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Anna Louise Strong letter to Eleanor Roosevelt regarding the outbreak of war in Poland, September 5, 1939
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| Title | Anna Louise Strong letter to Eleanor Roosevelt regarding the outbreak of war in Poland, September 5, 1939 |
| Author | Strong, Anna Louise (1885-1970) |
| Publication Date | 1939 |
| Notes | In this letter to Eleanor Roosevelt, written at the Hotel Latham in New York City, Anna Louise Strong opens by agreeing with a statement in a recent letter from Roosevelt about the possibility of cooperation between democracy and communism. She notes that Stalin has engraved the motto "Socialism and Democracy are invincible" on the Soviet Pavilion, and assures Roosevelt that he is sincere. Strong attempts to articulate the motives that led to the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact the previous month, stating her belief that the Soviets, who felt that British prime minister Neville Chamberlain was attempting to maneuver them into war with Germany, had "walked out, not because they loved the Nazis better, but because they didn't think the fight worth the cost." She is glad that both the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. have chosen not to enter the war, and tells Roosevelt that the two country's motives are very similar.
Strong notes that her husband, Joel Shubin, has been increasingly impressed by President Roosevelt's response to the crisis, and commented just that evening that the President was "a really great man! Here's a real world leader of our times." She tells Roosevelt that "it is the first time I ever heard him enthusiastic over anything outside socialism and the USSR". This reminds her of a comment she'd heard Earl Browder make -- that President Roosevelt "had caused a fundamental revision of the beliefs of the Communists... [who] for the first time concede that real gains could be made for the working-class under a 'bourgeois-democratic-government'." Strong concludes by again extending an invitation to Roosevelt to meet with her and her husband, possibly at the Soviet Pavilion. |
| Contextual Notes | Anna Louise Strong (1885-1970) was an American journalist and political activist throughout her life. After spending much of the 1910s working as a progressive advocate for child welfare, she became involved in the labor movement in Seattle, and through that movement increasingly identified herself with international communism. This advocacy, along with her work for the Seattle Union Record, connected her to the events surrounding the Seattle General Strike in 1919. Strong later left Seattle, and spent much of the 1920s and 1930s living in the Soviet Union, meeting with men such as Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin, and writing books about her experiences for Western audiences in an attempt to build support for the USSR. During World War II, she continued to promote the cause of communism, although her support for the Chinese communist movement ultimately alienated her from the government in Moscow, limiting her to one visit to the Soviet Union in the final two decades of her life. She spent most of those years living in the People's Republic of China, befriending Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong, and continuing to publish books and articles in support of communism until the end of her life.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) was First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945 as the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (as well as being the niece of an earlier American president, Theodore Roosevelt). In the 1930s, she had become a prominent advocate for the New Deal and the African-American civil rights movement. During World War II, she became an advocate for the United Nations, and later served as the United States' delegate to the U.N., chairing the commission that composed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. |
| Subjects (LCSH) | Strong, Anna Louise, 1885-1970--Correspondence; Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962--Correspondence; Poland--History--Occupation, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945--Poland |
| Digital Collection | Pamphlet and Textual Documents Collection
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| Digital ID Number | PAM0392 |
| Ordering Information | To order a reproduction or inquire about permissions contact: photos@u.washington.edu. Please cite the Order Number. |
| Repository | University of Washington Libraries. Special Collections Division |
| Repository Collection | Anna Louise Strong papers. Accession No. 1309-001. Box 4/18 |
| Object Type | Letter (correspondence)
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| Physical Description | 1 leaf; 27.5 x 21.5 cm. |
| Digital Reproduction Information | Scanned from original text or image at 150 dpi saved in TIFF format, resized and enhanced using Adobe Photoshop, and imported as JPEG2000 using Contentdm software's JPEG2000 Extension. 2010. |
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