What’s next, a stamp honoring Julius Rosenberg? by Roger Kimball

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Dec 02, 2003 08:08 AM

What’s next, a stamp honoring Julius Rosenberg?

by Roger Kimball

So, the U.S. Postal service has gotten around to honoring Paul Robeson. According to The Washington Post, early in 2004 the 27th stamp in the Black Heritage series will be released depicting Robeson, the black actor, singer, athlete, and, not incidentally, the vocal and unrepentant Stalinist.

In 1945, Robeson told The Daily Worker that

If the United States and the United Nations truly want peace and security let them fulfill the hopes of the common people everywhere -- let them work together to accomplish on a worldwide scale, precisely the kind of democratic association of free people which characterizes the Soviet Union today."

Robeson won the Stalin Peace Prize in 1952, and when Stalin died the following year he delivered a heartfelt eulogy for the wolrld’s greats mass murderer, recalling his first glimpse of "the great Stalin" in Moscow in 1937:

Suddenly, everyone stood up, began to applaud, to cheer, to smile. The children waved. In a box to the right --smiling and applauding back to the audience -- stood the great Stalin.
I remember that the tears began to 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. I lifted high my son Pauli to wave to this world leader, and his leader.

(For more of Robeson’s sentimentalities on Stalin, see click here.)

As Andrew Sullivan notes, "Robeson was a full-fledged apologist for the Stalinist terror and even refused to condemn Stalin’s pact with Hitler. If he’d been a staunch supporter of Hitler and backed the Fuhrer in the pact, do you think we’d be honoring him today? Or is a Father Coughlin stamp coming out soon?" Maybe not, but how about an Algir Hiss stamp? I wouldn;t be against it. "No wonder," as Sullivan said, that Walter Duranty "kept his Pulitzer."