From googles cached archives: "Other well-meaning and intelligent people visited the Soviet Union, among them the American singer, actor and human rights advocate Paul Robeson. In an interview that he gave in Moscow to a correspondent for New York's Daily Worker, Robeson is reported as saying that wherever he turned in Moscow he had found happiness and "bounding life, the feeling of safety and abundance of freedom." Commenting on recent trials and executions, Robeson said that from what he had seen of the workings of the Soviet Government, "anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot!" 1
I also remember a Bill Buckley column where he said that a dissident went to Robeson for help and he betrayed him to the NKVD. A whole lot worse the Kazan talking to a congressional committee IMHO.
Gag....
While there is no excuse for the excusing of genocide, two things must be mentioned regarding Robeson: Firstly -- that he was a giant among men intellectually, athletically, and talentwise. Secondly -- because he was a black man (and a very dark-skinned black man at that), he was disrespected and stifled in a society that in word, but not deed, rewarded those with the aforementioned qualities.
Traveling to Soviet villages -- where he experienced no racism and where everyone was oppressed by the government for the sake of supposed equality -- was enough to make him turn his back on still-segregation filled America.