Introduction
KOLATCH, MYRON
1924-2006 Introduction By Myron Kolatch THE HEADLINE on Charles McGrath's adroit New York Times feature story (January 23) reporting The New Leader's imminent demise read: "A Liberal Beacon...
...Today most readers and major financial supporters of magazines like the NL seek affirmation of their own views—what I tend to call psychological breast-feeding...
...Poems by Iosif Brodsky...
...and to give it a new face...
...Longtime readers may recall that an article by Carl A. Auerbach, professor of law at the University of Wisconsin, entitled "Jury Trials and Civil Rights" (April 29,1957), supplied the formula for breaking a Southern filibuster and passage of the first Civil Rights Act since Reconstruction...
...I countered that the cable office in Belgrade would know where to deliver our request—if it wanted to...
...He was named business manager in 1930, with responsibility for soliciting funds, expanding circulation, attracting advertising, and overall administration...
...The Lament of Abrashka Tertz," a Russian song rendered by John Updike...
...And bylines of well-known political figures, reflecting a growing global reach, started to appear: Hugh Gaitskell and Herbert Morrison from Britain...
...Pursuit of the second objective began with a revision of the "back of the book,' detailed in the eight pieces that make up the back of this issue...
...Guessing that Tito probably had not been able to prevent the mailing of the journal to foreign subscribers, I phoned Andrew Field, a young NL contributor in Harvard's Slavic Languages and Literatures Department, and asked him to see if the Lamont Library received Delo...
...The story told of Tito's confiscating the January and February 1965 issues ofDelo, the Yugoslav literary monthly where it appeared...
...Tributes poured in from eminent personalities around the world...
...He was angered by its coming out while he was attempting a reconciliation with the USSR and accused Mihajlov of "a new form of Djilasism...
...An hour later Shub passed my desk and said, "Okay, I sent the cable...
...I managed to obtain the only copy of the original Russian...
...Up front it started with a string of notable Washington correspondents, among them George E. Herman, Karl E. Meyer, Leo Janos, Robert Sandoz, Andrew J. Glass, Bob Schieffer, Steven V. Roberts, Andrew Mollison, and— from February 1987 to the end of 2005, without missing a deadline—Daniel Schorr...
...When I was introduced to him, he put his arm around my shoulder and indicated he knew the NL had published a poem from his 1964 cycle on the power of art to transcend the temporary might of a government...
...He noted that at a supper for visiting Americans he attended in Moscow's Union of Writers in August, Evtushenko complained: "You who talk of freedom of literature—you make our literature the servant of sensation and the dollar, and the handmaiden of your politics...
...Djilas, had just spoken to her by phone and was told the secret police had come to search Djilas' apartment and arrest him...
...When I phoned him for an appointment he seemed reticent, but agreed to see me...
...Produced by Moshe Decter, Shub's successor as managing editor until 1960, and myself, it consisted—except for an opening contextual essay and a short concluding one— of published Soviet and non-Soviet Communist documents...
...Some intellectuals in the USSR responded differently...
...The next week an envelope came from Rome bearing the same manuscript...
...Similarly, it took notice when, after a Labor Party dinner in London for Niki ta S. Khrushchev and Nikolai A. Bulganin at which Hugh Gaitskell presented a list of 200 Socialists in Communist prisons and urged their release, Pravda declared (emphasis in original): "the idea of staging a provocational intervention at the dinner in honor of the Soviet leaders evolved at an informal meeting of staff members and contributors to the 'New Leader' magazine in New York___The American slanderers gazed at the ceiling and in an instant compiled a mythical list of'Social Democrats' supposedly held in Soviet prisons___' Pravda's assertion that the NL supplied the names presented by Gaitskell happened not to be the truth...
...she asked...
...Shortly afterward, I heard that a transcript of Brodsky's trial had been smuggled to Western Europe...
...The Trial of Iosif Brodsky" (August 31,1964) was the subject of lengthy newspaper stories across the country, and was presented in dramatic form on television in the U.S...
...Equally impressive was Levitas' ability to corral literary collaborators, including Albert Camus, Arthur Koestler, George Orwell, Stephen Spender, Alberto Moravia, and Ignazio Silone...
...Leszek Kolakowski's "What Is Socialism...
...If I like what's in them, I'll do it myself...
...editorials in leading newspapers and journals praised his stewardship of The New Leader...
...To cite a mere dozen: Milovan Djilas' "The Storm in Eastern Europe...
...Viktor Nekrasov's "Travel Notes in America...
...I said I didn't think that would make an impressive epitaph...
...who had a copy of the whole manuscript...
...The INS correspondent in Vienna, a personal friend of Mrs...
...At its core, the clash between James Oneal and Sol Levitas was about their very different conceptions of The New Leader...
...Marshall, Edward Seidensticker, Edouard Roditi, Ray Alan, Janice Valls-Russell, Denis Healey, David Marquand, Norman Gelb, Elie Wiesel, and a great many others...
...he envisioned the paper's Social Democratic roots serving as a link to the liberal anti-Communist intelligentsia in virtually every corner of the world...
...The rough-hewn brownstone and red brick structure at 7 East 15th Street where The New Leader had its original sparse offices—a five-story Romanesque affair built in 1887 as a YWCA branch that in 1917 became the Rand School of Social Science—remained a relic of another era...
...In December 1937, after Levitas persuaded the paper's board to change his title to executive editor, Oneal submitted a long, bitter letter of resignation...
...Upon assuming the managing editorship in 1961,1 set three goals: to maintain the NL's international focus...
...t made its debut with the issue of September 19,1961, to unanimous applause...
...Specifically, he complained about articles being solicited and published while he was out of the office, many of them by Mensheviks, and about contempt for Social Democratic Federation news items...
...Soon the tension between the two men was palpable...
...The issue also marked our becoming a biweekly, because 1 had admired the Reporter magazine's tempo from the time it was launched in 1949 and felt expanding our pages somewhat would enable us to further expand our horizons...
...I prodded...
...The Trial of Iosif Brodsky: A Transcript...
...Nikolai Gavrilov's "Letter from a Soviet Writer...
...Though "one often hears that Evtushenko has sold out to the glamour of public life...
...He went on to recount Brodsky's being found guilty of "parasitism" and sentenced to five years of forced labor in the Arkhangelsk region...
...The same, of course, was true of our coverage of the Civil Rights revolution by Louis E. Lomax, C. Eric Lincoln, John A. Williams, William B. Gould, and Albert Murray, to name only a handful...
...Allemann, Silvio F. Senigallia, Eliahu Salpeter, S.L.A...
...Achieving our goals did not assure our survival in a fastchanging world...
...When the board subsequently accepted his "statement of policy" for the paper and assured him that his editorial authority would not be compromised, he agreed to stay on...
...It was an article Field wrote, "A Poet in Prison" (June 22, 1964), accompanied by a poem entitled "Memoir to Pushkin," that introduced American readers to Brodsky's work...
...The transition ended in 1962, when Norman left his double-duty for the greener pastures of the Foreign Policy Association...
...Were your parents bom in Russia...
...Several years earlier, at a print shop on East 4th Street in Manhattan used by many New York college newspapers, I met Mitchel (Mike) Levitas, Sol's son...
...Peckolick, in fact, redesigned the NL in 2000, when it shifted to a bimonthly frequency, and he did the cover and design for this final issue...
...He informed us of an unpublished concluding installment, which ran in our issue of June 7,1965...
...But it did not take long for me to appreciate the magazine my talented colleagues were putting out...
...So did the broad-ranging "Fair Game" and "States of the Union" columns by Walter Goodman and Richard J. Margolis, respectively, and George P. Brockway's "The Dismal Science" column, which succeeded Sidney Weintraub's regular articles on economics...
...Once an ardent admirer of Stalin, he had recently been booted by Marshal Josip Broz Tito for his "heretical" views...
...One fascinating evening the guest was an NL contributor who had done a stint as U.S...
...The New Leader thus became the only place the Mensheviks ever won a revolution...
...Back from several months in the Soviet Union, Field recalled Anna Akhmatova's praising the 24-year-old Leningrader during a conversation about the young generation of Russian poets...
...The editor was James Oneal—not, as is widely thought, Sol Levitas, a former Menshevik vice mayor of Vladivostok...
...to have it sink deeper roots in its own soil...
...Levitas, by contrast, had little patience for the parochial...
...My third objective, redesigning the NL, was getting nowhere until an acquaintance told me she had mentioned our search to Herb Lubalin, one of the country's top graphic artists, who might know the right designer...
...No,"Isaid...
...As he propelled me toward the empty hallway, I had visions of his handing me a manuscript written (by him or a friend) for the drawer...
...We must talk," he whispered into my ear...
...In 1966 the building was sold and we moved to 212 Fifth Avenue...
...No, my mother was born in Manhattan and my father in Brooklyn...
...My first day at work a blond middle-aged woman introduced herself...
...if not to the Establishment," said Feiffer, "his concern is shared by many of the most liberal intellectuals...
...In April 1940 Oneal quit again, making it clear that this time he would not reconsider...
...in 1983 we moved to our present quarters at 275 Seventh Avenue...
...Prominent contributors listed there included Eugene V Debs, Morris Hillquit, Algernon Lee, Abraham Cahan, and Norman Thomas...
...When Mrs...
...The next week he informed me that he was going ahead, and a month later he phoned to say, "I've got a new magazine for you...
...A day after "The Storm in Eastern Europe" hit the stands, International News Service called...
...Especially after it switched to a magazine format in May 1950, The New Leader attracted considerable attention by publishing articles from dissident writers and works circulating underground in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe...
...When David Zaslavsky, writing in Kommunist, leveled a long attack at Shub's "Labor in the Soviet Orbit," a separate paperback-size section of our December 24-31,1956 issue, a stratum in that orbit knowingly winked its eye...
...Norman Jacobs, 46, educational director of the Tamiment Institute, will serve as editorial director...
...It was of singular interest to legal scholars, who never previously had access to the inside of a Soviet courtroom...
...and abroad by organizations like the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith...
...Evgeny Evtushenko's poem "Nefertiti...
...and Canada...
...Little did I know I was in for something of a culture shock...
...Oneal, working only three days a week because he had suffered a mild stroke, charged that "the secrecy, deception and direct sabotage of the business manager" were undermining "the editorial department...
...He pointed out that we did not have an address for Djilas...
...The answer was yes...
...My coming to The New Leader in November 1953, immediately after two years as a stateside Army journalist and editor during the Korean War, was the result of a coincidence...
...these were illuminating, often contentious sessions...
...and Myron Kolatch, 31, assistant managing editor since 1958, will serve as managing editor...
...Abram Tertz' "Thought Unaware...
...On November 6,1966,1 was invited to a reception for Evtushenko at Queens College of the City University of New York, where he was giving a reading...
...The evidence is not encouraging, as Sanford Lakoff has observed...
...A friend who dropped by suggested the former Yugoslav vice president...
...She smiled, "How did you get a job here...
...Lubalin became devoted to the NL, designed all of its full-size special issues, "freshened up" (as he put it) the basic design in 1969, and was supportive in various other ways until his death in 1981...
...We both returned to our separate tasks...
...But all he said, in a grave voice, was: "Is there any money...
...A Russian journalist sitting among the spectators had taken down virtually the entire proceedings verbatim and succeeded in getting the document out of the country...
...In addition, it announced, "for a transitional period Dr...
...But my purpose here is neither to rationalize nor to lament the fact that the legend above our logo, instead of flipping forward and promising an "83rd Year of Publication," now declares with finality "82 Years of Publication...
...After much bickering over a few dollars, I was sworn to secrecy and we came to terms...
...Is there a place in the cyberspace age for a magazine that, if pressed, describes itself as a "small 'i' independent, small 'd' democratic, small ? liberal journal of news analysis and opinion...
...Prose Poems by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn...
...The idea was intriguing...
...Mihajlo Mihajlov's "Moscow Summer 1964...
...For long stretches Alan Peckolick, a Lubalin partner, and Michael Aron, a protégé, have helped fill the gap...
...Giuseppe Saragat from Italy...
...But Shub, aware that it could boomerang, was understandably reluctant to pursue it because Sol was out of the country...
...Such sustenance, though, has rarely been provided in these pages...
...I was named executive editor, with the managing editor's slot eliminated to cut costs...
...Djilas asked why they were taking away her husband, they cited his article in The New Leader...
...The New Leader made its first appearance on January 19, 1924, as a six-column standard-size weekly newspaper "devoted to the interests of the Socialist and Labor movements," according to its masthead...
...Although no explanatory note was attached, we eventually determined that Djilas had a friend from Italy visiting when he sent off the article and asked him to mail a second copy from Rome for insurance...
...Andrei Sinyavsky's "Unfettered Voices...
...Ben Josephson, president of the magazine's board and director of the Tamiment Institute—a small foundation that was the NL's staunchest financial supporter as well as its landlord—told me there was some feeling the magazine should shut down now that Sol was gone...
...SOL Levitas, who had himself fled from the Bolsheviks in 192 3, died on January 3,1961,amonth short of his 67th birthday...
...In any event, a compilation of a different sort, The New Leader's special issue "Jews in the Soviet Union: A Report by the Editors" (September 14,1959), could not be refuted quite the same way...
...The first was the easiest, with contributors like Adam Ulam, Robert V. Daniels, Peter Kenez, Marshall D. Shulman, ER...
...He was the editor of the Brooklyn College Vanguard, 1 was the editor of New York University's Washington Square College Bulletin, and we became friends...
...Jews in the Soviet Union" was widely distributed in the U.S...
...Responding to the news, Sanford Lakoff, a political scientist at the University of California's San Diego campus, saw it as "one more indication of the Center's collapse in this country...
...Pravda, Izvestia and the Soviet Party theoretical journal, Kommunist, indirectly formed another source of much smuggled work the NL received...
...Attended by the staff and two to three dozen invited top-level journalists...
...Within four days the manuscript arrived by regular air mail from Belgrade...
...On Monday, January 9, a statement issued by the board said in part, "The most fitting tribute we can render to the memory of Sol Levitas is to make certain the magazine to which he dedicated his life will continue to serve the nation and the free world...
...Oneal cautioned against trying to turn it into "a paper for the liberal intelligentsia," with "Social Democracy so faded out of its columns that the reader will have to use powerful glasses to find it...
...Feiffer's findings notwithstanding, a majority of dissidents recognized that the Western enemies of their enemy were their friends...
...Lubalin, a slight, youthful-looking man in his 40s, with a soft voice and a poker face, said simply: "Leave the copies here...
...It is, rather, to help set the record straight: to fill in some blank spots, shatter a few myths, and offer glimpses of how the venture managed, intellectually at least, to thrive as long as it did...
...The rapprochement was short-lived...
...It also contributed to nudging the subject toward the front burner in Western capitals, ultimately leading to the Kremlin's painfully arbitrary program permitting the emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel...
...It was the precursor of the American Conference on Soviet Jewry and corresponding groups elsewhere...
...The introduction of our "Thinking Aloud" column, with Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol as alternating proprietors (yes, they do differ) added substantially to the domestic side...
...of "The World and the Jug'(December9, 1963), Ralph Ellison's searing reply to Irving Howe's "Black Boys and Native Sons" in Dissent...
...In some instances, like the historic Djilas piece, nothing more was involved than our own initiative: Anatole Shub (then the managing editor) and I (a relatively new associate editor) were trying to think of someone in the Communist world who might be sufficiently repelled by the ugly tum of events in Hungary and Poland to raise his voice in a meaningful indictment...
...Visits by affable Mensheviks added to an émigré atmosphere, reinforced by the physical surroundings...
...Together they presented an undeniable picture of the Jewish community's deteriorating political, social and religious status in the USSR since the Bolshevik Revolution...
...Konrad Adenauer, Erich Ollenhauer and Willy Brandt from Germany...
...As I was about to be discharged, Sol happened to mention his needing an associate editor to Mike, who arranged for us to meet one evening at his Greenwich Village apartment...
...He photocopied the two installments, we had them translated, and they made up our entire enlarged March 29, 1965 issue, with annotations by Field...
...Nevertheless, I'm inclined to be optimistic...
...ambassador to the USSR, George F. Kennan...
...As I began to reiterate our financial condition, he waved me out...
...and of Martin Luther King Jr.'s granting us permission to publish his "Letter from Birmingham City Jail" (June 24, 1963...
...Jules Moch and André Philip from France...
...Many have creatively speculated about the road traveled by this material to our offices, but the reality would not appeal to a John Le Carré in search of a plot...
...1924-2006 Introduction By Myron Kolatch THE HEADLINE on Charles McGrath's adroit New York Times feature story (January 23) reporting The New Leader's imminent demise read: "A Liberal Beacon Burns Out...
...On my own watch, I learned from the New York Times about Mihajlo Mihajlov's "Moscow Summer 1964...
...His continuing involvement with the international Social Democratic community also enabled him to arrange occasional off-the-record meetings featuring such notable figures as Paul-Henri Spaak of Belgium, Max Brauer of Hamburg, Ernst Reuter of Berlin, and Golda Meir of Israel...
...His list was drawn up in consultation with the Socialist International...
...George Feiffer, a seasoned Soviet affairs specialist, reported in "Brodsky: Reactions in Moscow" (September 14,1964) that they felt their "inner war" for "openness" was made more difficult by foreign interference...
...I arrived at his office with half a dozen issues, told him about the magazine while people kept marching in to show him their work, and asked if he could suggest a promising young designer...
...Do you speak Russian...
...At a closed trial, Djilas received a three-year sentence and was sent off to Sremska Mitrovica, where he had previously been imprisoned for his activities as a Bolshevik...
...Thank you for being a loyal member of The New Leader family...
...This elicited a call, weeks later, from a friend of Mihajlov's in the U.S...
...Whether or not you concur, there can be little doubt about the impact of the present polarization of American politics...
...Particularly over the past four and a half decades, we have proceeded on the assumption that a sophisticated audience wants to be exposed to the opinions, analyses and reportage of respected writers, regardless (or perhaps because) of their not always being in lockstep agreement...
...Their victory quickly turned the NL into a highly regarded source of information about the underlying meaning of ongoing events in the Soviet bloc, prompting even the Kremlin to subscribe...
...Jayaprakash Narayan from India...
...Haakon Lie from Norway...
Vol. 89 • January 2006 • No. 1
