his assessment with the strange note, alluding to my
mentioning how my son Michael at a young age was accosted on the West Side
of Manhattan by bums whom the Left always defended as the "unfortunate
homeless," with this strange and bizarre analogy. He writes: "If
'unfortunates' become 'bums,' is it any wonder that all Commies become
spies?" Really, can't Martin Duberman, a sophisticated historian, come up
with anything better?
--------------
Ronald Radosh is a regular columnist and book reviewer for
FrontPageMagazine.com. A former leftist and currently Professor Emeritus
of History at City University of New York, Radosh has written many books,
including The Rosenberg File (with Joyce Milton) and, most recently,
Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover
Left.
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