TO RUSSIA WITH LOVE

This is a second in a row commemorative entry. Paul Robeson was born on April 9, 1898. He would have been 115 years of age, had he physically lived that long.

The great American Paul Robeson (1898-1976), one of the Spirit of 1776 breed, was a man of many talents, a supremely controversial individual and a bona fide genius. For this reason, I strongly advise my reader to learn more about this man from all available sources, as he is well worth the effort. Meantime, aside from a brief Russian biographical sketch of him, I shall limit myself to just a few notes of my own, inadequate for a general portrait, but sufficient as a bait for the reader.

The name of Paul Robeson is revered in Russia, but it must be extremely unfair and misleading to attribute this admiration solely to Robeson’s famous leftist leanings and his love for the USSR, as certain American biographers do. Russia has shown a great appreciation of genius, with no regard for political correctness. In the bitterest months of World War II, as the Nazi German aggressors were ravaging the Russian land, the music of Richard Wagner could be heard almost every day in the Kremlin, as Stalin was a great admirer of Wagner, and Wagner’s large portrait was as ever, including today, adorning the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory of Music, alongside other German geniuses. All other great German composers and persons of genius have never ceased to be in the highest esteem, war or no war. It’s just that Russia has always loved genius, and no matter what, in sickness and in health, always will.

By the same token, Paul Robeson was honored as a genius, first and foremost. He was indeed a great artist (singer, actor of film and stage, and also a writer, an outstanding intellectual, and many other things). It is for all these things, plus, of course, his great love for Russia, that he is so greatly honored there. One might add though, that Russia is not unique in her admiration for Robeson. Many other countries have paid tribute to his genius. It goes without saying that genius transcends the confines of his own nation.

I remember my mother telling me about his great performance as Othello at the Royal Shakespeare Theater at Stratford-upon-Avon, which she attended in 1959 during her stay in England. Paul Robeson was a big name in England at the time, and deservedly so. He was also a frequent visitor to many other countries of the world, greeted everywhere as a phenomenon of the first magnitude. Even in his native America, where, in his lifetime, his status was that of a pariah, recognition eventually was restored to him, although, regrettably, general public still does not seem to know his name.

As a curiosity, I will now present a short biography of Robeson, from an official Russian source, which I translated from the original Russian. In addition to showing the special Russian angle, it provides the reader with some general information about this exceptional individual.---

The singer, film and stage actor, athlete, lawyer, and champion of the rights of Negroes, Paul Robeson was born on 9 April, 1898, in Princeton, NJ, in the family of a priest and a teacher. Having finished high school, he became only the third black student in the history of Rutgers College. He quickly became popular in that college, as one of the best students, and as a brilliant football player.

He was the first Negro graduate student at Columbia University Law School, from which he graduated with honors in 1923, joining a law firm, but not for long, settling on a different career: he became an actor.

He received world recognition in the title role in Shakespeare’s Othello, first in London in 1930 and then in 1943 on Broadway, in New York.

With a perfect pitch and a bass baritone of an extraordinary power and expressiveness, he liked to sing folk songs and Negro spirituals. In 1925 he held his first solo concert with a tremendous success, captivating the audience with his sincerity, fullness of feeling, and his natural and unaffected performing style.

After acquiring fame as a singer, he acquired fame as an actor. In the 1930’s and early 1940’s, he starred in such popular films as The Emperor Jones, Song of Freedom, King Solomon’s Mines, The Proud Valley, and Tales of Manhattan.

In 1931, he met in New York with the genius director Sergei Eisenstein, and upon his invitation first came to the USSR in 1932.

In 1936-1937, Robeson went with concerts in Spain. “This trip,” he wrote, “was a turning point in my life... I realized that the struggle against fascism must be our main and most important thing.” Returning home, he gave lectures about his trips to Spain and the Soviet Union, continued his concert activity, distinguished by its social urgency. His repertoire was extensive: he sang in twenty-five languages successfully rendering the national color of each song.

Robeson was one of the organizers of assistance to the USSR in its war against Nazi Germany, calling for a speedy opening of the second front. In 1943, for his outstanding achievements in social activities, Robeson was awarded the Abraham Lincoln Medal. In 1944, he received the Medal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In 1949, Robeson, a staunch supporter of peaceful coexistence between the US and the USSR, again visited our country.

In 1950 at the height of McCarthyism, the Commission on Un-American Activities deprived Robeson of the right to travel abroad on tour, because “his activities in recent years have shown that he is first an advocate of communist ideas and only then a singer.” In the same year Robeson was awarded the International Peace Prize for his Songs of Peace, and was elected a member of the World Peace Council.

In 1953 he became the laureate of the International Stalin Prize for Peace Among Peoples. In 1958, he was awarded the title of honorary professor of Moscow Conservatory. In 1960 he gave concerts in New Zealand and Australia. After 1963 he withdrew from public appearances, and on January 23, 1976, the genius singer died.