Gus Hall

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Gus Hall (1954)
Hall's signature

Gus Hall (born October 8, 1910 in Cherry Township , Minnesota as Arvo Kustaa Hallberg (also: Arvo Kusta Halberg ); † October 13, 2000 in New York City ; other alternative names : John Hollberg , Gaspar Hall , Arvie Hallbert ) was a US -American leaders of the Communist party USA (CPUSA). From 1959 to seven months before his death he was its general secretary. With a term of office of over 40 years, he is the longest-serving general secretary in the history of the officially communist parties. Within the CPUSA, he represented strong ties to the Soviet Union . Hall was a CPUSA presidential candidate in the 1972 , 1976 , 1980 and 1984 presidential elections .

Life

Origin and youth

Hall was the fifth of ten children of Finnish immigrants from the Lapua area and was born in the Mesabi Range , a rural region of northeast Minnesota. This mining region was considered to be a center of Finnish immigrants with some radical political views. He never lost the Finnish accent of his homeland. Even his parents Matt, a miner , and Susannah Hallberg were communists, members of the union Industrial Workers of the World and came from loud Hall families who had as family members for generations radicals and revolutionaries. In the USA, her house also served as an overnight stop for passing communists. His father helped found the CPUSA in 1919. For this reason, Matt Hallberg was on a black list set (blacklist), which meant for him that he had taken as a miner all chances for employment. As a result of this forced unemployment, the family always went hungry, according to Hall. At the age of 15 he left school after eighth grade and worked as a lumberjack in northwest Minnesota to help his parents financially. In 1927, at the age of 17, Hall joined the CPUSA's youth organization, the Young Communist League (YCL), probably because of an advertisement from his father , and he became its organizer for the northern Midwest within a year.

Beginning political career

From 1931 to 1933 Hall was able to study at the international Lenin School in Moscow after an internal selection by the CPUSA . There he is said to have learned guerrilla tactics as well as possible uses of sabotage . After his return to Minnesota, Hallberg took part in a strike organized by the Trotskyist Farrell Dobbs , whereupon he - like his father - was blacklisted and had to change his name because he no longer saw any possibility of making money under his old name . As a new name he chose Gus Hall, which was based quite heavily on his second name Kustaa and his last name Halberg. From 1935 onwards he was also legally confirmed. In 1934 he spent a total of six months in prison for causing rioting during a truck driver strike in Minneapolis . At that time, following his recruitment by union leader John L. Lewis, he was active in the CIO , primarily in Warren and Niles , two steel centers in northern Ohio . Hall had the greatest success of his union career in 1937 when he was co-organizer of the Little Steel Strike . This strike was directed against the smaller steel producers ("little steel") who, unlike their larger competitors, did not want to sign a collective agreement with the unions. Hall was arrested as a suspect after an explosives attack on Republic Steel , a major opponent of the strike, and pleaded guilty to the illegal possession and transportation of explosives, a fine of $ 500 for which he was fined. Hall ran, already as a full-time official of the CPUSA, under the name Arvo Gus Halberg as a candidate of the CPUSA for a seat on the city ​​council of Youngstown , Ohio, and for the office of governor of Ohio. After that election, Hall was sentenced to 90 days in prison for election fraud. In 1942 he helped found the United Steelworkers , which developed into one of the largest industrial unions in North America by the time he died.

Post-war years and rise to the top of the CPUSA

When the US entered World War II, Hall interrupted his active party and union career to volunteer for military service in the US Navy . He allegedly took this step because he saw himself as an anti-fascist and wanted to prove this in an active fight against fascism . The fact that the CPUSA did not rate this negatively was because it had spoken out in favor of patriotism since the attack on Pearl Harbor . Since the beginning of the German-Soviet War in June 1941 and the resulting termination of the Hitler-Stalin Pact by the National Socialists , the Comintern again advocated the popular front idea , since the USSR joined the anti-Hitler coalition . Hall was stationed in Guam and worked as a mechanic . In 1944, while he was still serving in the war, he was elected to the CPUSA's National Committee in absentia . In 1946 he was honorably discharged and in the same year appointed to the National Executive Board , the next higher party body, as one of several young veterans . This succeeded after the party experienced another shift to the left, which isolated its then chairman Earl Browder and led to his disempowerment.

Gus Hall's 1954 police photos

Twelve Communist Party leaders were indicted on July 22, 1948 under the Alien Registration Act , better known as the Smith Act . The case against William Z. Foster , who had heart disease , was severed. The main trial began on January 17, 1949 and lasted over nine months. Defendants Eugene Dennis , Henry Winston, John Williamson, Jacob Stachel, Gus Hall, Benjamin Davis, John Gates, Irving Potash, Gil Green and Carl Winter were found guilty of conspiracy against the government and sentenced to five years' imprisonment and a $ 10,000 fine sentenced. As a highly decorated soldier, Robert G. Thompson received two years less imprisonment. When the Supreme Court upheld the Smith Act by 6-2 votes on June 4, 1951, Gus Hall, Henry Winston, Gilbert Green, and Robert G. Thompson did not serve their sentences in early July (the party lost $ 80,000 bail). Hall, who was elected to the second highest office in the party in 1950 and was also acting general secretary, allegedly tried to flee to Moscow, but was picked up by police in Mexico on October 8, 1951 and handed over to the FBI at the border near Nuevo Laredo . Dorothy Healey, who claims to have warned Hall against fleeing to Mexico, was surprised that Hall ignored this hint. Thompson, who was caught in California, and Hall received an additional three-year sentence, serving in Leavenworth Federal Prison , a maximum-security prison in Kansas , with Machine Gun Kelly in his cell neighbor . After his release, he traveled through the USA in 1959, ostensibly as a vacationer, in order to prepare for his election as general secretary and thus the removal of Eugene Dennis from office. Hall was not considered a favorite for this post for a long time, although he was short-term Secretary General in the early 1950s when Dennis was imprisoned.

In 1959, after his release, Hall actually succeeded in advancing to general secretary of the CPUSA in a campaign candidate against his former mentor William Z. Foster , which was unusual for communist parties . Hall stated that the goal for his time as general secretary was to democratize the party. Hall held this office until his abolition; from 1962 until a few months before his death, he also represented the organization as party chairman . During his more than 40 years in office as general secretary or chairman, however, he never succeeded in significantly increasing the political influence of his party at the national level; the party instead shrank but could be held together. At the beginning of his tenure as general secretary Hall tried in the 1960s to get the CPUSA to engage in non-violent protests and to connect with the student protests. In the second point he was to prove unsuccessful, while with the help of the first the fight against the continuation of the McCarthy era succeeded. In the 1964 presidential election , the party supported Lyndon B. Johnson's campaign to prevent Conservative Senator Barry Goldwater from winning .

Presidential candidacy and end of political career

Hall's results in his presidential candidacy
Election year Vice candidate Votes received (absolute) Votes received (%)
1972 Jarvis Tyner 25,597 0.03%
1976 Jarvis Tyner 58,709 0.07%
1980 Angela Davis 44,933 0.05%
1984 Angela Davis 36,386 0.04%

In 1972, the CPUSA withdrew support from the Democratic Party in the presidential election because it nominated its own candidate, Hall, who wanted to establish the CPUSA in the US party system. This type of change in strategy had last happened in 1948, when the party officially trusted the United States Progressive Party's presidential candidate , Henry Agard Wallace . Hall was the first candidate for the Communist Party to run in almost all states since Earl Browder in 1940. In 1968, Charlene Mitchell ran , but only in two states. Hall won very few votes because communist ideas never became very popular in the United States. In addition, in some states the presidential candidates had to swear not to be a member of the CPUSA in order to be allowed to vote, which was impossible for their chairman for obvious reasons.

When he ran for the first time, he received only 0.03% of the vote, his lowest result when he ran 4 times. Under the influence of the Watergate affair and the associated protest votes for small parties, he achieved his best result in his second presidential candidacy in 1976 with 58,709 (0.07%) votes. With this successful result for him, he reached eighth place among the candidates. For all of his election campaigns, Hall chose the motto People before Profits (in German: Menschen vor Profiten ). As reasons for his candidacy, he cited the attempt to establish the CPUSA in the American political public, and they should also express a symbolic protest. He did not succeed in establishing himself in the party system, as the number of members and public presence declined during his term of office and the two major parties were never endangered.

Gus Hall signing a book in 1984

In his two presidential candidacies during the 1980s, he ran together with Angela Davis , who was expelled from the party in 1992 because she no longer fully represented Hall's line and in the Committee of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, which she co-founded, did not follow Hall's neo-Stalinist course wanted to continue to follow. After the 1984 election, the CPUSA did not nominate any more candidates for presidential elections, nor did it support any other parties, so Hall has remained the CPUSA's last presidential candidate to this day. The 1980s were a politically very difficult decade because one of his closest confidants, for Hall Morris Childs , who had in the meantime the second most important man of the party and ran on the financing by the CPSU, as many years in 1980 FBI - informant proved. Although the government accepted Childs into a protection program for exposed agents and Childs was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1987 , Hall denied that Childs was an agent. In addition, Henry Winston , his African-American vice chairman, died in 1986 and his leadership suffered from unrest in the black party base, which would have preferred a new black runner-up to Hall's white favorite. The decade ended positively for Hall, as he suspected a growing acceptance of his person, which he made out, among other things, in appearances in front of a large audience.

When he stepped down from the party chairman in favor of Sam Webb shortly before his death in 2000 , he was made honorary chairman . At that time, the post of general secretary no longer existed, only that of party chairman - this decision was made by Hall in order to make the party more American.

Death and aftermath

Hall spent the last years of his life in a multi-storey house in Yonkers with his wife Elizabeth Hall (née Turner; * 1909; † 2003), who was also a political secretary to the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) and to its successor organization, United Steelworkers , was active. They had been married since 1935.

Hall died on October 13, 2000 at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, New York City, of the long-term effects of diabetes . On the occasion of his death, the New York Times devoted almost an entire page to him , and Wolf Blitzer wrote an obituary for him on CNN . Hall left behind his wife, two children Barbara and Arvo, and three grandchildren. Barbara and Arvo showed no interest in their parents' communist beliefs. Hall was unable to complete his ninth book, so only parts are left. He was buried in the Forest Home Cemetery near Chicago .

Hall's work Socialism USA is regarded by its followers as a manifesto of American communism and still serves the CPUSA today as a basis and Bill of Rights . He is also referred to by the Gus Hall Action Club , a blog from Blogger.com .

Political classification

Gus Hall was considered a Marxist - a Leninist with a Stalinist stamp. As a bearer of high orders of the Soviet Union such as the Order of Lenin and the Order of Friendship of the Nations , he had the reputation of being one of the most convinced representatives of the interests and concerns of the Soviet Union and its political ideas outside the direct sphere of influence of the USSR. Hall spent some time in Moscow every year until the collapse of the Soviet Union, which is why he was also one of the most famous and, according to the local press, most important American politicians in the USSR. There he was received by high-ranking politicians such as Leonid Brezhnev . Furthermore, Hall was able to secure money for the CPUSA from the USSR annually until 1989, also on the basis of personal initiative, which was approved by the Politburo and handed over by the KGB . Against this background, he also defended the occupation of Prague by the Soviet Union in 1968 and its invasion of Afghanistan and recognized the Stalinist principle of socialism in a country , although as a communist outside a communist country he could expect positive changes for himself from a desired world revolution . To ensure that his comrades remained loyal to the line, he excluded those who pursued less orthodox ideas or who spoke out against the supposed interests of the Soviet Union. He described politicians like Mikhail Gorbachev or Boris Jelzin as "demolition contractors". His influence from the Soviet Union went so far that Oleg Kalugin could claim that the KGB had CPUSA and Hall in its hands. After the end of real socialism in Eastern Europe, he mourned it until the end of his life and advocated following the line of what he believed to be the last communist states such as China and North Korea . At the same time he saw his pure fixation on the Soviet Union now more critically and as a mistake. In 1991, after being asked if he planned to travel to the Soviet Union again soon, he said:

"If you want to take a nice vacation, take it in North Korea."

"If you want to have a nice vacation, go to North Korea."

In terms of environmental policy , Hall was of the opinion that the environmental problem was a problem of capitalist systems; he called for a Marxist investigation of this problem. He took no position on religious questions because he was convinced that "Our fight is not with God, but with capitalists" (in German: "Our fight is not against God, but against the capitalists"). Since he saw himself as an active opponent of racist oppression, he was also close to the Black Panther Party , whose sympathizer Angela Davis was twice his candidate for vice-presidency. This gained worldwide fame for its commitment to this group. Hall felt the CPUSA should support African Americans .

criticism

Gus Hall was mainly criticized for consistently advocating the line of the Soviet Union, including under the regime of Josef Stalin , and attempting to take action against Trotskyists through party exclusions and political attacks . Support for Stalin's line against Trotskyism was demonstrated, for example, in Hall applauding the arrest of leading supporters of Leon Trotsky under the Smith Act . Years after these incidents, Hall had in the meantime served his sentence legitimized by the Smith Act, changed his mind and accused himself of not supporting the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).

Former comrades criticized that he had used the two million dollars he received annually from the Soviet Union from the CPSU for the party for renting limousines and his own golf club and not for supporting imprisoned party comrades. Kalugin even claimed that Hall siphoned off USSR money for himself. According to the Russian newspaper Izvestia , the CPUSA is said to have received around 40 million dollars from 1971 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. Hall was also criticized by KGB spies for not running the CPUSA well enough. Therefore, young American communists were advised to distance themselves from Hall and the CPUSA. The Soviet spies denied the ability to take revolutionary actions, and because of the good surveillance by the FBI , the party could not get enough government funding.

A group around the literary scholar Irving Howe criticized Hall's adherence to his party position and the aging of the CP under his leadership. This stiffening of old ideologies was also attacked by Dorothy Healey , a former chairwoman of the CPUSA California. She was of the opinion that Gus Hall could not change his position, even though he had called for a reorientation of his party after the 1996 election .

Many conservatives in particular saw Gus Hall as a danger to the United States, as J. Edgar Hoover once described him as “a powerful, deceitful, dangerous foe of Americanism” ( English for “a powerful, deceitful, dangerous enemy of Americanism”). Hall was attacked for an alleged quote in which he allegedly called for the death of all Christians in a very brutal way. He was accused of this, especially from anti-Semitic and fascist circles - usually with the statement that Hall was a Jew  , without any evidence . Such attacks also came, in part, from the moderate right. In fact, this was not his quote.

On the other hand, Hall still pay tribute to members of communist parties around the world for having devoted his entire life to the working class in “the most dangerous imperialist country in the world” . Marked Viktor Anpilov him as a "true symbol of proletarian internationalism."

Publications

  • Peace can be won !. New York: New Century Publishers, 1951.
  • Our sights to the future. New York: New Century Publishers, 1960.
  • Which way USA 1964? The communist view. New York: New Century Publishers, 1964.
  • On course: the revolutionary process. New York: New Outlook Publishers, 1969.
  • Imperialism today. New York: International Publishers, 1972, ISBN 0-7178-0303-1 .
  • Ecology: can we survive under capitalism? New York: International Publishers, 1972. ISBN 0-7128-0347-3 .
  • The energy rip-off: cause & cure. New York: International Publishers, 1974, ISBN 0-7178-0421-6 .
  • The crisis of US capitalism and the fight-back. New York: International Publishers, 1975, ISBN 0-7178-0460-7 .
  • Labor up-front in the people's fight against the crisis. New York: International Publishers, 1979, ISBN 0-7178-0565-4 .
  • La crisis de una vida cotidiana, y las victorias en la lucha por superarla. Prague: Agencia de Prensa Orbis, 1979.
  • Basics. New York: International Publishers, 1980, ISBN 0-7178-0580-8 .
  • For peace, jobs, equality. New York: New Outlook Publishers and Distributors, 1983, ISBN 0-87898-156-X .
  • Karl Marx, beacon for our times. New York: International Publishers, 1983, ISBN 0-7178-0607-3 .
  • Fighting racism. New York: International Publishers, c1985, ISBN 0-7178-0634-0 .
  • Working class USA. New York: International Publishers, 1987, ISBN 0-7178-0660-X .

Participation

  • Communist leadership: "tough guy" takes charge. Washington: US Govt. Print. Off., 1960.

German language translations

  • 18th Congress of the Communist Party of the USA. Dietz, Berlin 1967.
  • American imperialism in today's world. Dietz, Berlin 1973.
  • Victory requires struggle. Dietz, Berlin 1973.
  • XXI. Communist Party Congress of the USA. Dietz, Berlin 1977.
  • XXII. Communist Party Congress of the USA. Dietz, Berlin 1980.
  • The crisis of everyday life and its victorious fight. Dietz, Berlin 1981.
  • On current questions of the struggle of the Communist Party of the USA. Dietz, Berlin 1981.
  • Selected speeches and writings: 1974–1980. Dietz, Berlin 1982.
  • Labor movement and class struggle in the USA. Dietz, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-320-01206-1 .

literature

  • Peggy Dennis: The Autobiography of an American Communist . L. Hill, Westport 1977, ISBN 0-88208-081-4 .
  • John E. Haynes, Harvey Klehr: Moscow Gold, Confirmed at Last? . In: Labor History , vol. 33 (Spring 1992), pp. 279-293. (regarding the acceptance of money from the Soviet Union)
  • Dorothy Healey, Maurice Isserman: Dorothy Healey Remembers: A Life in the American Communist Party . Oxford University Press, New York 1990, ISBN 0-19-503819-3 .
    • Second edition: California Red: a life in the American Communist Party , Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993. ISBN 0252062787 .
  • Phillip Bonosky : Gus Hall - The life path of a worker , in Hall: Labor movement and class struggle in the USA

Web links

Commons : Gus Hall  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Entry by Gus Halls in the American National Biography
  2. ↑ a b Chuck Haga: Gus Hall, the face of US communism, dies; Minnesota native spent his life swimming upstream , Star Tribune. October 17, 2000. 
  3. ^ A b c d Elliott Robert Barkan: Making it in America . ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara 2001, ISBN 1-57607-098-0 , pp. 147 (American English, Retrieved from Googlebooks on June 28, 2009 ).
  4. ↑ Article Gus Hall in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE) , 3rd edition 1969–1978 (Russian)http: //vorlage_gse.test/1%3D119482~2a%3D~2b%3DGus%20Hall
  5. ↑ Bonosky p. 15.
  6. ↑ Bonosky p. 13.
  7. ^ A b Obituary for Gus Hall ( World Socialist Web Site of the ICFI ). Retrieved September 13, 2009.
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Sam Tanenhaus: Gus Hall, Unreconstructed American Communist of 7 Decades, Dies at 90 , The New York Times. October 17, 2000.  Retrieved October 8, 2015.
  9. ↑ Obituary from spartacus.uk Retrieved September 12, 2015 (English)
  10. ^ Gus Hall: Labor's new upsurge - a deeper look , Peoples Weekly World. October 17, 2000. Archived from the original on January 29, 2003. 
  11. ↑ Mention of Gus Hall among those arrested at Ohio Memory.Retrieved September 12, 2015.
  12. ^ A b Rupert Cornwell: Obituary: Gus Hall , The Independent. October 18, 2000. 
  13. ^ Saul Pett: Old loser Gus Hall still jokes , Chicago Sun-Times. April 12, 1987. 
  14. ↑ a b Gus Hall died , Our time. October 27, 2000.  Retrieved June 29, 2009.
  15. ↑ a b Obituary on cnn.com ( memento of March 9, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  16. ^ Healey; Isserman p. 123 and p. 174.
  17. ↑ Healey, Isserman; P. 123.
  18. ^ A b Dorothy Healey, Maurice Isserman: California Red . Oxford University Press, New York 1990, ISBN 0-252-06278-7 , pp. 172 (American English, accessed from Googlebooks on June 28, 2009 ).
  19. ^ Obituary on Kalaschnikow.net ( memento from September 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive ). Retrieved September 13, 2009.
  20. ↑ Statistics on the presidential elections 1972 Accessed on September 13, 2009 (English)
  21. ↑ Statistics on the 1976 presidential elections. Accessed on September 13, 2009 (English)
  22. ↑ Statistics on the 1980 presidential elections. Accessed on September 13, 2009 (English)
  23. ↑ Statistics on the 1984 presidential elections. Accessed on September 13, 2009 (English)
  24. ↑ a b Obituary from Newsru.com Retrieved September 13, 2009 (Russian)
  25. ↑ a b Zeitspiegel - Without head and capital . In: Die Zeit , No. 2/1992.
  26. ↑ Uwe Schmitt: That's Mum, she works for the Communist Party , Welt. April 29, 2004.  Retrieved June 29, 2009.
  27. ^ John Barron: Operation Solo . Regnery Pub., Washington DC 1996, ISBN 0-89526-486-2 , pp. 4 (American English, Retrieved from Googlebooks on June 28, 2009 ).
  28. ^ A b c d Michael T. Kaufman: For Gus Hall, the Fight is Good, if Not the Fortune , The New York Times. January 24, 1989. 
  29. ↑ a b Manfred Sohn : Gus Hall hands over the baton , Our time. May 19, 2000.  Retrieved June 29, 2009.
  30. ↑ Elizabeth Hall dies at 94 , People's Weekly World. October 17, 2003.  Retrieved September 12, 2015.
  31. ↑ Curriculum Vitae of Gus Hall  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved on September 13, 2009 (page no longer available)@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.chenoaillinois.compw.knowledgerush.com  
  32. ^ Gus Hall in the Notable Names Database . Retrieved September 13, 2009.
  33. ^ Healey; Isserman p. 186.
  34. ^ A b Gus Hall remembered , People's Weekly World. October 26, 2002.  Retrieved September 12, 2015.
  35. ↑ Blog of the Gus Hall Action Club.Retrieved September 13, 2009 (English)
  36. ↑ David North : The Legacy We Defend , p. 288.
  37. ^ A b c Michael Dobbs: Panhandling the Kremlin: How Gus Hall Got Millions , The Washington Post. March 1, 1992. 
  38. ↑ a b Obituary for Gus Hall of the Независимая газета Retrieved September 13, 2009 (Russian)
  39. ^ A b Friedbert Pflüger : The human rights policy of the USA . Oldenbourg, Munich / Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-486-51901-8 , p.  155 .
  40. ↑ Legal mines . In: Der Spiegel . No. 40 , 1980 ( online ).
  41. ↑ DIED . In: Der Spiegel . No. 43 , 2000 ( online ).
  42. ^ Oleg Kalugin : The First Directorate , St. Martin's Press, New York 1994, ISBN 0-312-11426-5 , p. 55.
  43. ↑ Jonathan Hughes: Ecology and historical materialism . (PDF; English; 625 kB) Retrieved September 13, 2009.
  44. ^ André Richter: The education of the social: About the development of educational landscapes and youth welfare structures in the USA . Juventa, Weinheim / Munich 2006, ISBN 3-7799-1114-0 , p. 151 .
  45. ^ Gus Hall: Against Racism: the struggle for equality and working class unity , People's Weekly World. February 25, 1997. Archived from the original on August 13, 2004. 
  46. ↑ Extract from a book by Peter J. Kraus.Retrieved September 13, 2009.
  47. ^ A b Oleg Kalugin : The First Directorate . St. Martin's Press, New York 1994, ISBN 0-312-11426-5 , pp.  56 (American English).
  48. ^ Gus Hall: After the '96 elections - challenges facing the Communist Party , People's Weekly World. December 7, 1996. Archived from the original on July 29, 2002. 
  49. ^ Paul F. Boller, John H. George: They never said it . Oxford University Press, New York 1989, ISBN 0-19-505541-1 , pp. 44 (American English).
  50. ↑ Condolences from around the world , people's world. Archived from the original on May 15, 2003. 
  51. ↑ Gus Hall , The Herald. November 7, 2000. 


This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on February 18, 2009 .
personal data
SURNAME Hall, Gus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hallberg, Arvo Kusta
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Politician (CPUSA)
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Cherry Township , Minnesota
DATE OF DEATH October 13, 2000
Place of death New York City