The New York Times / September 1, 2007 This Just In: Pete Seeger Denounced Stalin Over a Decade Ago By DANIEL J. WAKIN
A front-page article in The New York Sun yesterday trumpeted what seemed to be a striking fact: Pete Seeger, the quintessential leftist balladeer and a former Communist, had denounced Stalinism. The article centered on a letter from Mr. Seeger to the writer, Ron Radosh, a historian and adjunct senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute [and a former leftist, now a David Horowitz type]. "I think you're right I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in U.S.S.R.," Mr. Seeger wrote. He also included the lyrics to a song he wrote several months ago called the "Big Joe Blues": He ruled with an iron hand. He put an end to the dreams Of so many in every land. He had a chance to make A brand new start for the human race. Instead he set it back Right in the same nasty place. Mr. Radosh, who once studied banjo with Mr. Seeger [!!], said in an interview that he had idolized him, but he has become a dogged critic of Mr. Seeger's politics. Mr. Radosh wrote that he was "deeply moved" that the singer, "now in his late 80s, had decided to acknowledge what had been his major blind spot opposing social injustice in America while supporting the most tyrannical of regimes abroad." But in fact, Mr. Seeger, 87, made such statements years ago, at least as early as his 1993 book, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" In the book, he said in a 1995 interview with The New York Times Magazine, he had apologized "for following the party line so slavishly, for not seeing that Stalin was a supremely cruel misleader." But Mr. Radosh said that Mr. Seeger's comments before had been little noticed and had never gone as far. And Mr. Seeger had never written a song condemning Stalin until now, Mr. Radosh said. Mr. Radosh said that a public renunciation of Stalin was important because Mr. Seeger had made a powerful impact on the culture. "He's a cultural figure who's so identified with that, and is breaking with tradition," Mr. Radosh added. If anything, the interest in Mr. Seeger's views on the Soviet Union shows the durability of cold war ideological debates. But Mr. Seeger, speaking by telephone from his home in Beacon, N.Y., seemed mildly amused by the matter. "I certainly should apologize for saying that Stalin was a hard driver rather than a very cruel leader," he said. "I don't speak out about a lot of things. I don't talk about slavery. A lot of white people in America could apologize for stealing land from the Indians and enslaving Africans. Europe could apologize for worldwide conquest. Mongolia could apologize for Genghis Khan. But I think the thing to do is look ahead." When a documentary filmmaker asked Mr. Seeger to suggest a critic of his views, he suggested Mr. Radosh. But the critical comments were not included in the movie. Mr. Radosh took note of that in his June review of the documentary in The Sun. The film, he wrote, had whitewashed Mr. Seeger's silence on Communist crimes. Mr. Seeger said he wrote Mr. Radosh after that to apologize for the exclusion of the critical remarks. In the letter, which Mr. Radosh provided along with the lyrics, Mr. Seeger gives more insight into his cold war thinking. Mr. Seeger said he had concentrated on showing what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had accomplished "without using guns." "But I still hoped that someone like Khrushchev or Gorbachev could open things up," he writes. "But I underestimated (and probably still do) how the majority of the human race has faith in violence." The "basic mistake," he adds, was "Lenin's faith in discipline." He closes warmly: "Well, you stay well. Keep on." In the interview Mr. Seeger said Mr. Radosh had made a career out of exposing the crimes of Soviet Communism. He said the focus on his own past was "kind of funny." "I'm sure," he added, "there are more constructive things he could do with his life." Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company -- Jim Devine / "In the years since the phrase became a cliché, I have received any number of compliments for my supposed ability to 'think outside the box.' Actually, it has been a struggle for me to perceive just what these 'boxes' were — why they were there, why other people regarded them as important, where their borderlines might be, how to live safely within and without them." -- Tim Page (THE NEW YORKER, August 20, 2007).
