Paul Robeson Jr, Trotskyites and Anti-Stalinism

The following text is a speech delivered by Professor Grover Furr, Professor of Medieval English literature at Montclair State University in New Jersey, during an online session (Watch the speech on YouTube)  organized by the Institute for the Critical Study of Society, at the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library in Oakland, California, on Sunday 31 March. 

 

(Warning: Not for faint-hearted Trotskyites) 

Grover Furr — Paul Robeson's Meeting with Itzik Fefer, June 1949

By Grover Furr

In 1981 Paul Robeson’s son, Paul Robeson Jr, claimed that his father had told him privately that in June 1949 he, Paul Sr, learned about the persecution of some prominent Jews in the Soviet Union, but had never publicly revealed this fact and had asked his son to promise not to reveal it during his, Paul Sr’s, lifetime. In later years Paul Jr repeatedly confirmed this story. In the present article I check this story against the evidence that is now available. I conclude that Paul Jr’s story is untrue.