Political Views of Paul Robeson - Possible Challenge To Soviet Policies

Possible Challenge To Soviet Policies

Robert Robinson, an African American toolmaker who had lived in the USSR since 1930 and who had met Robeson in the 1940s, wrote in his autobiography "Black on Red: My 44 Years Inside the Soviet Union," as well as stated in a 1980's interview with Martin Duberman, that he recalled rumors during the early 1960s that Robeson had an "unpleasant confrontation" with Khrushchev about antisemitism. Historian Duberman found inconsistencies with Robinson's dates but posits that it involves an issue of "crucial if clouded importance" that may shed light on Robeson's subsequent suicide attempt in Moscow, March 1961 as well as his panic attack while passing the Soviet Embassy in London, September 1961 prior to his lengthy hospitalization at the Priory for mental illness.

Robinson had long since decided that Robeson was oblivious to the harsh Soviet realities, as he had refused Robinson's multiple appeals for assistance at getting out of the U.S.S.R. Robinson still recorded his astonishment when during the ball bearing factory concert (Robinson gives the date as 1961, but photographic evidence given by Duberman points to 1960), Robeson included "a mournful song out of the Jewish tradition, that decried their persecution through the centuries." Singing in Yiddish, with such a "cry in his voice," such a seeming "pleas to end the beating, berating and killing of Jews," that he concluded that Robeson had made a decisive choice to protest Soviet antisemitism. Robinson also recalls conversing with Robeson's interpreter and learning that he had been singing the Jewish songs at other appearances including major concert venues.

Robinson maintained having heard a rumor from five different people, none of whom knew each other and all of whom were "officials within the party structure." Robeson purportedly asked Khrushchev if stories in the Western press about the purges of Jews and widespread institutionalized antisemitism were true. And Khrushchev had purportedly blown up at him, accusing Robeson of trying to meddle in party affairs. Robinson also claimed to "have never heard his records again broadcast regularly" on radio Moscow and "never read another word about him in the press." Robeson would never return to the Soviet Union after his aforementioned five month hospitalization.