Otto, Harold Williams and Farmer, having completed their course at K UTV A, left the Soviet Union af ter the Sixth Congress.
The African, Bankole, remained for further training to prepare him for work in the Gold Coast (Ghana). At K UTV A there was another contingent of Black students from the U.S. Along with Maude White, there were now William S. Patterson (Wilson), Herbert Newton, Marie Houston and many more were to come.
I was then thirty and had recently completed my last YCL
assignment as a delegate to the Fifth Congress of the Y oung Communist International (YCI). Along with my studies at the Lenin School, I was continuing my work in the Comintern. I was then vice-chairman of the Negro Subcommission of the Eastern (colonial) Secretariat, and Nasanov was chairman. The subcommission was established as a "watch-dog" committee to check on the application of the Sixth Congress decisions with reference to the Black national question in the U.S. and South Africa.
According to our reports, the South Africans were applying the line of the Sixth Congress and so we devoted most of our attention to the work in the United States.
In the U.S., the minority girded itself for a long struggle against the Lovestone-Pepper leadership, which had emerged from the Sixth Congress battered, but not beaten. This leadership still enjoyed the majority support within the Party. This was due primarily to the widely prevalent belief within the Party that this
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leadership was favored by the Comintern. Lovestone was loud in his protestations of support for the line of the Sixth Congress and attempted to pin the right-wing label on the minority. This deception was successful for a short time.
The CI's support for Lovestone seemed confirmed by a letter from the ECCI dated September 7, 1928, a week after the adjournment of the Sixth Congress. The letter contained two documents. The first was the final draft of paragraph forty-nine of the "Thesis on the International Situation and Tasks of the Communist International," which dealt with the U.S. Party. The second was a "Supplementary Decision" by the Political Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Communist International which denied the minority's charge that the Lovestone-Pepper leadership represented a right line in the Party.1
Paragraph forty-nine commended the Party, saying, "it has d�played more lively activity and has taken advantage of symptoms of crisis in American industry .... A number of stubborn and fierce class battles (primarily the miners' strike) found in the Communist Party a stalwart leader. The campaign against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti was also conducted under the leadership of the Party."
It also criticized the Party, stating that "the Party has not with sufficient energy conducted work in the organization of the unorganized and of the Negro Movement, and ... it does not conduct a sufficiently strong struggle against the predatory policy of the United States in Latin America." It concluded by stating,
"These mistakes, however, cannot be ascribed to the majority leadership alone .... the most important task that confronts the Party is to put an efld to the factional strife which is not based on any serious differences on principles ... " The thesis pointed out that while some rightist errors had been committed by both sides, "the charge against the majority of the Central Committee of the U. S.
Party of representing a right line is unfounded."
The letter evoked great jubilation among Lovestone-Pepper cohorts and was given widest publicity. A self-laudatory statement from the Central Committee was published alongside the Cl letter in the October 3, 1928, Daily Worker. It boasted that the letter
283
proved that the Cl "is continuing its policy of supporting politically the present Party leadership."
Of course we in the minority resented Lovestone's interpretation of the CI's letter. We felt that the CI's criticisms of all factionalism and its rejection of our specific charge against the Lovestone-Pepper leadership were not equivalent to a political cndorsement for Lovestone. The Comintern called for unity in the Party on the basis of the Sixth Congress's decisions. We could hardly expect the Cl to come out in support of the minority; it was not a cohesive ideological force itself. The subsequent defection of Cannon to Trotskyism further demonstrated the lack of ideological cohesion in the minority. Then there was the hard faet that Lovestone still held the majority of the U.S. Party.
Differences of principle between the minority and the Lovestone leadership had begun to develop only a half year before at the Fourth Congress of the RILU in March 1928. These arose over the question of trade unions; but even here they were clouded by factionalism and vacillation on the part of the minority. There was, therefore, substance to the CI's charges that both groups had placed factional consideration above principles.
About the same time, the Party was shocked by the defection of James Cannon and his close associates Max Shachtman and Marty Abern. They were ex_posed as bidden Trotskyists and expelled from the Party. Cannon's treachery was first exposed by the minority. This frustrated Lovestone's attempt to pin the label of Trotskyism on our group. Nevertheless, Lovestone sought to use the Trotsky issue to divert the Party from the struggle against the main right danger. Later, the Comintern was to criticize the minority for its lack of vigilance and its failure to disassociate itself
"at the right time" from Cannon's Trotskyism.
Lovestone was cocky and over-confident. He was looking forward to wiping out the minority as a political force in the U.S.
Party at the next convention. Even the recall to Moscow of Pepper, his main advisor and co-factionalist, shortly after the return of the U.S. delegation, seemed not to shake his selfconfidence. (Pepper had originally come to the U.S. as a Comintern worker and was thus directly subject to its discipline.)
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His recall was undoubtedly an indication of Lovestone's declining support within the Comintern. The Lovestone leadership supported Pepper's protest against recall. The Cl did not press the issue at the time and Pepper remained in the U.S. Shortly thereafter he returned to his former position in Party leadership. But the incident was not forgotten; it was to be added on the debit side of the ledger at Lovestone's final accounting.
Then came the first blow. It was a letter from the Political Secretariat dated November 21, 1928. The letter expressed sharp displeasure at the factional manner in which Lovestone had used the previous letter of September 7. It pointed to the non-self-critical and self-congratulatory character of the statements issued by the majority in response to the September letter and expressed emphatic disapproval of the claim by Lovestone that the Comintern was "continuing its policy of supporting politically the present leadership." "This formulation," the new letter asserted, "could lead to the interpretation that the Sixth Congress has expressly declared its confidence in the majority in contrast to the minority.
But this is not so."2
The letter also called for the postponement of the Party Convention until February 1929. Clearly Lovestone had overreached himself. Coming on the eve of the U.S. Central Committee Plenum, the letter threw the Lovestoneites into dismay and consternation. How do we explain the sharpened tone of this letter? It was a by-produet of the heightened counter-off ensive against the international right and its conciliators which had gotten underway after the Sixth Congress of the Comintern. It was a warning tremor of the quake that was to come.
Internationally the right had crystallized at the congress and, immediately foliowing, it had burgeoned forth in the USSR and other leading parties of the Comintern. In Germany it was expressed in illusions regarding the social democrats and in resistance to the organization of left unions. In France it was reflected in opposition to the election slogan of "class against class." In Britain it surfaced as a non-critical attitude towards the Labor Party and a refusal to put up independent candidates.
This new thrust of the right was met by a strong counter-
285
offensive. In Germany it led to the expulsion of the Brandler
Thaelheimer right liquidationists. The Cl intervened there on behalf of Thaelmann against the conciliators Ewart and Gerhart Eisler.
In the Soviet Union, the right line of Bukharin and his friends had encouraged resistance on the part of the kulaks and capitalist elements to the five-year plan, industrialization and collectivization. They resisted the state monopoly on foreign trade. This was reflected in mass sabotage, terrorism against collective farmers, party workers and governmental officials in the countryside, burning down of the collective farms and state granaries. In the same year (1928), a widespread conspiracy of wreckers was cxposed in the Shackty District of the Donetz Coal Basin. The conspirators had close connections with former mine owners and foreign capitalists. Their aim was to disrupt socialist development.
As a result, the counter-offensive could no longer be postponed, and the CPSU was obliged to take sharp action against the menacing right and its leaders-Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky.
The opening gun against the right came in October 1928, at a plenary mteting of the Moscow Committee of the CPS U. At first, Bukharin was not mentioned by name. Other meetings followed.
In early February 1929, at a joint meeting of the Politburo and Presidium of the Central Control Commission (CCC), Bukharin was exposed as a leader of the bidden right.
In the Comintern itself, the struggle unfolded after the Sixth Congress. As Bukharin came under attack, his leadership became increasingly tenuous. De facto leadership of the Cl passed to the pro-Stalin forces and Bukharin became little more than a figurehead. His lieutenants, the Swiss Humbert-Droz and the Italian Celler, also came under attack.
Against this background, it was inevitable that Lovestone too, would be smoked out in the open.
We students held what amounted to a dual-party membershipenabling us to keep abreast of the situation in both the CPSU and the CPUSA. From our vantage point in Moscow, we had a clearer view of the developments in the Cl than did our counterparts at home. As members of the CPSU we participated in the fight of the
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school against the right. Molotov himself, Stalin's closest aide, came to the school to report on the decisions of the February 1929, joint meeting of the Central Commission of the CC of the CPSU
and the Moscow Party organization. Along with Bukharin, Rykov and T omsky were exposed as leaders of a clandestine right in the Soviet Party.
Molotov had moved into the Cl immediately after the Sixth Congress-a clear political move to offset Bukharin's leadership.
Therefore, he spoke authoritatively on the ramifications of the international right and of Bukharin supporters in the fraternal German, French, ltalian and other parties. He didn't mention the CPUSA or Lovestone in his report, but we students did in discussion on the floor foliowing his report.
The Lenin School was a strong point in the struggle against the Bukharin right, just as it had been in the struggle against the T,otsky-Zinoviev left. The school reflected in microcosm the struggle raging throughout the Cl for the implementation of the Sixth Congress line against the right opposition. Here we had the right on the run. They were in the minority and at a decided disadvantage from the start, for the entire school administration and faculty from Kursanova (the director) down were stalwart supporters of the Central Committee of the CPS U and its majority grouped around Stalin.
Indeed, Lovestone had made a fatal mistake in allowing so many able comrades of the minority in the CPUSA to go to the Lenin School. He had undoubtedly already realized this. My group was now in its second year. The students who had preceded us, including Hathaway, were back in the U.S. and Hathaway quickly became an outstanding leader of the minority group upon his return.
We all had many friends in the Russian Party and in the Cl, especially among the second level leadership-people important in international work. Some of us were sent on brief international missions-for example, the Krumbeins were sent to China and also to Britain. Rudy Baker, another student from the U.S., was also sent to China. A number of us American students were invited to participate in meetings of the Profintern, the Anglo-American
287
Secretariat and even the ECCI itself an occasions where American questions were discussed.
I remember one such meeting that I attended as part of a group from the Lenin School. I had been sent by the school to extend greetings to a joint meeting of the Central Control Commission of the CC of the CPS U and its Moscow organization held January
February 1929, as mentioned above. Although I felt no need for an interpreter, as my Russian was adequate, Gus Sklar was sent with me. He was a fellow student and one of the few supporters of Lovestone at the school. A Russian-American, he was completely bilingual and a very affable fellow.
In my brief speech of greetings I hailed the victoriaus struggle of the CPSU against the right and right-conciliators under the leadership of Comrade Stalin as setting an example for us in the American Party. "We have our own right deviationists," I said,
"Bukharin's friends in the American Party-the Pepper-Lovestone leadership." I described the leadership's theory of American exceptionalism and its underestimation of the radicalization of the American working class and oppressed Blacks. I ended my speech in a typical Russian manner: "Lang live the CPSU and its Bolshevik Central Committee led by Comrade Stalin."
I listened attentively as poor old Gus honestly and accurately translated my speech. It certainly was a factional speech but was greeted with applause by the Moscow offo::ials and workers in the audience.
Gus left the hall and proceeded immediately to the Lux Hotel to inform Lovestone's crony, Bertram Wolfe. Wolfe had recently replaced J. Louis Engdahl as U.S. representative to the Cl. He had been sent by Lovestone in the hope af improving communication between Moscow and the American Party.
I recall that he was particularly riled by this speech. Several days later there was a meeting of the ECCI on the preparations for the American Party's Sixth Convention to which a number of us students were invited as usual. Wolfe, while giving his report, voiced a number of complaints. Citing my speech, he questioned the seeming lack of respect accorded the legitimate representative of the Amei-ican Party. "How is it," he wondered, "that Haywood,
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a mere student, extends greetings to the Soviet Party. Why is it that he is given a platform at such an important meeting to launch a factional attack on the U.S. Communist Party? Why is it that when I report here, Lenin School students are always called on to give minority reports?"
These complaints were met with stony-faced silence by the members of the secretariat.
CURTAINS FOR LOVESTONE
From Moscow, we students followed events in the U.S. with avid interest. Out line of communication was in good repair, as our stateside friends kept us well posted. We knew a showdown was imminent. Finally, the Sixth Convention of the CPUSA convened on"March 1, 1929.
It was attended by two special Cl emissaries with plenipotentiary powers, the German, Philip Dengel, and the British Communist leader, Harry Pollitt. They brought with them two sets of directives: the first was public in the form of the final draft of the CI's open letter to the convention, and the second, confidential organizational proposals designed to ensure the carrying out of the directives of the open letter. The contents of the open letter were known; it had been circulated as a draft. We students at the Lenin School had participated in the discussions in the Cl in which the letter was formulated.
The open letter continued the balanced criticism of both groups along the lines of paragraph forty-nine of the Thesis of the Sixth Congress and the Supplementary Thesis. It held that both groups were guilty of unprincipled factionalism; it pointed to the absence of differences on principle between them. It said both were guilty of right mistakes. However, there was something new in the open letter. It pointed out that the source of the right mistakes of both groups lay in the idea of American exceptionalism. "Both sides," it continued, "are inclined to regard American imperialism as isolated from world capitalism. as independent from it and developing according to its own laws. "3
289
To us in the minority, it seemed the scales were now tipped slightly but definitely against Lovestone. Though both sides were guilty of this error, it was the Lovestone faction which had articulated it into a full blown theory and which, I felt, held to it the most strongly.
"This mistake of the majority is closely related to its great overestimation of the economic might and the powerful technical development of the United States." In this regard the open letter emphasized that it is "absolutely wrong to regard this technical revolution as a 'second industrial revolution' as is done in the majority thesis." It was a "serious error," it stated, to infer that the remnants of feudalism were being wiped out in the South and that a new bourgeoisie with a new proletariat were being formed.
"Such overestimation (of the results of the development of technique) would play into the bands of all advertisers of the successes of bourgeois science and technique who seek to deafen the proletariat by raising a lot of noise about technical progress and showing that there is no general crisis of capitalism; that capitalism is still vigorous in the U.S. and that thanks to its extremely rapid development, it is capable of pulling Europe out of its crisis." The letter contended that "technical transformation"
and rationalization lead "to further deepening and sharpening of the general crisis of capitalism."
With regards to the minority it criticized Bittelman's "apex theory " and stated that the "sharpening of the general crisis of capitalism is to be expected not because American imperialism ceases to develop but on the contrary it is to be expected because American imperialism is developing and surpasses other capitalist countries in its development, which leads to an extreme accentuation of all antagonisms." The "apex theory" is the view that U.S. imperialism had reached its peak of development and would soon be brought to its knees, primarily by the weight of its own internal contradictions.
The letter went on to condemn the factionalism in the Party, stating, "so long as these two groups exist in the Party ... the further healthy ideological development of the Party is excluded."
It concluded by putting forth four principal conditions essential
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to the Party's "transformation into a mass Communist Party ... the decisive significance of which neither the majority ... nor the minority have understood." The four conditions were: "I) A correct perspective in the analysis of the general crisis of capitalism and American imperialism which is a part of it; 2) To place in the center of the work of the Party the daily needs of the American working class; 3) Freeing the Party from its immigrant narrowness and seclusion and making the American workers its wide basis, paying due attention to work among Negroes; and 4) Liquidation of factionalism and drawing workers into the leadership."
Clearly the letter put an end to any basis for Lovestone's claim of Cl support.
What then were the CI's proposals for a new, non-factional leadership? These were contained in the confidential organizational proposals brought by the two Cl reps, Dengel and Pollitt.
Tqe proposals called for the temporary withdrawal of Lovestone and Bittelman-considered the two main factionalists-from the U.S. and requested that they be placed at the disposal of the Cl for assignment to international work. It advised the appointment of William Z. Foster as the new general secretary. Pepper was again ordered to Moscow immediately and forbidden to attend the convention.
Formal acceptance of the line of the open letter posed no difficulties for an unprincipled opportunist of Lovestone's caliber.
In faet, the letter was endorsed by both factions. But the organizational proposals, which threatened to snatch power from Lovestone, were another matter. The crucial question for Lovestone and company was to retain contol of the Party. With his buge majority in the Party, he felt he was in a position to bargain with the Cl. But the situation called for some fast footwork.
While loudly proclaiming full agreement with the political directive and proposing its unqualified acceptance, he directed his main thrust at the organizational proposals, claiming they contradicted the political directive. Defying the Cl reps, he and his partisans carried the fight to the convention floor. There they launched an unbridled campaign of defamation and character assassination against Foster, who was then favored by the Cl to
291
rcplace Lovestone. The minority, on its part, charged Lovestone with support of the deposed Bukharin.
Not to be outdone, the Lovestoneites supported a resolution dcnouncing Bukharin and calling for his ouster as head of the Comintem. Lovestone had no compunction in dumping his former political patron.
Tempers flared; fistfights erupted on the convention floor. A group of so-called proletarian delegates organized by Lovestone sent a ca ble to the Cl pleading fora reversal of the organizational proposals, and that the convention be allowed to choose its own general secretary, subject of course to the Cl's approval.
The situation was so tense that the CI responded by conceding the right of the convention to elect its own leadership-and thus its general secretary-with the exception of Lovestone. They still insisted on Lovestone's and Bittelman's withdrawal to Moscow.
Other than that, the convention with its Lovestone majority was free to elect its own leadership.
Lovestone made his crony Gitlow general secretary. The Cl also insisted on Pepper's return to Moscow. The convention end ed up with the appointment of several Lovestone loyalists as a
"proletarian delegation," which would trave! to Moscow and plead the majority case in the Comintern. The members of the delegation were mainly Party functionaries chosen for political reliability. Led by the majority leaders Lovestone, Gitlow and Bedacht, they went to Moscow to seek the repeal of Lovestone's assignment to Moscow and his prohibition from CPUSA leadership.
THE SCENE SHIFTS TO MOSCOW
Since the Sixth Congress, Lovestone had succeeded in covering his flanks on the Afro-American question. He had proposed Huiswood as candidate for the ECCI (of which he was now a member). Five Blacks-Huiswood, Otto Hall, Briggs, Edward Welsh and John Henry-were elected to the new Central Committee. Lovestone's "proletarian delegation" arrived in Moscow
BLACK BOLSHEVIK
on April 7, 1929, its ten members included two Black comrades, Edward Welsh and Otto Huiswood. I assumed that the line-up of leading Black comrades with the Lovestone crowd represented an alliance of convenience and had little to do with ideology. Up to that time there had been no serious discussion in the Party of the Sixth Congress resolution on the Negro question.
Foster and Weinstone also arrived to place the case of the minority before the American Commission. Weinstone had switched over to the minority during the Sixth Party Convention and now supported the Cl organizational proposals. Bittelman was also on hand, having acceded without protest to his reassignment to Comintern work.
The American Commission convened a week later, on April 14, 1929, in a large rectangular hall in the Comintern building. More than a hundred participants and spectators were on hand. The cqmmission itself was an impressive group and included leading Marxists from Germany, Britain, France, Czechoslovakia and China. Among the delegates from the USSR were Stalin, Molotov and Manuilsky. There were also top officials of the Comintern and Profintern: Kuusinen, Gusev, Mikhailov (Williams), Lozovsky, Bela Kun, Kolarov, Kitarov (secretary of the YCI) and Bell.
Kuusinen was chairman of the commission and Mikhailov was secretary.
Among the invited guests was our large contingent from the Lenin School. I sat and looked over the "proletarian delegation" as we waited for the meeting to start.4 I knew Huiswood, having met him at the founding convention of the American Negro Labor Congress in 1925, but I didn't know Welsh-he was a newcomer, having been in the Party only a few months.
There was Alex N oral, a farmer from the west coast whom I had met in Moscow the year before. There he had worked in the Crestintern (the Peasant International) representing American farmers. There was Mother Bloor whom I had met previously; she was a plump, kindly-looking elderly woman, formerly with the Foster faction. She always had a twinkle in her eye and her gentle look belied her true character as a staunch, fierce, proletarian fighter. A veteran of many labor battles, she was an impressive
293
agitator. I wondered what she was doing in Lovestone's crowd.
There were three others in the delegation whom I didn't know: William Miller, Tom Myerscough and William J. White.
The commission sessions were to last nearly a mon th. Gitlow led off stating the case for the majority. A large man, his face screwed up in a perennial frown, he was an ill-tempered sort. He harangued lhe audience for two hours, pouring invective on the minority, particularly Foster. Boasting that the overwhelming majority of the Party supported his group, he praised Lovestone, contrasting the great (so-called) "contributions" of Lovestone with the shortcomings and failures of Foster.
Woven throughout was the implication that the Party would be destroyed if the Comintern's decisions were not reversed. He attacked Lozovsky, Profintern chairman, as being virtually a member of the minority faction. He wound up his pitch by calling for a reversal of the CI organizational directives to the CPUSA Sixth Convention, stating that the removal of Lovestone from leadership would be a damaging blow to the Party.
Foster replied in a more moderate tone, scoring the Pepper
Lovestone leadership and their theory of American exceptionalism as representing the right deviation in the U.S. Party. He cxpressed outrage at the smear campaign launched against him by the Lovestone group which he said was designed to line up the Party against the Cl decisions. He called for support of the Co min tern.
Bittelman spoke, emphasizing that the downward swing of the U.S. economy was already taking place and life itself refuted the Lovestone-Pepper optimistic prognosis. Wolfe complained about discriminatory treatment by the ECCI; how his status as official representative of the CPUSA was not recognized and how he was excluded from important discussions on the American question.
At last, members of the "proletarian delegation" took the floor and spoke, damning Foster and praising Lovestone. After speaking, each one was questioned by members of the commission. The questions were designed to bring out their understanding of the issues involved. N othing came out but a parroting of Gitlow and Lovestone.
294
BLACK BOLSHEVIK
There was an undercurrent of belligerency and hostility to the commission and the Comintern. Loyalty to Lovestone was a hallmark of the delegation. I was particularly embarrassed by Ed Welsh. He was a tall, handsome, young Black. Welsh, I learned, had been in the Party only a few months, but was a staunch henchman of Lovestone, who had placed him on the Central Committee.
As he mounted the platform, anger, defiance and disrespect for the commission was written plainly on his face. He launched into a most vicious tirade against Lozovsky, the chairman of the Profintern. Manuilsky, a Soviet member of the ECCI who was sitting in front of the rostrum, was so shocked at the virulence of this attack against a person of Lozovsky's stature that he started to rise to his feet in protest.
Welsh waved him down with his hand, shouting, "Aw, sit down,
)'OU!"
Manuilsky flopped back in his chair in open-mouth amazement.
Tom Myerscough, a mine organizer from the Pittsburgh area, also spoke. He was a tough-looking, blustering ex-miner. He strode up to the platform and declared that he spoke three languages, "English, profane, and today I'm gonna speak cold tur key."
The running translation came to an abrupt halt and there was a momentary confusion as the translators stumbled over this slang term.
In the end, Myerscough's "cold turkey" turned out to be just another rehash of Lovestone's charges.
The commission then brought up its big guns. Comintern and Profintern officials-Gusev, Kolarov, Lozovsky, Bela Kun, Heller and Bell. Th�y continued with a balanced criticism of both groups, but as the meeting went on more and more emphasis was placed on the mistakes of the majority.
Lozovsky, his eyes twinkling, stepped up Joyously to the attack.
It was evident that he welcomed this opportunity to settle old scores. He'd been subject to insults and slanders from Lovestone and company for several years, and now the day of reckoning had come. He directed his main barbs against Lovestone and Pepper,
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dwelling at length on the "strange case" of Comrade Pepper and his fictitious travels.
Pepper was first called back to Moscow in September 1928; the call was repeated in the organizational proposals ofFebruary 1929, and he was ordered to take no part in the U.S. Party convention.
Pepper dropped out of sight, giving the impression that he was on his way back to Moscow. Pepper's account of what then happened was that he went to Mexico to seek transportation by ship to the Soviet Union. When no satisfactory arrangements could be made, he returned to New York and from there went on to Moscow. But during the period he was supposedly in Mexico, he was seen in New York at the time of the Party convention there.
Pepper had return ed, we heard, but was not present at any of the sessions. His case was before the International Control Commission. (An arm of the Cl, the ICC was composed of representatives of seventeen parties. Its functions were to supervise the finances of the ECCI and deal with questions of discipline referred to it by member parties.)
Lozovsky dwelt at length on Pepper's mysterious travels; how it was the longest trip on record from New York to Moscow, how he had somehow managed the impossible feat of being in two places at the same time. He spoke of how Pepper had faced a hig decision: either to return to Moscow or remain in the United States-which meant dropping out of the Party. It took him a long while to make up his mind, Lozovsky observed.
Kolarov, a buge Bulgarian, took the floor. He referred to Myerscough's "cold turkey" speech with heavy humor. He conceded that he lacked the linguistic skills of some of his American comrades, and since he didn't know anything about this "cold turkey," he was just going to speak plain Russian.
Stalin made his first speech at the commission on May 6. Foster had introduced me to him at the beginning of the commission sessions. I guess Foster had wanted him to know he also had some Black supporters. I had met Stalin before, but I doubt that the great man had remembered me from our first meeting.
I was now to hear him speak for the first time. Garbed in his customary tan tunic and polished black boots, he stepped to the
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rostrum. Very informally leaning on the stand with a pipe in one band, he began speaking in a calm, measured, scarcely audible voice. We had to strain to hear him.
Stalin emphasized two main points, charging both the majority and minority factions with American exceptionalism and unprincipled factionalism: "Both groups are guilty of the fundamental error of exaggerating the specific features of American capitalism.
Y ou know that this exaggeration lies at the root of every opportunist error committed both by the majority and minority groups."5 Stalin followed this with a rhetorical question: "What are the main def ects in the practice of the leaders of the majority and the minority? ... Firstly, that in their day-to-day work they, and particularly the leaders of the majority, are guided by motives of unprincipled factionalism and place the interests of their faction high er than the interests of the Party.
-• "Secondly, that both groups, and particularly the majority, are so infected with the disease of factionalism that they base their relations with the Comintern, not on the principle of confidence, but on a policy of rotten diplomacy, a policy of diplomatic intrigue." As an example he cited the way in which both factions speculated on the "existing and non-existing differences within the CPSU," adding that they are "competing with each other and chasing af ter each other like horses in a race. "6
He presented a six-point program for a solution to the problems faced by the American Party. This included approval "in the main" of the ECCI proposals to the Sixth Convention of the CPUSA (except that relating to the candidacy of Foster); sending of an open letter to all Party members "emphasizing the question of eradicating all factionalism"; condemning the refusal of the majority leaders to carry out the ECCI proposals at the Party convention; ending immediately the situation in the American Party in which important questions of developing the mass movement, "questions of the struggle of the working class against the capitalists," were "replaced by petty questions of the factional struggle."
Stalin concluded by calling for a reorganization of the CPUSA by the secretariat of the ECCI, with emphasis on advancing those
297
workers "who are capable of placing the interests and the unity of lhe Party above the interests of individual groups." Finally, that Lovestone and Bittelman be made available for work in the Comintern so that everyone clearly understands that "the Comintcrn intends to fight factionalism in all seriousness."7
Stalin's remarks indicated why the Cl considered the development of the American Party so crucial and why it spent so much time in resolving its problems: "The American Communist Party is one of those few communist parties in the world upon which his tory has laid tasks of a decisive character from the point of view of the world revolutionary movement.. .. The three million new unemployed in America are the first swallows indicating the ripening of the economic crisis in America ... I think the moment is not far off when a revolutionary crisis will develop in America." 8
As Stalin was speaking, I looked across and saw Lovestone with a leer on his face. Earlier on during a break in the session, I had run into him in the corridor.
"Hello, Harry," he called to me, "you ought to come over to our side; we could use a bright young f ellow like you."
Rather taken aback at the man's gall, I said something like,
"You've got your own Negroes!"
"Oh, that trash!" he said with a deprecating wave of his hand, obviously referring to Huiswood and Welsh.
Shocked by his crudeness, I was strongly tempted to ask how much he thought I was worth, but I was afraid he might have taken me seriously.
The session continued as Molotov followed Stalin, speaking along basically the same line. He stressed the need to put an end to the factionalism which had corroded the Party and held back the growth of the working class movement. He concluded by calling on the CPUSA to "get on a new track .... to ensure the liquidation of factionalism not in words but in deeds, and to ensure the transformation of its organization" so that the Party could prepare itself for the sharpening struggles and crises to come. 9
It was now clear from the speeches of Stalin, Molotov and other members of the commission which way the wind was blowing. For the majority, Stalin's speech was definitely an ill omen. Even
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though the subcommittee of the commission (Molotov, Gusev and Kuusinen) had not yet reported out a draft of the commission's findings, Lovestone and company decided to force a showdown.
From this point on, they began a series of veiled threats against the Comintern.
On May 9, three days befare the subcommittee's draft was presented, the Lovestoneites issued a declaration which accused the ECCI of supporting the minority against the majority and
"rewarding Comrade Foster with its confidence." Gambling that they would stili be able to control the Party at home, the Lovestoneites arrogantly challenged the leadership of the Cl. As a cover for their own splitting activities, they accused the ECCI of trying to split the American Party. 10
This was clearly the rhetoric of splitting, and was so considered by the members of the commission. It could only be interpreted as a 1:hreat to take the U.S. Party out of the Cl.
On May 12, the last meeting of the full commission was called into session. Kuusinen, as chairman, reported the findings and decisions of the subcommittee. Their report was in the form of a draft address from the ECCI to the membership of the CPUSA which had been circulated the day before. 11 Addressed over the heads of the Party leadership, it singled out the Lovestone faction for its sharpest attack. In this respect, it went much beyond previous criticisms, such as those of the "Open Letter to the Sixth Convention." It now said that exceptionalism was "the ideological lever of the right errors in the American Communist Party,"
adding that exceptionalism:
found its clearest exponents in the persons of Comrades Pepper and Lovestone, whose conception was as follows: There is a crisis of capitalism but not of American capitalism, a swing of the masses leftwards but not in America. There is the necessity of accentuating the struggle against reformism but not in the U nited States, there is a necessity for struggling against the right danger, but not in the American Communist Party.
The address charged the Lovestone leadership with "misleading honest proletarian Party members who uphold the line of the
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Comintern," and "playing an unprincipled game with the question of the struggle against the right danger." It termed Lovestone's declaration of May 9 to be a "most factional and entirely impermissible anti-Party declaration," stating that it "represents a direct attempt at preparing a condition necessary for paralyzing the decisions of the Comintern and for a split in the Communist Party of America."
The draft address concluded with five points:
1) A call for dissolution of both factions; 2) Temporary removal of Lovestone and Bittelman from work in the CPUSA;
3) Rejection of the minority demand for a special ·convention; 4) A call for the re-organization of the secretariat of the CC of the CPUSA on a non-factional basis;
5) The turning of Pepper's case over to the International Control Commission.
Presenting the draft address, Kuusinen appealed to the Lovestone delegation:
We call upon the comrades to turn back from this road unconditionally .... Our subcommission deems it necessary to call quite definitely upon the delegation as a whole, and upon every individual member of the delegation, to state with absolute clearness whether they are prepared to submit to the decisions of the Comintern on the American question and to carry them out implicitly without reservations. Yes or no? It will substantially depend upon your answer, what character the measures of the Comintern upon the American question shall eventually assume. From your declaration we see plainly that it is no longer a question of factionalism of the leaders of the Majority of the CC against the Minority group, but it is already a factional attitude towards the Executive of the Comintern. 12
The majority delegates, af ter provoking this showdown with the ECCI, refused to give a straight answer to the question posed by Kuusinen-whether or not they would accept the decisions of the Comintern. They backed away, postponing a confrontation until May 14. In the meantime, the majority leaders were secretly taking steps to split the Party.
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A cable drafted immediately after the May 12 meeting and telegraphed from Berlin on May 15 was secretly sent to "caretakers" at home, instructing them that the " .... draft decision means destruction of Party .... take no action, any proposals by anybody."
The cable went on to state, "situation astounding, outrageous, can't be understood until arrival" and "possibility entire delegation being forcibly detained."
The cable then instructed the majority cohorts at home to:
"Start wide movements in units and press for return of complete delegation ... take no action on any ... CI instructions .... Carefully check up all units, all property, all connections, all mailing lists of auxiliaries, all sub-lists, district lists, removing some offices and unreliables. Check all checking accounts, all organizations, seeing that authorized signers are exclusively reliables, appointing secretariat for auxiliaries and treasury dis-authorize present signatory.
ln.<,tantly finish preparations sell buildings especially eliminating (Weinstone) trusteeship. Remove Mania Reiss." 13
LOVESTONE'S MOMENT OF TRUTH
May 14, the night of the big showdown, finally arrived. The Presidium of the ECCI-the highest body of the Cominternconvened to hear the report of the commission and render the final decision on the American question. The Red Hall of the Comintern building was jam-packed with participants and on-lookers, among them top flight leaders of the Comintern and Profintern, political workers of both these organizations and leaders of many affiliate parties.
We Americans constituted a sizeable group. In addition to the ten delegates, it seemed as though Moscow's entire American Communist colony was present. Asidc from our large Lenin School contingent, which had attended the sessions from the beginning, there were now students from the Eastern U niversity (K UTV A): Maude White, Patterson, Marie Houston, Bennett and Herbert Newton.
Lovestone's moment of truth had arrived. During the month of
301
sessions, tension had been steadily building; we waited with eager anticipation for the outcome of the final session.
Finally the meeting was gaveled to order and Kuusinen, the chairman of the commission read its findings. They were in the form of an address from the Executive Committee of the Comintern to all members of the Communist Party USA. He concluded by pointing out that the majority delegates had yet to answer the question he had posed in the commission on the twelfth of the month. The floor was then thrown open for discussion.
An angry, scowling Ben Gitlow mounted the platform and read another declaration signed by the American "proletarian" delegation. Although presented in a more diplomatic form than the previous declaration, this new statement continued the same factional and anti-Party attack. As later characterized by the ECCI, it was a "direct attempt to nullify the decisions of the Cl and pave the way for an open split in the CPUSA."14
The declaration opened with some formal phrases asserting the adherence of its signers to discipline, loyalty and devotion to the Comintern, and claiming to speak for the "overwhelming majority of the membership" of the Party.
It went on to charge the new draft letter to be Contrary to the letter and spirit of the line of the Sixth (Comintern) Congress ... our acceptance of this draft letter would only promote demoralization, disintegration and chaos in the Party. This is the only logical outcome of the line of the draft letter .... There are valid reasons for our being unable to accept this new draft letter, to assume responsibility before the Party membership for the execution of this letter, to endorse the inevitable irreparable damage that the line of this new draft letter is bound to bring to our Party."15
The audience sat in stunned silence at this outright defiance of the Comintern. It was a clear declaration of war.
Following Gitlow's tirade, members of the Presidium and leaders of other parties took the floor and attacked the declaration, pointing out its anti-Party splitting character. They pleaded with the rank-and-file members of the delegation to remain loyal to the Comintern. This plea was joined by a number of our Lenin
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School students; Zack, Cowl and Lena Davis all spoke.
During this part of the discussion, Stalin took the floor for the second time. In his usual calm, deliberate manner he delivered a scathing blast at the majority leaders-Lovestone, Gitlow and Bedacht. He characterized the May 9 declaration as "superfactional" and "anti-Party." The May 14 declaration was "still more factional and anti-Party than that of May 9th." 16 He called the new declaration a deceitful maneuver, drawn up "craftily ... by same sly attorney, by same petty-fogging lawyer."
On tbe one band, tbe declaration avows complete loyalty to tbe Comintern, tbe unsbakeable fidelity of tbe autbors of tbe declaration to tbe Communist International.. .. On tbe otber band, the declaration states that its authors cannot assume responsibility for carrying out the decision of the Presidium of tbe Executive Committee ... .If you please, on the one band, complete loyalty; on the other, a refusal to carry out the
" decision of the Comintern. And this is called loyalty to the Comintern!. .. What sort of loyalty is tbat? What is the reason for this duplicity? This hypocrisy? Is it not obvious tbat this weighty talk of loyalty and fidelity to the Comintern is necessary to Comrade Lovestone in arder to deceive the membership?17
It cannot be denied that our American comrades, like all Communists, have the right to disagree with the draft of the decision of the Commission and have the right to oppose it.. .. But... we must put the question squarely to tbe members of tbe American delegation: When the draft assumes tbe force of an obligatory decision of the Comintern, do they consider tbemselves entitled not to submit to that decision? 18
Stalin then dwelt at length on the evils of factionalism and his barbs hit us in the minority as well as the majority. He held up the American Party as an example of the havoc factionalism can wreak. He stated that factionalism:
weakens communism, weakens tbe communist offensive against reformism, undermines the struggle of communism against social-democracy ... weakens tbe Party spirit, it dulls tbe revolutionary sense ... interferes witb the training of the Party in the spirit of a policy of principles ... undermining its iron discipline ... completely nullifies all positive work done in tbe Party. 19
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He warned the majority against playing "trumps with percentages," and denied their claim of majority support in the U.S.
Party:
You had a majority because the American Communist Party until now regarded you as the determined supporters of the Communist International.. .. But what will happen if the American workers learn that you intend to break the unity of ranks of the Comintern?... Y ou will find yourselves completely isolated .... You may be certain of that,20
Stalin's speech really struck home to me. I had been a member of 11 faction for the whole five years I had been in the Party; I had been rccruited simultaneously into the Party and into a faction. Thus, when Lovestone took over, I had shifted from the Ruthenberg
!'action to the Foster faction, but af ter the past month of discussion t here was no getting around the faet that factionalism had harmed t hc Party's work. It was clear the Party could not make the turn to t hc left and, in particular, develop the Black mavement without t hc elimination of factionalism.
It was now after midnight, and the Presidium was finally called to vote on the draft address. It was accepted with ane vote against, cast by its only American member, Gitlow. A poll was then taken ol' each of the majority delegates. Each was called to the platform 11 nd as ked directly if he or she accepted the decision, yes or no?
There was a ripple of excitement when Bedacht, a majority lcader and hitherto staunch supporter of Lovestone, broke with t hc majority and declared that he accepted the decision of the Prcsidium and would carry it out. He was joined by Nora!, the west coast farmers' organizer.
Lovestone stood by the majority declaration. Six others, i ncluding Welsh, answered that while disagreeing with the decision t hcy would follow communist discipline and accept it until it could hc raised at the next Party convention. Gitlow spoke last. He dcclared that not only did he disagree with the decision, but that he would actively fight against it when he returned to the U.S.
Again Stalin took the floor, evidently dissatisfied with the hcdging of most of the American delegation. In a quiet voice he pointed out that the American comrades apparently "do not fully
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realize that to defend one's convictions when the decision had not yet been taken is one thing, and to submit to the will of the Comintern after the decision has been taken is another." He said it involved the ability of communists to aet collectively and is
"summed up as the readiness to conform the will of the individual comrades to the will of the collective."
He denied that the American Communist Party would perish if the Comintern persisted in its opposition to Lovestone's line, arguing rather that "only one small factional group will perish." The Presidium decision, he concluded, was important because "it will make it easier for the American Communist Party to put an end to unprincipled factionalism, create unity in the Party and finally enter on the broad path of mass political work."21
The historie meeting was finally adjourned at 3 A.M. the morning of the fifteenth. It was nearly summer and, as we passed into the street, the early dawn shone on Moscow's gilded church dornes. We Lenin School students headed towards our dormitory off the Arbot. At first we were all quiet, each one engrossed in his or her own thoughts, trying to piece together what had happened and assess what it meant for the Party. Breaking the silence, someone asked me if I had witnessed the incident between Stalin and Welsh as we were leaving the hall.
"No," I said, "what happened?"
It seemed that on the way out, Stalin passed Welsh who was standing in the aisle talking to Lovestone. Stalin, in a friendly gesture, extended his band to Welsh, as if to say ''we have our disagreements, but we're still comrades."
Welsh rudely rejected the proferred band and in a loud voice said to Lovestone, "What the hell does that f ellow want'?" There was something strange about Welsh I didn't like. His attachment to Lovestone seemed to transcend any communist or political principles. I wasn't really too surprised at this incident, remembering the earlier one with Manuilsky. But I was glad I hadn't seen it. The Lovestone drama was drawing to a close. The Comintern moved with dispatch to head off the threatened split. On May 17, two days after the Presidium meeting, the Political Secretariat of
305
the Cl removed Lovestone, Gitlow, and Wolfe from all positions of leadership in the Comintern and in the Party. At the same time all three were detained in the Soviet Union to await the formal disposition of their cases. Lovestone was warned that to leave the Soviet Union without permission of the Comintern would be considered a violation of communist discipline. Bedacht, Weinstone and Foster, who supported the address, were immediately sent home. Mikhailov (Williams) was also sent to the States as Cl rep.
The Comintern cabled the 3,000 word address to the CPUSA. It was received by Lovestone's caretakers Minor and Stachel, who immediately disassociated themselves from Lovestone. Along with the leading ten man majority caucus, they pledged to follow the Comintern decisions. The Central Committee met the same day and unanimously called upon the delegates remaining in Moscow to cease all opposition to the Cl.
On May 20, five days after the meeting of the Cl Presidium, the address was published in the Daily Worker and became the property of the entire Party membership. Lovestone's doubledealing and deception were now apparent to all. The mandate from the Sixth Convention had limited him to seek review of the Cl decisions, not to defy them.
In the foliowing days, there was a flood of letters and resolutions from former Lovestone supporters denouncing him, repudiating the actions of their former leaders in Moscow, and unconditionally supporting the Comintern. On May 24, Huiswood, Noral and Mother Bloor, who were still in Moscow, issued a statement. They maintained · that they still disagreed with the Cl, but had no intention of resisting.
The Central Committee set up interim leadership composed of William Z. Foster, Robert Minor, W.W. Weinstone and Max Bedacht as acting secretary. The new leadership immediately inaugurated a mass campaign to educate the rank-and-file Party members about the political issues involved in the struggle. This campaign swiftly swung the vast majority of the Party behind the Cl. On June 22, the U.S. Party was notified by the Cl that Lovestone had left Moscow in violation of the Comintern decision
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and without meeting his promise to submit for publication a political declaration retracting his opposition. Gitlow and Wolfe had left befare. Upon his return to the U.S., Lovestone continued his splitting maneuvers. By the end of June, all three were expelled from the Party.
Thus Lovestone's attempt to split the Party failed completely. It was repudiated by almost his entire foliowing. His boasted ninety percent majority shrank to two percent. Only a couple hundred bitter-end right wing factionalists remained loyal to him and were expelled along with him.
The political and organizational line of the Sixth Congress was soon vindicated. Scarcely three months af ter the expulsion of the Lovestoneites came the stock market crash of October 1929-signaling the onset of the great economic crisis which was to engulf the entire capitalist world and exacerbate the already deepening general crisis of capitalism. The crisis shattered the bourgeois liberal myth of American exceptionalism perpetrated by Lovestone and Pepper.
With the elimination of the six-year-old factional struggle and its chief perpetrators, uni.ty was at last achieved. The Party was now in a position to carry through the left turn called for by the Sixth Congress, now capable of leading the great class and liberation struggles of the next decade.
The political degeneration of the Lovestone leaders was rapid and predictable. Lovestone formed a so-called Communist Party Opposition Group, declaring its purpose to be the "re-establishment of communism in America." He kept up the pretense of being a Marxist-Leninist for a few years but when his anti-Party campaign proved ineffectual, the group fell apart and Lovestone embarked on an open anti-communist course.
He later placed himself in the service of the reactionary trade unionists Matthew Woll and David Dubinsky, with whom he helped sponsor the AFL-CIO anti-communist crusades. In 1963
Lovestone moved up to international prominence as director of the AFL-CIO's Department of International Affairs and George Meany's "Foreign Minister." The International Affairs Department had its own network of ambassadors, administrators and
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intelligence agents and collaborated closely with the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in reactionary subversion of trade union movements in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe.22
John Pepper was expelled from the Party by the International Control Commission, not for his political crimes, but for lying with respect to the trip to Mexico which he never made and for falsifying an expense account for a fictitious trip to Korea. He wound up working for the Gosplan (State General Planning Commission in the Soviet Union). I occasionally saw him on Tverskaya on his way to or from work. What a come-down for Pepper! From the glamor of international politics to a bureaucrat's desk in the Planning Commission.
Edward Welsh remained Lovestone's man-Friday. Many years later, in the early fifties, I ran into him on the street in New York City. We immediately recognized cach other. Surprised and curious, I asked if he were still with Lovestone. He said he was, adding that he knew I was still with the Party. Neither of us had more to say; there was an awkward pause, we said goodbye and went our own ways.
Back at the Lenin School, we of the former minority were elated by the decisions of the commission and the news of the complete rout of the Lovestoneites at home. The political and organizational decisions of the Comintern were accepted unanimously at a meeting of American students held shortly af ter the close of the commission. Factionalism was condemned and the unity of American students achieved. It was at .this meeting that the last two Lovestone holdouts, Gus Sklar and H.V. Phillips, finally capitulated.
THE CRIMEA REVISITED
It was mid-summer and I was again on my way to the Crimea. I looked forward with pleasure to revisiting the lovely peninsula with its subtropical climate, lush beauty and of course, its warm and friendly people. It would be a month until school began, and I
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intended to spend half my time in rest and relaxation and the remainder in "practical work," which in this case was further observations on the national question.
Arriving in Sevastopol, I went immediately to the Party headquarters where I presented my letter of introduction to the local Party secretary. Where did he think would be the best place for me to go, I asked. The secretary, a big bluff man of Russian or Ukrainian nationality, was evidently very busy.
The anteroom was crowded with people undoubtedly with more important business than mine. He, was polite and friendly, however, and in what seemed to me a split-second decision, he said he knew just the place for me-Alushta. It was a resort town on the coast about twenty-five kilometers beyond Yalta, where I had stayed two summers before. He offered to put me up in a rest home where his Party organization had a number of places reserved.
1:J:1at sounded good to me, and I asked him if I would have an opportunity to study the national question there.
"Oh yes," he assured me, "you'll find a number of nationalities in the town there-Tartars, Greeks, Karaite Jews, Germans, Ukranians and even some Russians! How many more could you want?" he joked. And he wished me good luck as his secretary called in the next person from the crowded anteroom. I waited outside while she typed the letter of introduction and then asked her for directions to the Coast Artillery Barracks.
It was a regiment "adopted" by the school in a special fraternal relationship which included mutual visits and cultural exchanges.
We students also sent them literature and periodicals from our respective parties. This relationship heightened their political understanding of the international situation and the communist movement abroad. For us it deepened our insight into the role of the Red Army as a politically conscious guardian of Soviet power.
It furnished a concrete illustration of how the Red Army functioned. I had met some of the members of the regiment in Moscow, but this was to be my first visit to their barracks. I arrived at the barracks which were situated on the outskirts of the city near the coast and was greeted warmly by the political officer of the regiment whom I had met in Moscow. He introduced me to
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other officers and men. I was then tak en on a tour of the gun sights.
They were big coastal guns, elaborately protected behind earth and concrete fortifications.
They were so expertly·camouflaged, that it was impossible from the sea to tel1 anything was there. The buge guns were bidden in underground implacements; each had its own electrical system which raised it by elevator to firing position. After firing they would drop back to their concealed pits. Under each gun was what seemed to be a virtt!al machine shop.
They had observation posts established along the coast to control the long range fire of the guns. They were proud of their guns and especially proud of their new British range finding equipment.
I ask ed how they had gotten hold of that, and an officer grinned,
"Well, that's what the British would like to know!"
After touring the gun sites, I felt Sevastopol was well defended against any attack from the sea. But alas, the enemy attack on Sevastopol thirteen years later-during the Second World Warwas not to come from the sea. It came from the land when the Nazi armies smashed into the Crimea across the narrow Perekov isthmus connecting the Crimea with the Ukrainian mainland. The
"hero city" of Sevastopol was to withstand the seige for 250 days before it fell after putting up a stubborn defense which tied down the powerful German army.
Next came the inevitable beced-informal conference-with the army men. I was plied with questions about the U nited States, conditions of Blacks, and Lovestone and the right deviation in the Party. I gave them a rundown on the recent decisions, described the participation of Comrade Stalin and the eventual expulsion of the Lovestoneites. I was impressed by the high political level of the questions they posed and the knowledge they displayed of American affairs.
I stayed with them overnight and was invited to a big hearty meal at their mess. Discussions continued until the bugle sounded lights out. N ext morning I was escorted to the station. From there, we drove a lovely, scenic route to the town of Alushta.
Alushta was a beautiful little town by the sea with the Crimean
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mountain range rising immediately behind it. I found myself in a modem rest home on the outskirts of town with the beach conveniently near-a perfect place to relax and rest. I met the Party Sectetary of Alushta, a Tartar. He introduced me to some members of the Party Committee and town Soviet. These committees, I found, were representative of the various nationalities and ethnic groups in the area.
But in general I found nothing particularly new on the national question-it was similar to the situation in the Yalta area where I'd been two years before. All groups were living in peaceful harmony and the cultures of each were mutually respected. Stress was laid, however, on the development of the Turkic language and culture of the Tartars, who comprised the main nationalities of the Crimean Autonomous Republic, about one-third of the total population of the peninsula. After them came Ukrainians, Russians, Greeks, Jews, and Germans in that order. The Tartars, however, were regarded as the basic nationality and it was their homeland dating from the days of the Golden Hordes. These were sufficient factors for an autonomous republic to be set up for them in 1921 with a Tartar president.
But after a couple of weeks in the Crimean paradise I became restless and bored and longed to be back in the hustle and bustle of Moscow. I felt isolated; I wondered what was happening in the U.S. Party. I'd had no news of developments and had heard nothing of the unfinished business of the Black national question. I wanted to talk to Nasanov about plans for our Negro C-ommission in the Comintern. Then, not least, I missed my wife Inushka.
RETURN FROM THE CRIMEA
I returned to Moscow a few days before the school opened in order to spend some time with Ina. From her I learned that a young Russian woman who worked in the chancellor's office at K UTV A had returned from vacation in the Crimea and was spreading malicious slander about me, portraying me as an insatiable womanizer. The woman was known among the K UTV A
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An effective struggle against reformist leaders and the winning of the masses from their reactionary influence demanded once and for all, that we seriously take up the task of building the LSNR
into an independent mass organization around the Party's program of struggle for Black liberation.
Only on the basis of building up our work along these lines, would we be able to weld that unbreakable unity of Black and white toilers. My report lasted two hours and was considered a highlight of the convention. I received a standing. ovation. By a motion of a delegate from Michigan, my report-"The Road to Negro Liberation"-was published in pamphlet form. I was later placed on the Politburo as a result of this speech.
LOOKING BACK
Before the Party could take the lead in the Black liberation movement, it had to demonstrate in action to Blacks that their deeply rooted distrust of white workers-nurtured by race riots and discrimination, and encouraged by established leaders-was an obstacle to united action in the crisis.
The Party was able to do this because it had a comprehensive program to deal with the crisis and the other groups did not. In Scottsboro, the Party effectively discredited the legalistic strategy of the NAACP-its reliance on courts, lawyers and liberal politicians. It was in our day-to-day work in the northern ghettos, the unemployment demonstrations, the campaigns against evicttions and police brutality, and in struggles to organize nondiscriminatory unions, that the Party won hegemony over the local bourgeois nationalist organizations. Such movements were springing up at the time in Chicago, New York, Baltimore, St.
Louis, Washington and Detroit.
These nationalist and separatist organizations exploited the antagonisms which inevitably developed between Blacks and white immigrants in neighboring ghettos. This was further exacerbated by the presence of white immigrant shop keepers in the Black community.
BLACK BOLSHEVIK
letter from the school and knew what I was supposed to do," I replied.
"He probably wanted to get rid of you," she pointed out. I told her I saw no reason why practical work could not be combined with leisure and added that my comrades had said the rumor had been started there by a known scandal-monger. This cartoon, I contended, was just an echo of that malicious campaign.
"Regardless, you shouldn't have allowed yourself to get caught in such a situation," she observed.
I simmered down and we parted on a friendly note. But the source of the cartoon remained a mystery.
As I remember I protested the incident to Maurice Childs, the Party secretary of the English speaking sector and its representative to the School Bureau. I didn't see how the cartoon could have been posted without his knowledge, but he brushed the matter aside.
�The foliowing day however, the picture was removed. I believe it was Childs who told me that the artist was a young Mexican in the Spanish language section of the school. I remembered two Mexican comrades had entered the school some months before, but like most of the students they were using pseudonyms.
But this was not the end of the story. A few days after the wall cartoon incident I ran into Marie Houston, a Black K UTV A student from the U.S. Marie had a grudge against me for taking sides against her in some of her personal disputes with other students at KUTVA. Apparently her grudges were many and extended to most of her fellow students.
We exchanged cool formal greetings, and as I was about to pass on she lashed out, "Hey man, I've been hearing all about your carryings on in the Crimea-that's pretty bad stuff! What you trying to do, scandalize our name?'' she demanded. "By the way, when you gonna be cleansed? I'm sure gonna be there!" she gloated.
She was referring to the Party cleansing ( chistka) which was taking place that fall throughout the Soyiet Union. I didn't take Marie's threat lightly. A few days before, during the cleansings at K UTV A, she hurled a series of violent and false charges at
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Patterson and Maude White. They were kept on the stand for hours attempting to refute them. In Patterson's case, his cleansing had taken up one whole evening and was extended to the next.
William Weinstone, then official Party representative to the Comintern and also a member of the International Control Commission, finally interceded to get Pat off the hook. A curious thing about all this was that to my knowledge Marie was never called to account for her slanderous accusations.
The day of the Party cleansings at the Lenin School finally arrived. The entire collective including the rector, the scrubwoman, maintenance personnel, faculty, clerical workers and the entire student body gathered in the school auditorium.
The chairman of our cleansing committee was none other than the famous old Bolshevik Felix Kohn, member of the Central Control Commission of the CPSU. He had been a member of one of the first Marxist groups in Russia and a friend of Lenin-a person with an unchallengeable record. He was a thin elderly man, stem looking, with a shaggy goatee and flashing eyes under bristling eyebrows. He impressed me as a strict disciplinarian.
He opened the meeting, called attention to the solemnity of the occasion, and then outlined the task, purpose and the procedure to be followed. It was a process of purification, he said, designed to purge from our ranks all noxious elements, factional troublemakers and self-seeking careerists which a Party in power inevitably attracts to it. Party members were to be examined on the basis of both their individual work assignments and their political commitment as members of the CPSU.
In other words it was to be a scrutiny of both conduct and conviction. All present, whether Party or non-Party, had the duty to come forth if they had criticisms or charges against any Party member. Indeed, it was permissible for people outside the school, anyone who had a complaint against any Party member, to participate. The Party member on the stand was required to give an autobiography-when, how and why he or shejoined the Party, and what he or she was doing to merit renewing their membership.
In a stem voice, eyes flashing, Kohn warned: "Woe betide anyone who makes false statements or attempts to in any way deceive this
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commission!"
He then listed the penalties which could be given to Party members for various infractions. First there was a reprimand for minor offenses, a censure for more grave ones, then strict censure with a warning and expulsion as a last -resort.
We all sat tensely as the secretary of the commission began to call students to the stand. The commission had five memberssent by the Party from outside the school. Each Party member upon taking the stand was required to turn his or her membership card over to the commission, to be returned only if the commission felt that he or she had answered all questions to its satisfaction. In other words the commission decided whether you retained the right to re main in the Party.
Eventually my turn came. I must admit I was rather nervous. I took the stand and sketched my background and Party experieq,ces, what I got out of study at the school, what I intended to do when I returned home. No one rose to criticize me. And to my great relief, Marie didn't even show up. In faet, Kursanova commended me as a good student and spoke favorably about my studies on the national question.
The cleansing continued for several exciting days but no serious infraction of Party discipline or lack of Party loyalty was found among our English-speaking group. The cleansing, however, was a more serious matter among students from underground parties in fascist or semi-fascist countries. As I remember, a police agent was flushed out in the Polish group.
But who had drawn that cartoon? This mystery was not to be cleared up until forty years later, although I had always had some faint suspicion as to the artist's identity. I attended a birthday party for the world-renowned Mexican muralist Davido Siquieros. As a result of an international protest movement, he had just been released from prison where he and other revolutionaries had been incarcerated, charged with leading and fomenting the National Railway Strike of 1959.
It was a fes ti ve occasion in typical Mexican style, complete with fireworks and a round-the-clock open house. Hundreds of comrades, friends and neighbors gathered to congratulate the great
315
artist. As I was introduced to him by a friend a thought suddenly occurred to me: Had he not been a student at the Lenin School in 1929, I asked.
"Yes," he responded, looking at me curiously. "Yes, I was there."
"Were you the one who drew a cartoon for the school wall newspaper titled 'Comrade Haywood doing practical work in a Crimean Rest Home?' "
His eyes lit up with a gleam of recognition. "Yeah, that was me."
"Well," I said, "l'm that Harry Haywood." We both burst out laughing and he proceeded to tel1 the others around us the whole story.
"Who was the other young Mexican with you at the school?'' I asked.
"Oh, that was Encina." (Encina was the General Secretary of the Mexican Communist Party.) "He's still in jail," Sequieros added sadly.
My Last Year
in the Soviet Union
Following Lovestone's expulsion from the Party in June of 1929, Nasanov and I continued our work in the Negro Commission of the Comintern. We both loved the work which involved a tontinuous check on the press of the U.S. Party (then the Daily Worker and The Communist); the minutes and resolutions of the Party's leading committees; and other labor and progressive publications in which Party members were active.
This included Labor Unity, the organ of the TUUL, and Labor De/ender which was put out by the International La bor Def ense.
This material was to be found in the Comintern Information Department whose American representative at the time, as I remember, was A. G. Bosse.
As I acquainted myself with the material, I became pleased and excited at the advances the Party had made in work among Blacks.
The U.S., it seemed, had entered the third period with a bang-a rapid decline of the economy and growth of mass unemployment.
Most impressive was the widespread resistance of workers to
"rationalization" (wage cutting, stretch-out and speed-up), and the anti-union terror campaign of employers backed by the federal, state and local governments. The resistance was reflected in the needle trades, mining, automobile and textile industries.
All this was two months befare the October 1929 stock market crash and the anset of the economic crisis which was to embrace the whole capitalist world. The Party, now freed from faction-
MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVIET UNION
317
alism, had united on the basis of the Comintern Address and was vigorously moving forth to organize and lead the mounting struggles of the workers.
N asanov and I felt the hest evaluation of the Part y's work among Blacks was put forward by Cyril Briggs in a series of articles which appeared in the June, July and September 1929 issues of The Communist. 1
Briggs characterized the Sixth Congress of the Cl as a major turning point for the Party in carrying out a revolutionary program in Afro-American work. Using the struggle against white chauvinism as a barometer of the eff ectiveness of the Party's work in this area, he pointed out that "prior to the Sixth Congress, white chauvinism in the American Party (in both factions!), unmasked at that Congress by Comrade Ford, and mercilessly condemned by that supreme revolutionary body, made progress in Negro work well-nigh impossible." 2
Before the Sixth Congress there were only a handful of Blacks in the Party, but since then the Central Committee had set up a National Negro Department to help in the formulation of policies and in the direction of the work nationally. District and section Negro committees were formed in most areas of Party concentration.
At the Sixth Party Convention, Black comrades were elected to the highest body in the Party, the Central Committee, and to the National Executive Committee of the Young Communist League.
They were also elected to the Party's Politburo, the National Bureau of the League, and added to district committees and section committees. Another step forward was registered at the founding convention of the TUUL in September 1929; of the 800
plus delegates, 68 were Black.
Nevertheless, this was only a beginning. White chauvinism was still pervasive and represented a powerful influence in the Party.
Briggs · then turned a critical spotlight on the most dramatic struggle of the period-the strike of Southern textile workers at Gastonia, North Carolina, which took place in the spring of 1929.
This strike-led by the Party and the National Textile Workers Union, an affiliate of the TUEL-was the Party's first mass
318
BLACK BOLSHEVIK
activity in the South. It was therefore a test for the new line on the unions and on the Afro-American question.
The Southern textile industry-and Gastonia's mills were no exception-was traditionally a white industry with Blacks about five percent of the work force. The whites were new proletarians from the mountains and farms, employed by northern mill owners who had moved their mills south to exploit the cheap and unorganized labor of the region. In Gastonia, these workers responded to their exploitation by striking against "stretch-out"
and starvation conditions.
The bosses used the old battlecry of white supremacy to divide the Black and white workers and try to break the strike. It created an atmosphere of reeking race hatreds and suspicion, and this was the state of things when the National Textile Workers Union launched its organizing campaign in Gastonia .
.• The mill owners and their local myrmidons-the sheriff, police, militia, foremen, managers and extra-legal arms of the KKKsought to maintain the status quo threatened by the strikers. The strike speedily took on a political character, reaching the point of armed conflict.
The heroic woman strike leader, Ella May Wiggins, was pursued and shot down in broad daylight. The Gastonia chief of police was killed and several deputies wounded when they attacked a tent colony which strikers had formed after being evicted from their company-owned homes. Sixteen strike leaders, including some communists, stood trial for the murder of the police chief.
The reign of terror that ensued made the situation extremely difficult for our organizers. Clear ly there could be no retreat from the principle of organizing Blacks and whites into one union on the basis of complete equality, yet there were some union and Party leaders who wanted to back down in the face of the prevailing chauvinism among the white workers.
The Central Committee firmly laid down the line against such a retreat. Following the line of the ECCI resolution, it insisted that the new union embrace all nationalities and colors and that separate unions for Blacks were to be organized only in those trades from which they were barred by the reactionary policies of
MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVIET UNION
319
white union leaders. After their initial wavering, the local leadership rallied to the correct line. Blacks and whites were organized into the same union.
Testimony to this is a dramatic incident involving my brother Otto. I hadn't heard much of Otto since he'd returned to the States, only that he'd been placed on the Central Committee at the Sixth Convention and was working in the Negro Department of the TUUL. As TUUL organizer, he had been sent to Gastonia. He was at nearby Bessemer City at the time of the attack on the strikers'
tent colony and the shooting of the police chief. Otto was unaware of what had happened and that the stage had been set for his lynching should he return.
As an article in the Daily Worker described the incident: Otto Hall...was on his way ... to Gastonia on the night of the raid ... the white workers, realizing the grave danger to which Hall was exposed if he happened to get into Gastonia that night, formed a body guard and went to meet Hall and warned him to keep away. They met Hall two miles out of town and took him in a motorcar to Charlotte where they collected enough money among themselves to pay his railroad fare to New York. No sooner had Hall embarked on thetrain a mob broke into the house where he hid befare his departure.
It was only timely action on the part of these white workers that saved the life of their Negro comrade.3
The Gastonia struggle signaled a new period in the Party's trade union work-a period which characterized the thirties overall.
Under the leadership of the Commuifist Party and our left trade unions, Black and white workers were organized into the same unions on the basis of equality and in the common fight against the capitalists. The Party was able to mobilize mass support for the strike and the sixteen leaders framed for murder, in cities throughout the South and the country as a whole. Otto personally spoke in some twenty-seven cities.
But what was to be said about the needle trades union, long a bastion of the left? Briggs pointed out the "criminal" apathy of the comrades working in this area. The Needle Trades Industrial Workers' Union only organized Blacks in times of strike, and as a
BLACK BOLSHEVIK
result, had very few Black members. While the union had special departments and scores of functionaries for Greek, ltalian, Jewish and other immigrant workers, there was no Afro-American department and not a single Black functionary. This, at a time when in New York alone there were several thousand Black needle trades workers.
Comrades in the Miners Union made a similar underestimation of work among Afro-Americans. This union, operated in an industry which had a large number of Black miners-in some fields even out-numbering the white workers-but had not yet appointed a single Black organizer. In Illinois District Eight (my old district), there occurred a particularly blatant case of white chauvinism. William Kruse, the district organizer, refused to share the pool of funds available for wages with Comrade Isabel, the Black functionary. He persisted in this practice despite the de mands of the National Secretariat that the funds be shared equitably. 4
Despite the numerous examples of white chauvinism, there was no doubt that the Party was making advances in regards to Negro work. In faet, it was precisely because of these advances that chauvinistic practices which hitherto had gone under wraps were brought out into the open and attacked. Briggs' series of three articles was the sharpest attack on white chauvinism ever published by the Party.
Their publication reflected that despite the many shortcomings in our work, there was a growing awareness in the Party leadership of the seriousness of the question. The rapid deterioration of economic conditions affecting both Black and white workers allowed no complacency. If the Party was going to play a leading role in the coming struggles, it would have to carry on a continuous struggle against white chauvinist ideology and practices.
I was heartened by Briggs's articles. At the same time, however, I was somewhat disturbed. While Briggs evoked the Comintern resolution on the Negro question in his blast against white chauvinism, he was curiously silent on the theory and program underlying the resolution. It was certainly true, as Briggs said, that among revolutionary white workers, white chauvinism was often
MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVJET UNION
321
manifested in the "general underestimation of the role of the Negro masses in the revolutionary struggle." But to say no more than that was to avoid the essence of the question.
What were the ideas and theories fueling this underestimation?
Clearly they were to be found in the remnants of Lovestone's line which still clung to the Party-the hangovers of the social democratic view which considered the fight against the special oppression of Blacks to be a diversion from the class struggle.
The new line was a drastic break with the social chauvinist doctrines of the past, and in it the Party had a mighty weapon in the fight against white chauvinism and petty bourgeois nationalism of the Garvey stripe. But the new line could not simply be declared, it had to be fought for.
As months passed, N asanov and I searched in vain through the Party press and documents for further discussion of the 1928
resolution. The resolution of the October 1929 plenum of the Central Committee had noted the increasingly important role the Black proletariat played in building the new unions. lts Program of Action called for "merciless struggle against white chauvinism and any attempt towards segregating the Negro workers." 5 Following the plenum, the National Agitprop Department had promised to publish a special discussion bulletin on the Afro-American question. None ever materialized, however.
By the beginning of 1930, it was becoming clear to us that there was not only confusion in the Party, but definite opposition to the new line.
As if to confirm our misgivings, the February 1930 issue of The Communist contained an article by veteran Black communist Otto Huiswood, titled "World Aspects of the Negro Question." It was the first article in a year to broach the theoretical aspects of the question, but it was a direct challenge to the line of the Comintern Sixth -Congress.
Huiswood sought to establish a difference in character between the oppression of Blacks in Africa and the West Indies, and those in the USA. The question in Africa and the West Indies, he contended, was a national question, but in the U nited States, it was a race question. According to Huiswood, the Black minority in the
BLACK BOLSHEVIK
result, had very few Black members. While the union had special departments and scores of functionaries for Greek, Italian, Jewish and other immigrant workers, there was no Afro-American department and not a single Black functionary. This, at a time w hen in New York alone there were several thousand Black needle trades workers.
Comrades in the Miners Union made a similar underestimation of work among Afro-Americans. This union, operated in an industry which had a large number of Black miners-in some fields even out-numbering the white workers-but had not yet appointed a single Black organizer. In Illinois District Eight (my old district), there occurred a particularly blatant case of white chauvinism. William Kruse, the district organizer, refused to share the pool of funds available for wages with Comrade Isabel, the Black functionary. He persisted in this practice despite the demands of the National Secretariat that the funds be shared equitably. 4
Despite the numerous examples of white chauvinism, there was no doubt that the Party was making advances in regards to Negro work. In faet, it was precisely because of these advances that chauvinistic practices which hitherto had gone under wraps were brought out into the open and attacked. Briggs' series of three articles was the sharpest attack on white chauvinism ever published by the Party.
Their publication reflected that despite the many shortcomings in our work, there was a growing awareness in the Party leadership of the seriousness of the question. The rapid deterioration of economic conditions affecting both Black and white workers allowed no complacency. If the Party was going to play a leading role in the coming struggles, it would have to carry on a continuous struggle against white chauvinist ideology and practices.
I was heartened by Briggs's articles. At the same time, however, I was somewhat disturbed. While Briggs evoked the Comintern resolution on the Negro question in his blast against white chauvinism, he was curiously silent on the theory and program underlying the resolution. It was certainly true, as Briggs said, that among revolutionary white workers, white chauvinism was often
MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVJET UNION
321
manifested in the "general underestimation of the role of the Negro masses in the revolutionary struggle." But to say no more than that was to avoid the essence of the question.
What were the ideas and theories fueling this underestimation?
Clearly they were to be found in the remnants of Lovestone's line which still clung to the Party-the hangovers of the social democratic view which considered the fight against the special oppression of Blacks to be a diversion from the class struggle.
The new line was a drastic break with the social chauvinist doctrines of the past, and in it the Party had a mighty weapon in the fight against white chauvinism and petty bourgeois nationalism of the Garvey stripe. But the new line could not simply be declared, it had to be fought for.
As months passed, N asanov and I searched in vain through the Party press and documents for further discussion of the 1928
resolution. The resolution of the October 1929 plenum of the Central Committee had noted the increasingly important role the Black proletariat played in building the new unions. lts Program of Action called for "merciless struggle against white chauvinism and any attempt towards segregating the Negro workers." 5 Following the plenum, the National Agitprop Department had promised to publish a special discussion bulletin on the Afro-American question. None ever materialized, however.
By the beginning of 1930, it was becoming clear to us that there was not only confusion in the Party, but definite opposition to the new line.
As if to confirm our misgivings, the February 1930 issue of The
Communist contained an article by veteran Black communist Otto Huiswood, titled "World Aspects of the Negro Question." It was the first article in a year to broach the theoretical aspects of the question, but it was a direct challenge to the line of the Comintern Sixth -Congress.
Huiswood sought to establish a difference in character between the oppression of Blacks in Africa and the West Indies, and those in the USA. The question in Africa and the West Indies, he contended, was a national question, but in the United States, it was a race question. According to Huiswood, the Black minority in the
BLACK BOLSHEVIK
U.S. lacked the requisites of a nation. It had "no distinct language and culture from the dominant racial group .. .its only distinguishing feature is its racial origin. "6
Thus, Huiswood pulled the Afro-American question out of the category of national-colonial questions and dumped it back into the muddy waters of "race question." He had fallen back upon Sile and his "social race" theory, which asserted the primacy of the race factor, race ideologies, in the oppression of U.S. Blacks.
By making race primary, Huiswood's article denied the validity of self-determination as a slogan for Black liberation. It rejected th�
concept of Blacks in the South as an oppressed nation, and therefore rejected the perspective which called for the develop"
ment of a national revolutionary movement based on the masses of Black soil-tillers and workers in that region.
Huiswood's article demanded an answer. Nasanov and I felt that it could in the end serve a positive purpose in that our reply afforded an excellent opportunity to clarify a number of areas of misunderstanding and confusion. Our response could be the vehicle to finally settle accounts with Sik and demolish his "social race" theory. Nasanov had already written a polemic against Sik exposing the latter's incredible ignorance of Lenin's position on the national question. This was to be published in the April issue of The Communist. 7 I would take on Huiswood directly.
First I answered his assertion that Blacks in the U.S. had no special culture. "Negroes have a culture which reflects their whole historical development as a people in the U .S.," I pointed out.
"And as to separate language ... this is not one of the prerequisites of the nation."8 I referred to Stalin, who said: "A common language for every nation, but not necessarily diff erent languages for different nations."9
But was there in faet a difference in the character of oppression between Blacks in the U.S., on the one band, and in Africa and the West Indies on the other? I concluded that there was no such difference. It was clear to me, of course, that Blacks in the U.S.
were not a colony in the formal sense of the term. U nlike a colony, they were not separated geographically from the metropolitan country.
MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVJET UNION
323
There was, however, no su bstantive difference in the character of Black oppression in the United States and the colonies and semicolonies. In both instances, imperialist policy was directed towards forcibly arresting the free economic and cultural development of the people, towards keeping them backward as an essential condition for super-exploitation.
In attempting to prove a difference in the character of oppression, Huiswood wound up downgrading the anti-imperialist content of the Black liberation struggle in the United States.
Since the Sixth Congress I had given considerable thought to the race factor and its role in the question of U.S. Blacks.
Certainly it was clear that race played an important role in the Afro-American guestion, but it was only one element and not the central question itself.
Of course, I pointed out: "It would be a serious mistake to underestimate the profound social role played by these theories.
Arising first as a moral sanction for a national colonial policy, these dogmas become fixed in laws, in tum influence politics and in this manner react again upon the social and economic basis, sharpening and deepening the exploitation of subject peoples and perpetuating the existing social relations." 10
In reality, I wrote, the racial persecution of Blacks was a particular form and device of national oppression. The racial element was a peculiarity of the question of U .S. Blacks. N owhere, with the exception of apartheid in Southem Africa, had race been made to play such a decisive role. N owhere had it served for such a long period as an instrument of ruling class oppression. The prominence of racial ideologies in Black oppression in the U.S.
arose from the necessity of the white rulers to maintain the degradation of Blacks in the midst of the most modem and advanced capitalist society in the world.
Under these conditions the bourgeois rulers had to pursue "the most energetic policy in order to keep up the bar of separation between white · and Negroes, i.e., retard the process of assimilation and thus preserve the conditions for the super-exploitation of the latter." 11
In the absence of pronounced cultural distinctions such as
BLACK BOLSHEVIK
language or religion, I argued, the "racial visibility" of U.S. Blacks was used by bourgeois social theorists as the most convenient factor upon which to erect spurious theories of white supremacy, in order to set them apart from the masses of the white population as permanent objects of scorn.
Sik, (and thus Huiswood) on the other band, counterposed the race question to the national question. They asserted that Blacks were separated from the dominant white race solely by "artificial racial divisions and race oppression arising on this basis."
Sik compounded these errors when he reduced the whole national question to a struggle between competing bourgeoisies for markets:
Among American Negroes there is no developing industrial bourgeoisie, hindered in its economic development the struggle of which (for its free economic development) for the winning of internal markets and for the removal of obstacles
-• standing in the path of economic progress, could give these national movements a progressive character. 12
But the national question, as Stalin pointed out, had undergone changes from that earlier period when it first appeared as part of the bourgeois revolution. Now, in the period of socialist revolution, it was part of the struggle of the proletariat: It is quite evident that the main point here is not that the bourgeoisie of one nationality is beating, or may beat, the bourgeoisie of another nationality in the competitive struggle, but that the imperialist group of the ruling nationality is exploiting and oppressing the bulk of the masses, above all the peasant masses, of the colonies and dependent nationalities and that, by oppressing and exploiting them, it is drawing them into the struggle against imperialism, converting them into allies of the proletarian revolution. 13
This was in sharp contrast to the formulation put forward by Sik and espoused by Huiswood. Sik, I contended, made the ideological factor of "racism" more important than the social question itself. Thus, in asserting the primacy of racial factors in the question, Sik and Huiswood reduced the Black liberation struggle to a struggle against racial ideology. They saw only the
MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVIET UNION
325
bourgeois assimilationist trend, "a striving towards intermingling and amalgamation, towards full social equality" in the struggle and not the potential national revolutionary trend ofthe masses. 14
The Black liberation struggle was reduced to a feeble bourgeois liberal protest against racism and racist ideology, divorced from its economic roots, and to be resolved through education and humanitarian uplift.
Feeling that it would add some clarity to the situation, I ended my piece with the serious economic and historical analysis of the question that Sik and Huiswood had so assiduously avoided. As I saw it, the evolution of American Blacks as an oppressed nation was the result of the unfinished bourgeois democratic revolution of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
The advent of imperialism froze the Blacks in their post
Reconstruction position-landless, semi-slaves in the South. It permanently blocked the road to fusion of Blacks and whites into one nation on the basis of equality under capitalism. The struggle for genuine equality was thenceforth ultimately bound in the South to take a national revolutionary and socialist revolutionary direction. This position defined the status of Blacks in the north as an unassimilable national minority, as the shadow of the plantation fell upon them throughout the country.
I think Huiswood was won over by my argument; at least I saw nothing more in the Party press trumpeting Sik's "race" theories.
In looking back on the thing now, I think it was a sort of skirmish in the war to carry out a revolutionary program on the Black national question. As long as the Party leadership vacillated in carrying out the line of the Sixth Congress, such old and reactionary theories were bound to persist.
I must say, however, that things were not standing still at home.
While progress in the struggle was slow, it was progress nevertheless. Amid a great upsurge in the workers' movement, the Party was beginning to implement the line of the Sixth Congress, though there was still some vacillation.
Our biggest thrill that spring had been the nationwide demonstrations of the unemployed led by the Party and the TUUL on March 6, 1930. Over one and a quarter million workers responded
BLACK BOLSHEVIK
to the Party's call in over a dozen cities coast to coast. Hundreds of workers and Party leaders were arrested. William Z. Foster, Robert Minor, Israel Amter and Harry Raymond were sentenced to three years in jail for leading a demonstration of 110,000 in New York's Union Square. 15 They served at least a year of these sentences.
The Party also led large and militant May Day demonstrations in several cities. All this clearly indicated that the Party was becoming a leader of the masses, as more and more people were thrown into struggle by the deepening economic crisis and the capitalist offensive.
The Party chalked up an astounding success in its recruitment drive. In a period of two or three months the Party recruited into its ranks over 6,000 new members, 90% from basic industry and 1,000 of whom were Blacks. 16 A considerable number of the latter has come from the disintegrating Garvey movement.
In the midst of this upsurge the Seventh Convention of the U.S.
Party con ve ned in New York on June 22, 1930, and N asanov and I followed the proceedings closely. The Party's estimate of the economic crisis and perspectives for the future were discussed in detail, emphasizing the need to def eat the right deviation in the Party.
As summarized by Browder, then General Secretary, the convention observed "that the economic crisis shows the stabilization of capitalism approaching its end, that it brings close the realization of war, and that it will in many countries be transformed into a political crisis, and that the working class will be more and more unable to find any path except that of revolutionary struggle." At the same time, the convention recognized the need to struggle against the "leftist" concept of the crisis as the
"automatic bearer of revolution."t 7
Internally the Party was in a qualitatively different position than it had been at the time of the Sixth Convention in 1929. It had broken away from the crippling factionalism that had all but paralyzed its work. It was now consolidating its forces on the basis of the decisions of the CI and had seized the initiative in the growing revolutionary trend in the country.
MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVIET UNION
327
There were a score of Black delegates ( 17%) present and for the first time the Afro-American question was characterized as "the problem for our Party." 18 While it was evident that important advances had been made in the work, the convention brought out that "this could not be credited to the clarity of understanding of the Party as a whole," 19 and that a "proper orientation is lacking. " 20
Much discussion and debate did not clear up this confusion.
Browder, for instance, denigrated the slogan of self-determination by making the Black rebellion contingent upon a revolutionary situation in the whole country. "The transformation of this slogan into one of action is conditioned upon the maturing of a revolutionary situation for American capitalist society."21 Overall, however, we felt the convention represented progress in terms of work among U .S. Blacks.
My three-year term at the Lenin School was drawing toward a close in June 1930. I began thinking about home and what awaited me on my return. I had little organizational experience in the Party before coming to the Soviet Union, and now began to wonder what type of work I would be doing.
But I was to find that N asanov had other immediate plans for me. He felt that I should stay for a few months longer and work with the CL It was felt (I presumed by Kuusinen and others) that the Comintern should intervene once more on the Black question.
Clearly the brief resolution adopted at the Sixth Congress two years previous was not sufficient. N ow a more detailed statement of the question was needed. They had in mind another Cl Commission on the question that would meet after the Seventh Convention of the U .S. Party-one set up to discuss and work out such a statement when all the proceedings from that convention were available. The convention would undoubtedly point up remaining areas of confusion.
"Wouldn't it be best for you to stay, Harry?" asked Nasanov.
"Eventually everything will work out," he said, "but it would be better for you to return with a new Cl resolution. That way you'll be off to a good start. lf you left now, you might get battered about in the fights there."
BLACK BOLSHEVIK
TUE RILU'S FIFTH CONGRESS
The Fifth Congress of the Red International of Labor Unions (RILU) was to convene in Moscow August 15, 1930. Delegates started arriving several weeks early. The U.S. delegation, thirty strong, included seven Blacks-the largest number ever to attend an RILU Congress. They had come to Moscow via Hamburg where they had participated together with Africans and West Indian blacks in the founding conference of the International Trade Union Committee ofNegro Workers, initiated by theRILU.
The Hamburg delegation was led by James Ford, head of the Negro Department of theTrade Union Unity League, a member of the executive committee of the RILU, and provisional chairman and chief organizer of the Hamburg Conference. His co-worker and assistant was George Padmore, also a TUUL national organizer. 22
The U.S. delegation included: Harold Williams, KUTVA graduate and a member of the railroad workers union in Chicago; Helen McClain, a Philadelphia needle trades worker; lke Hawkins, a Pennsylvania coal miner; and Arthur Murphy, a Pennsylvania steelworker. Of the delegation I only knew Ford and Padmore, and I hastened to make the acquaintance of the other delegates.
They were a young, enthusiastic group, fresh from struggles in their respective industries in which they had played leading roles. I was especially impressed by the young Black woman from Philadelphia, Helen McClain. She was a natura] leader, lively, attractive, humorous and the center of attention.
The delegates filled me in on news from home and related what had happened at the Hamburg Conference. The conference had been in preparation for nearly a year. A provisional committee had been set up under the chairmanship of Jimmy Ford. It was originally scheduled to be held in London, metropolis of the world's greatest colonial power. But it appeared that the conference organizers had reckoned without their hosts.
The preparations came under the scrutiny of His Majesty's
MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVIET UNION
329
Labor Government, headed by Ramsay MacDonald, whose Colonial Secretary was the well known Fabian Socialist, Sydney Webb. They would not allow the conference to meet in London and at the last minute, delegates and organizers moved it to Hamburg, Germany. After some delay it opened on July 7, 1929.
There were seventeen regular delegates and three fraternal (nonvoting) delegates representing 20,000 workers in seven countries.
Besides the U.S. delegates, there were delegates from Jamaica, Nigeria, Gambia, the Gold Coast (now Ghana), the former German colonies of the Cameroons (now Cameroon) and South Africa. The South African delegate was a white trade unionist, an active fighter for black-white unity in the trade union movement, who was acting as a proxy for a black trade unionist whom the apartheid government had denied a passport.
The conference lasted three days. There was an interchange of experiences; reports by Ford, Padmore and Patterson (the last a fraternal delegate from the Anti-Imperialist League). A number of resolutions were adopted and a permanent organization formedthe International Trade Union Committee ofNegro Workers. An executive board was elected, including Ford, Hawkins, McClain and Padmore from the U.S.; Kouyate from French West Africa; Frank MacCaulay from Nigeria; Albert Nzula from South Africa; G. Small of Gambia; and G. Reid of Jamaica. Representatives from Haiti, Liberia and East Africa were to be added.
A monthly publication, The Negro Worker, wasestablished with Padmore as the editor. Headquarters of the organization were set up in Hamburg. Many black sailors came into that international port-the second !argest in Europe-and the organization's literature later was circulated there by these sailors throughout Africa.
The International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers was the first attempt to bring together black workers on a world scale. Though the founding conference was small, it was historically important, because it was the first time Black workers from Africa and the Americas had gotten together. It was a wedge into black Africa which hitherto, with the exception of South Africa, had been isolated from the world revolutionary movement.
330
BLACK BOLSHEVIK
The main eff ort of the organization was to promote trade union organization in Africa and the West Indies, linking them up with the world revolutionary trade union movement led by the RILU.
Black workers in the U.S. were to play a vanguard role in this endeavor because of their greater political and organizational experience, the result of their position as an oppressed people in the heartland of the most advanced capitalist country.
The Fifth Congress of the RILU met in the Dom Soyuzov (House of the Unions)-meeting place for most of the international congresses held in Moscow. I attended a number of sessions of the congress, along with delegates from fifty-five countries. As this was also the Tenth Anniversary of the RILU, business sessions were accompanied by a number of festivities.
Our Soviet hosts seemed determined to make it a memorable occasion.
Qne of the things I remember hest about the congress was the presence of a dozen or so veterans of the 1871 Paris Communenow old men in their seventies and eighties. As I remember, they wore uniforms-red caps, red-lined blue capes and short white canvas leggings. At the opening celebration, one of the men on seeing us rushed up to embrace me, welcoming us as "my brothers," fighting "for the world commune."
When the congress opened, the Moscow press published an article by RILU leader A. Lozovsky. He listed the main tasks of the congress:
Closer to the masses by means ofthe united front from below, combat Right opportunism and 'left' sectarianism, the actual leadership of the economic mass struggle of the proletariat, aid for the weakest sections of the world proletariat, closer contact of the colonial slaves with the working class of the capitalist countries and the proletariat of the Soviet Union. 23
The RILU had come to this approach through years of struggle which Lozovsky had summarized in an article published two weeks before the congress. 24 When the RIL U was form ed in 1920, the main errors came from "left" anarcho-syndicalist tendencies.
But in later years, especially after the Ninth Plenum of the ECCI and the Fourth RILU Congress in 1928, the main <langer came
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from the right. By 1930, open right opposition to the decisions of these meetings had been defeated and remaining right tendencies, though still very dangerous, were under attack.
Lozovsky wamed, however, that in the course of the fight against right opportunist tendencies and for the line of "class against class" and independent leadership of economic struggles, left-sectarian tendencies had cropped up, involving the <langer of alienation from the masses. This left tendency was one which lumped together the social-fascist (reformist) leaders and the workers who followed them. Not knowing how to work in reformist trade unions for the realization of the "united front from below," they shouted "leftist" slogans such as "permanent general strike," and "armed strikes," all of which remained mere words.
Finally, Lozovsky pointed to the RILU's weaknesses: The most important of these faults are: lagging behind the mass, and the disproportion between political influence and organizational consolidation of this influence .. .In spite of all this, the RILU has accomplished a great work in uniting, rallying and ideologically welding together the forces of the international revolutionary movement.25
The congress only lasted about ten days; I attended a number of sessions and had the chance to hear Lozovsky, Padmore and James Ford, who reported on the Hamburg Conference.
The conference broke down into working commissions; each national delegation met to discuss their respective problems. Af ter the congress adjoumed, the delegates were taken on tours of the Soviet Union, the Dnieperstroy Dam, the Stalingrad plants and other sights.
THE 1930 RESOLUTION
The Negro Commission of the CI convened in late August, under the chairmanship of Otto Kuusinen. Members of the commission included: Earl Browder, James Ford, Bill Dunne, William Weinstone, William Patterson, Mingulian (head of the Anglo-American Secretariat), Mikhailov (Cl rep to the U.S.
332
BLACK BOLSHEVIK
Party), Nasanov, myself and several Black students from the Lenin School and KUTVA.26
Kuusinen was well versed in the problems of the U.S. Party and its work among Blacks. Prior to the commission, and in preparation for it, he had talked on numerous occasions with N asano.v and myself as well as with leading U.S. comrades present in Moscow.
He had also received a report from Mikhailov who had recently returned from a visit to the U.S.
He immediately got down to the business at hand. As I remember, he commended the U.S. Party on its recent progress in Afro-American work and its struggle against white chauvinism.
This was reflected in the faet that the Party in the last year had recruited over 1,000 Blacks into its ranks.
However, he observed, despite this advance, the pre-convention discussion preceding the Seventh Convention of the Party and the con_:vention itself revealed that there was still much confusion on the question. This faet had been admitted by the leading American comrades themselves. Looking over the materials from the discussion on the question, it was quite clear, he noted, that the Party had not yet overcome all underestimation of the slogan of the right of self-determination. There were still large areas of unclarity on the question generally.
Kuusinen then proceeded to pinpoint these areas as: a false counterposing of the slogan of "social equality" and "the right of self-determination" and the lack of understanding of their interrelationship. The U.S. convention had raised, but not answered, the following questions: Should the right of self-determination be considered only a slogan of propaganda or one of action? Should separatist tendencies among Blacks be supported or opposed?
Should the area of Black concentration in the South be regarded as a colony or as an integral part of the national economy of the United States? Could a revolutionary uprising occur in the South independent of the revolutionary movement in the country as a whole?
Kuusinen suggested the discussion center on these areas of unclarity without excluding any other questions comrades might want to raise. After the discussion, a new resolution should be
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drafted addressing itself to these questions. I noticed the bitterness and acrimony that had characterized earlier meetings were absent from the discussions that followed. Freed from factional considerations, it was evident that everyone was honestly seeking clarity on the question.
After a few days of discussion, Kuusinen himself undertook to draft a resolution. Further discussion followed, but on the whole there was agreement. After a few minor changes it was adopted by the commission and eventually became the resolution of the American Party on the Black national question.
The resolution proceeded straight to the heart of the controversial issues. It reasserted the position of the Sixth Congress which defined U.S. Blacks as an oppressed nation. lmplicitly, it rejected the position of Sik and others with their one-sided emphasis on race as the primary factor in Black oppression.
Stressing instead the basic social and economic factors, it defined it as "a question of an oppressed nation which is in a peculiar and extraordinarily distressing situation of national oppression, not only in view of the problem of racial distinctions (marked differences in the color of skin, etc.), but above all, because of considerable social antagonisms (remnants of slavery)."
The resolution struck out at the tendency to counterpose the slogans of "social equality" and the "right of self-determination"
and dealt in detail with their interrelationship. In this respect, it pointed out the necessity of making a clear distinction between the north and the South in the application of these slogans-between the oppressed Black nation in the South and the national minority in the north.
Equality, the resolution contended, could only be obtained by the.continuous fight for abolition "of all forms of economic and political oppression of the Negroes, as well as their social exclusion, the insults perpetrated against them and their segregation. This is to be obtained by constant struggle by the white and Black workers for effective legal protection for Blacks in all fields, as well as actual enforcement of their equality and combating of every expression of Negrophobia. One of the First Communist slogans is: Death for Negro lynching!"27
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The demand for equality, the resolution said, "applies to all Negroes, in the North as well as in the South." In the north it embraced all, or almost all, the special needs of the masses of Blacks. This, however, was not so in respect to the South, where the situation of Blacks was that of an oppressed nation. Here, the resolution held, "the main Communist slogan must be: The right of self-determination of the Negroes in the Black Belt. ''28
In the South, the attainment of full equality involved the question of political power needed for its enforcement and this could be construed in no other manner than political power in the bands of the Black masses of peasants and workers of that region.
This in turn could only be achieved through the fulfillment of the main slogan of the right of self-determination.
This did not mean that the slogan of equality was not applicable to the South where Blacks suffered "the glaring lack of all equality." But here it applied to the most urgent partial or immediate demands of the Black masses. The two slogans were thus closely connected; the winning of self-determination in the South was the prerequisite for full equality in the north.
Anticipating the possibility of autonomous demands in the north, the resolution added:
The struggle for the equal rights of the Negroes does not in any way exclude recognition and support for the Negroes'
rights to their own special schools, government organs, etc., wherever the Negro masses put forward such national demands of their own accord.29
The resolution emphasized that -the question was a "national question in the U.S., not only in the South but also in the N orth."
It went on to say that "The struggle for equal rights for the Negroes is in faet one of the most important parts of the proletarian class struggle in the United States." White workers must: march at the head on this struggle. They must everywhere make a breach in the walls of segregation and "Jim-Crowism"
which have been set up by bourgeois slave-market morality ...
white workers must boldly jump at the throat of the 100
per cent bandits who strike a Negro in the face. This struggle will be the test of the real international solidarity of the American white workers. 30
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335
The resolution rejected the characterization of the Black Belt (the area of Black concentration in the South) as a colony. Such characterization, it contended, could only be based on "artificially construed analogies, and would create superfluous difficulties for the clarification of ideas." However, it warned, "It would be nonetheless false to try to make a fundamental distinction between the character of national oppression to which the colonial peoples are subjected and the yoke of other oppressed nations."
The resolution asserted that the Black Belt "is not in itself, either economically or politically, such a united whole as to warrant its being called a special colony of the United States." Nor on the other band, was it "such an integral part of the whole United States as any other part of the country."
For one thing, industrialization of the Black Belt, in contrast to most colonies, was not in conflict with the interests of the ruling U.S. imperialists. Therefore, expansion of industry in the Black Belt would "in no way bring a solution to the question of living conditions of the oppressed Negro majority, or to the agrarian question, which lies at the basis of the national question."
Industrialization in the area would only sharpen the contradietions in that it would bring forth "the most important driving force of the national revolution, the black working-class."31
The resolution lists three fundamental slogans of the liberation movement in the South: I) The right of self-determination-this slogan, however, can be carried out only in connection with two other basic slogans. 2) Revolutionary land reform. (The resolution pointed out that "landed property in the bands of white American exploiters is the most important basis of the entire system of national oppression.") The agrarian revolution must be completed by th� confiscation of the landed property of white landlords and capitalists in favor of the masses of Black farmers. 3) The establishment of the state unity of the Black Belt. The resolution called for the political and geographic unity of the Black Belt, that is, the bringing together of Black majority areas in one governmental administrative unit. This would include a significant white minority. The resolution assails the idea of a nation-state exclusively inha bited by Blacks or the transportation of Blacks to Africa.
BLACK BOLSHEVIK
Any such attempt "to isolate and transport the Negroes," the resolution warned, "would have the most damaging effect upon their interests. Above all, it would violate the right of the Negro farmers in the Black Belt not only to their present residences and their land, but also to the land owned by the white landlords and cultivated by Negro labor."
The right of self-determination means, according to the resolution, the unlimited right of Blacks in the region to exercise, if they so choose, governmental, legislative and judicial authority over the entire territory and to decide upon the relations between their territory and other nations, including the United States. This would mean the overthrow of the class rule of the U.S. imperialists upon whose power the local landlords and capitalists depended.
The right of self-determination, therefore, included the full freedom of separation for the Black nation. The resolution contended that "if it desires to separate it must be free to do so; but if it prefers to remain federated with the United States, it must also be free to do that."32 This, the resolution stated, was the correct meaning of self-determination. This right must be fought for as a "free democratic right" whether the U.S. was still a capitalist state or whether the proletarian state had been established.
But the right of self-determination must not be construed as identical with secession. The resolution quoted Lenin: We demand freedom of separation, real right to self-determination certainly not in arder to recommend "separation," but on the contrary, in arder to facilitate and accelerate the democratic rapprochement and unification of nations.33
The resolution noted that separatist trends in the Black movement should not be supported "indiscriminately and without criticism." There were reactionary separatist trends as well as national revolutionary trends. An example of the former, it was pointed out, was Garvey's African utopia of an isolated nationstate consisting of Blacks alone. Politically, this was a diversion from the struggle against U.S. imperialism.
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Even if the situation does not yet warrant the raising of the question of uprising, one should not limit oneself at present to propaganda for the demand: 'Right to self-determination,'
but should organize mass actions such as demonstrations, strikes, tax-boycott-movements, etc. 34
The resolution enjoined communists to stand in the forefront of the fight for national liberation and to fight for the hegemony of the Black proletariat in the national struggle. It outlined the Party's tasks in building revolutionary organizations in the South, organizing proletarian and peasant self-defense against the KKK
and other like r:eactionaries.
Final success in this struggle was possible only if supported by mass actions of Black and white proletarians throughout the country. "Only a victorious proletarian revolution will finally decide the agrarian question and the national question in the South of the United States, in the interests of the predominating mass of the Negro population in the country."35
It spoke directly against those who held that the Black rebellion was contingent upon the maturing of the revolutionary situation in the country as a whole or that it could only develop at the same pace as the overall class struggle. This assumption, widespread in the Party at the time, reflected an underestimation of the inherently explosive character of the liberation struggle in the South.
Lenin defined national rebellion as mass resistance to oppression. "Every aet of national oppression calls forth resistance," he wrote. And further that "the tendency of every aet of resistance on the part of the oppressed peoples is the national uprising. "36
The entire thrust of the resolution was to prepare the Party for any contingency:
Whether the rebellion of the Negroes is to be the outcome of a general revolutionary situation in the United States, whether it is to originate in the whirlpool of decisive fights for power by the working-class, for proletarian dictatorship, or whether on the contrary, the Negro rebellion will be the prelude of gigantic struggles for power by the American proletariat cannot be foretold now. But in either contingency, it is
338
BLACK BOLSHEVIK
essential for the Communist Party to make an energetic
beginning already now with the organization of joint mass
struggles of white and black workers against Negro oppression. This alone will enable us toget rid ofthe bourgeois white chauvinism which is polluting the ranks of the white workers of America, to overcome the dis trust of the Negro masses ...
and to win over to our side these millions ofNegroes as active fellow fighters in the struggle for the overthrow of bourgeois power throughout America. 37
INA
The time for my departure was approaching. I thought of Ina and the future of our marriage. She had been much in my mind these last days in Moscow as I reflected back on our three happy yeijrs together.
Despite my busy schedule at the school, we managed to spend most weekends together at her mother's apartment on Malaya Bronaya, a short distance from the school. It was Ina who had introduced me to the cultural lif e of the Soviet ca pital. Toget her we attended theaters, movies, concerts at the Conservatory of Music, and Moscow ballets and operas at the Bolshoi Theater. We often visited the Park of Culture and Rest, a wooded area across from the Kremlin along the Moscow River. It combined restaurants, theaters and amusements. Exhibitions of all sorts were held there as well. Other times we went boating on the Moscow River.
Ina had given up her ballet school studies a year or so before.
She was now attending the lnstitute of Foreign Languages where she was studying ];:nglish. She displayed a great aptitude for languages and her English was quite good. After only a year of study she had begun to read American literature.
Though not a member of the Communist Party, she was what they called a "non-Party social activist"; that is, sympathetic to the Party and actively supporting its aims of building socialism.
As the time for my departure drew near, we earnestly discussed the future of our marriage. We had agreed that ·it should not be terminated with my departure. Our idea was that we would
MY LAST YEAR IN THE SOVIET UNION
339
eventually get Ina to the States. Of course, I anticipated same difficulties, but to my mind they were not insurmountable. For ane thing, we were-by mutual choice-unencum bered by children.
Ina was a friendly, outgoing person and I felt she would have little trouble adjusting to a new environment and would be accepted by the Black community in any of the big urban centers of the north. I would undoubtedly be assigned to national Afro
American work at the center in New York City on my return.
After all, even professional revolutionaries were not homeless itinerants of the old Wobbly tradition. Many were married and had families, even in situations where both were full-time professional revolutionaries.
So as we saw it, our separation was to be temporary. We agreed that once settled in my future work, perhaps in a year or so, I would either send for Ina or return myself to bring her back to the States.
Just befare my departure, an incident occurred which forcibly brought home to me the contrast between the socialist world which I was leaving and the racist world which I was about to re-enter.
The incident occurred in Stalingrad, one of the new buge manufacturing cities of the Soviet Union. The location was Tractorstroi, a basic unit of the Five Y ear Plan with a capacity of 50,000 tractors a year. The plant stretched fif teen miles along the Volga River. They had brought over about three hundred and fifty highly skilled white mechanics from the United States, whotogether with their families-formed a small American colony.
They had their own restaurants supplied with the hest food, tobacco and wines that the Soviets could furnish.
Into this situation stepped a Iane Black toolmaker, Robert Robinson. A native of Jamaica and a naturalized U.S. citizen, Robinson was a graduate of Cass Technical High School in Detroit. He had come to Moscow under a on�-year contract to instruct young Soviet workers in the Stalingrad plant in the art of toolgrinding. He had formerly been employed by the Ford, Motor Company.
On the morning of his arrival in Stalingrad he was shown into the American dining room. He sat down at a table for breakfast
BLACK BOLSHEVIK
before starting work where he was immediately insulted, beaten up and thrown out of the restaurant by two of his white American fellow workers. This attempt to transplant American racism to Soviet soil was met with outrage. It was made a political issue of high order by the Soviet trade unions and Party organizations.
Factory meetings were called throughout the Soviet Union which denounced this crime and expressed the outrage of Soviet workers. They adopted resolutions which were sent to Tractorstroi. The slogan of the day became, "American technique yes!
American race prejudice no!" It was given the widest publicity; the culprits were arrested immediately, not for assault and battery but for white chauvinsim, a social crime and therefore far more serious.
A mass public trial, with delegations sent from factories all over the country, was held. The white technicians were sentenced to two years imprisonment which was commuted to deportation to the U n1ted States.
Pravda, Izvestia and all of the provincial papers carried editorials summing up the lessons of the trial. In the build_ing up of our industries, they said, we expected many foreign workers to come to the country on contract to help fulfill the Five Year Plan. They would inevitably bring with them their prejudices from the capitalist world. Thus it was necessary for the Soviet workers to maintain vigilance against all forms of racism and nationalism which must be sternly rebuffed.
Robinson himself remained in the Soviet Union where he became a citizen and eventually an engineer. Later he was a deputy to the Moscow Soviets.
I remember the Robinson incident well. At the time it occurred, some of us from the school were in a restaurant. A group of Russians seated near us pointed to us and exchanged comments.
"Y ou heard about that shameful thing that happened at Tractorstoi?"
Our very presence reminded them of the incident. People were very sympathetic to us.
The incident was a dramatic affirmation by Soviet workers of their country's position on the question of race prejudice.
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Just a few days later, Ina, her mother and fellow students from the school accompanied me down to the White Russian Station, where I entrained for Berlin. From there, after a short stopover, I journeyed to Paris and then embarked at LeHavre for home.
The long voyage gave me pien ty of time for reflection on my stay in the Soviet Union. I thought of how I would put into practice some of the lessons learned during my four-and-a-half-year stay there.
The initial theoretical framework had been set up-now began the difficult task of testing it in practice. How would we build a national revolutionary movement of Blacks in close alliance with the revolutionary working class movement? What would be the problems in organizing Blacks? What resistance to the Cl position would I find within the Party's ranks? These were but a few of the questions that passed through my mind as I headed home.
