County Youth Athletic Award Named After Unapologetic Stalinist

A few weeks ago I opened my mail to find a letter from King County. It turns out that since two of my boys participate in Little League they are eligible to apply for a King County Sports/Academics Award. My interest turned to dismay when I saw for whom the Award was named, Paul Robeson.

Paul Robeson was without a question a talented athlete, an incredible singer and a civil rights visionary, well ahead of his time. He was a brilliant law student who overcame formidable obstacles. But amongst students of history, Paul Robeson is as well known for these notable acheivments as he is for his sedition. During the height of the Cold War, Paul Robeson was an unapologetic Communist. He advocated for and admired Joseph Stalin and made frequent trips to the USSR in the midst of the Stalinist purges.

Not only was Robeson aware of the mass murder and forced starvation but he took an active role in misleading the world about the extent of Stalin's atrocities.

One of the most famous and well documented of such incidents was Robeson's 1949 Moscow meeting with Jewish poet & writer Itzik Feffer. At the time Feffer had been imprisoned for three years and after he was cleaned up he was brought to Robeson at his hotel. No matter how well the Communists tried to present Feffer, they could not hide the fact that all of Feffer's fingernails were missing, having been previously ripped out.

Feffer indicated to Robeson that the hotel room was bugged. Frantically writing on note paper Feffer literally begged for his life. He implored Robeson to tell the American people the truth about the Soviet Union, about the murders, the purges, the forced starvation and the gulag. Feffer communicated to Robeson that all of Robeson's Jewish acquaintances had been murdered on Stalin's orders. He made hand motions of his finger across his neck indicating that he (Robeson) would be killed if Feffer didn't publicly demand his safety.

After returning to the United States, Robeson calmly told reporters that "I heard no word about" anti-Semitism. Feffer was soon after murdered on orders from Joseph Stalin.

Robeson traveled the world denouncing the United States and praising Stalin's Russia. His unconditional support of Communism bordered with betrayal of humanity, as the story of Itzik Feffer shows.

It was in appreciation of this unwavering support that in 1952 Joseph Stalin awarded him the Stalin Peace Prize, which Robeson proudly accepted.

Robeson also wrote a tribute to Joseph Stalin in April, 1953 shortly after Stalin's death entitled "To You Beloved Comrade".

MORE ABOUT PAUL ROBESEON
Robeson Described Stalin's "constitution" in 1936 as "an expression of democracy, broader in scope and loftier in principle than ever before expressed." This was after it had been disclosed that Stalin had deliberately caused the starvation deaths by starvation of millions of people in the Ukraine.

* Supported the Stalin-Hitler pact and the brutal Soviet and Nazi invasion of Poland, which started World War II.

* Called the Soviet invasion of peaceful and tiny Finland "defensive."

* Won the so-called Stalin Peace Prize in 1952.

* Denounced the murderously suppressed Hungarian uprising as the work of the "same sort of people who overthrew the Spanish Republican government," meaning the revolutionaries were fascists.

* Recalled, at a 1953 tribute, seeing Stalin, the man responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of Russians and other people, enter a box at the Bolshoi Theater in 1937: "I remember the tears began to quietly flow and I too smiled and waved. Here was clearly a man who seemed to embrace all. So kindly - I can never forget that warm feeling of kindliness and also a feeling of sureness. Here was one who was wise and good - the world and especially the socialist world was fortunate indeed to have his daily guidance."
This, Beichman notes, "was at the height of the infamous Moscow Trials."

* Claimed about the Moscow show trial frame-ups and executions, in an interview with the Communist Daily Worker: "From what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot."

* Rejoiced in the Great Terror: "It is the [Soviet] government's duty to put down any opposition to this really free society with a firm hand, and I hope they will always do it, for I already regard myself at home here [in Moscow]. ... It is obvious that there is no terror here, that all the masses of every race are contented and support their government."

* Bragged in 1949: "I am truly happy that I am able to travel from time to time to the U.S.S.R. - the country I love above all. I always have been, I am now and will always be a loyal friend of the Soviet Union."

Jarvis Tyner, executive vice chairman of Communist Party USA, was quoted in the People's Weekly World: "This [The Robeson Stamp] is a great victory" because "every schoolchild will be told about Paul Robeson," who "embraced all the advanced ideas of the Communist Party USA, the need for a socialist transformation of society"

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