Joseph Starobin

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

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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 [7] His passport was revoked in August 1953 by the State Department.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

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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. 1 2 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.
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