Joseph Starobin

Starobin c. 1938

Joseph Robert Starobin (December 19, 1913 - November 6, 1976) was an American journalist and Communist Party member.

Biography

Starobin attended City College of New York. ^[1] He was politically active while at the College, serving as a vice president of the Social Problems Club and advocating for the removal of President Frederick B. Robinson. ^[2]

Starobin began his career as a chemist before becoming more involved in Communist activism. ^[3] During the Moscow Trials, Starobin collaborated with James Wechsler on a pamphlet explaining the Party's position on the trials but it was never finished since the Party urged them to write an attack on Trotsky instead. ^[4] Eventually, Starobin rose to become the foreign editor of the Daily Worker , before being replaced by Joseph Clark. ^[5] In 1953, Starobin spent 30 days in China, as the first American journalist to travel past the so-called "bamboo curtain". ^[6] He described this trip in his 1956 book Paris to Peking. ^[7] His passport was revoked in August 1953 by the State Department. ^[8]

That same year, Starobin began advocating for the Communist Party to distance itself from the Soviet Union. ^[9] He eventually broke with the Communist Party, though the reasons for his departure were covered up by the Party because of his prominence as a writer and editor of Party publications. ^[10] On August 24, 1956, Starobin published an editorial in The Nation, arguing that the Communist Party was no longer a viable party and arguing for a new socialist movement. ^[11] Due to these views, he was criticized, along with John Gates, by William Z. Foster. ^[12] Earlier in the 1950s, Foster had tried to expel Starobin and Gates from the Party because they disagreed with his assessment that a war between capitalist and Communist countries was inevitable. ^[13] In December 1956, Starobin was one of eighty members of the Left invited by A.J. Muste to discuss the future of the contemporary socialist movement. ^[5] These meetings eventually led to the creation of the American Forum for Socialist Education, which Starobin sponsored. ^[14]

During the 1960s, Starobin became a senior fellow at the Russian Institute of Columbia University. ^[15] Starobin and his wife moved from New York City in 1964 to Hancock, New York, where they lived in a converted 19th century barn that the couple operated as a skiing lodge. ^[16]

Starobin continued to be politically active through the 1970s. He advocated for a negotiated peace settlement to the Vietnam War, sending a memorandum to J. William Fulbright about his discussions with North Vietnamese contacts. ^[17] He met twice with Xuan Thuy, who he had first met during his 1953 visit to Hanoi. ^[18] Starobin also met with Henry Kissinger, who was not responsive to Starobin's attempts at negotiation. ^[19]

Starobin's son Robert Starobin became a historian of American slavery. ^[20] Like his father, Robert Starobin was involved in left-wing politics and was a supporter of the Black Panthers. ^[21] Joseph and Robert Starobin's papers are held together at Stanford University's Green Library. ^[22]

Bibliography

• Paris to Peking (1955)
• American Communism in Crisis, 1943-1957 (1975)

References

1. Philipson, Ilene J. (1993). Ethel Rosenberg: Beyond the Myths. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. p. 199. ISBN   0813519179.
2. "More Suspensions at College Seen". The Buffalo Times. October 29, 1932. p. 2.
3. Wechsler, James (1985). The Age of Suspicion. New York: Primus. p. 105. ISBN   0917657381.
4. Kutulas, Judy (1995). The long war: the intellectual people's front and anti-Stalinism, 1930-1940. Duke University Press. p. 107. ISBN   9780822315247.
5. Isserman, Maurice (1993). If I Had a Hammer: The death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. p. 156. ISBN   0252063384.
6. Greenfield, Carl O. (July 8, 1954). "Other Side of Bamboo Curtain: Daily Worker Writer Tells of Indo-Reds". Ventura County Star. p. 1.
7. Wilkerson, Doxey A. (March 1956). "World Journey". Masses & Mainstream. 9 (2): 53.
8. Caute, David (1978). The great fear: The anti-Communist purge under Truman and Eisenhower. Simon and Schuster. p. 247.
9. Sorin, Gerald (2012). Howard Fast: Life and Literature in the Left Lane. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 320. ISBN   9780253007278.
10. LeRoy, Gaylord C. (1995). Toward a Reconstituted Left: A New Stage in Marxism. New Stage Press. p. 114. ISBN   0964652102.
11. Weiss, Max (November 1956). "Notes of the Month". Political Affairs. 35 (11): 6.
12. Shannon, David A. (1959). The decline of American Communism: A history of the Communist Party of the United States since 1945. Harcourt, Brace and Company. p. 307.
13. Isserman, Maurice (1982). Which side were you on? : The American Communist Party during the Second World War. Wesleyan University Press. p. 248. ISBN   0819550590.
14. Abrahams, Samuel (May 23, 1957). "Commies in New Sleight of Hand Move". Brooklyn Daily. p. 5.
15. Jaffe, Philip J. (1975). The rise and fall of American Communism. New York: Horizon Press. p. 195. ISBN   0818016043.
16. "Things Happen When Stars in Country Sky Outshine Lights of Broadway". The Portsmouth Herald. January 29, 1964. p. 22.
17. "Senator Raps Plan for Peace". New Castle News. November 20, 1969. p. 2.
18. Salisbury, Harrison E. (November 23, 1969). "Hanoi Wants Private Peace Talks With U.S." Independent. p. 15.
19. Frankel, Max (October 8, 1969). "Viet Breakthrough Seen, But White House Still Mum". Independent. p. 11.
20. Bell, Daniel; Kazin, Michael (2018). Marxian Socialism in the United States. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. pp. xxvii. ISBN   978-1-5017-2211-0.
21. Heineman, Kenneth J. (2001). Put Your Bodies Upon the Wheels: Student Revolt in the 1960s. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. p. 97. ISBN   1566633516.
22. "Guide to the Joseph R. Starobin and Robert S. Starobin Papers, 1945-1976 M0675". oac.cdlib.org. Retrieved 2025-01-24.