Baritone Of The Oppressed

    Paul Robeson

On that 14th of June in 1949, the audience present at the Tchaikovsky Hall had thoroughly enjoyed the concert. The powerful baritone voice of the American singer resonated inside the hall. The predominantly Russian audience, traditionally enamoured with the bass voice found the performance extremely pleasing. However, the concert was fast coming to an end and the audience was getting restless. It was then that the singer spoke from the stage, in near perfect Russian. He spoke about his warm friendship with Soviet Jews like Solomon Mikhoels and Yitzhak Feffer. He spoke of the enduring ties between the Soviet and American Jewish communities and the vitality of Yiddish language. He then announced that he would sing a song in memory of the Jewish partisans who fought the Fascist aggression of the Second World War.

The audience was stunned. There was absolute silence in the Tchaikovsky Hall. The Soviet Union was then in the grip of an anti-Semitic wave. The Jewish identity was being questioned and Soviet Jews were accused of being 'rootless cosmopolitans' who lacked allegiance to the ideals of Soviet socialism. The actor Solomon Mikhoels had died the previous year; officially as the result of an automobile accident. He was buried with full state honours. The rumor was that he was assassinated by the Soviet secret police of the time- the MGB1. The other friend that the American singer had mentioned- Yitzhak Feffer was missing and was presumed to be in MGB custody. The Yiddish language was linked to the Jewish identity and was actively being suppressed. At a time such as this, to sing a Yiddish song was unthinkable; even suicidal.

As the song would be sung in Yiddish, the singer proceeded to translate the first stanza into Russian so that his audience may connect with the spirit of the song.

“Never say that you have reached the very end

When leaden skies a bitter future may portend.

For sure the hour for which we yearn will yet arrive

And our marching steps will thunder - we survive!”

The audience still sat shocked, stunned and silent. Then a young girl stood up and clapped. Slowly, others joined in and the applause grew. Finally when the applause died off, the singer started with the song. It had an immediate effect. The barriers that had been erected between man and man, collapsed. There were no Jews, no Russians, no MGB, no suspects in the audience; just human beings. People broke down in tears while their neighbours comforted them. A simple Yiddish song had reminded them of the fragility of human lives and the preciousness of freedom. In a nation that had lost over 20 million people to the fascist aggression, virtually everyone in the audience had someone to remember that night. The crowd moved towards the stage and some tried to get atop the stage to shake hands with the singer while others called out to him- “Pavel Vasilyevich”. That was how Paul Robeson had asked to be called while in the USSR.

By Narodin