In 1949, the African American singer Paul Robeson, known for his anti-racist stand, performed the “Song of the Jewish Partisans” (“Zog nit keyn mol”) in its original version, in Yiddish, at a concert in Moscow. It was an expression of support for his friends in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, at the time being repressed in the antisemitic Stalinist “campaign against cosmopolitanism.”
Fifty years after the singer’s death, the artist and activist Alexey Markin revisited this story in an exhibition in Hamburg called Entangled Voices. He also invited the Russian protest ensemble Arkadiy Kots to participate, which recorded a new version of the “Song of the Jewish Partisans” in seven languages, including Arabic and Ukrainian. In this conversation between those involved, the participants discussed the historical importance of the project and its meaning for today.
Alexey Markin
Paul Robeson is one of the most legendary figures of the black civil rights movement in the Soviet context, alongside W. E. B. Du Bois and Angela Davis. In the USSR, he was an extremely popular singer, known and loved by generations. Robeson first came to the Soviet Union in 1934 at the invitation of Sergei Eisenstein, and after that he visited the country six more times; his last visit took place in 1961, when he came for medical treatment — precisely during the period of Yuri Gagarin’s flight into space.
In my doctoral dissertation, I examine the representation of African Americans, including Robeson, in Soviet art, while in the artistic project his role as a political activist in Soviet history comes to the forefront — a role that, in my view, needs to be rethought. On the one hand, Robeson rightly belongs in the pantheon of black civil rights fighters in the United States. On the other hand, he never developed a consistent critical position toward Stalinist repression, although he had both the necessary knowledge and personal connections with repressed Soviet citizens. Some of these people died literally in front of his eyes, and he was unable to help them, despite certain privileges and connections within the Soviet establishment.
Yet he accomplished something virtually impossible by Soviet standards — to make a unique gesture of political solidarity with the victims of the antisemitic campaign against “rootless cosmopolitans.” In 1949, at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Hall, he performed the Jewish partisan song “Zog nit keyn mol” as an encore. Robeson dedicated this performance to the actor and chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, Solomon Mikhoels, who had been murdered by Soviet security services. All of this took place in public space and moreover was broadcast on the radio across the entire Soviet Union.
This political statement, unimaginable for Soviet citizens, became a gesture of defiance and a symbolic subversion of official Soviet policy.