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Psychology for Revolutionaries
Psychology for Peace Activists
Why there are so few women warriors
The Seville Statement on Violence
A theory of mental illness
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As the President of the Connecticut Association for American-Soviet Friendship (CAASF) from 1982 until 1987, and as a member of the executive of the National Council (NCASF) in 1990 and 1991, I have a full record of this work, especially in the annual reports of the CAASF that I produced from 1983 through 1990, and regular newsletters to the membership during that time, as well as copies of the national newsletter Friendship News and records from National Council meetings when I was an officer. It was on the basis of my work in these Associations that I got to know its director Alan Thomson and took part in the Peoples Appeal for Peace which was launched by Alan and the NCASF. And over these years, Lindsay and I led several trips to the Soviet Union and CAASF, under my direction, hosted a number of Soviet delegations in Connecticut.
According to the brief history of the National Council for American-Soviet, as recounted by its emeritus director, the Reverend Richard Morford in his address to the Delaware Valley American-Soviet Friendship Society in 1983, the Council was founded in 1943 and in its early days it had a very respectable participation and large rallies at Madison Square Garden. Although it was greatly reduced by the anti-communist attacks of the McCarthy era which sent Morford to imprison for three months in 1950, the Council managed to survive and continue to function at a reduced level throughout the years.
I first became aware of the Council at a meeting to launch a Connecticut chapter. This took place at Promoting Enduring Peace (PEP) in nearby Milford, CT, on February 6, 1981, including Alan Thomson, the national director, Howard and Alice Frazier of PEP, Joelle Fishman of the Communist Party, Paul Hodel of the New Haven Peace Center and Karen Jacob who was the secretary for PEP. At the time I was getting ready to leave for my sabbatical in Holland and Soviet Georgia, so I did not get very involved.
A meeting of the Connecticut Association for American-Soviet Friendship
click on the photo to enlarge
When I returned from Georgia in 1982, I decided to get more involved, and there were meetings in February, March and April and a rally at Carnegie Hall on May 7, 1982.
Looking through the annual reports, the CAASF newsletters and our photo scrapbooks from 1982 to 1990, I am amazed at how much was done and how many people were reached with the message of friendship between the peoples of our two countries that were not only in a "cold war" with each other, but also at the point of destroying the earth in a nuclear war. Over these years there were at least 33 mailings to a mailing list in Connecticut that grew from 300 to almost a thousand. I recall our meetings as being "mailing meetings" in which we labeled, stuffed, sealed and stamped envelopes while we talked. The major expense of the Association was stamps!
Each year we held several major public events, featuring Americans who were back from people-to-people trips to the USSR or Soviet delegations or speakers. We were involved major public figures in some of these events, including speaker of the state legislature Irv Stolberg, Congressman Bruce Morrison, New Haven Labor Council president Frank Carrano, New Haven Board of Education President Ed Edmunds, Hartford Mayor Thirman Milner, New Haven mayor Ben DiLieto, and the Branford First Selectwoman Judy Gott. In one case this backfired when Milner handed the Soviets an anti-Soviet proclamation that he had previously signed. Press coverage grew to the point that the 1985 Soviet delegation was featured in almost every major Connecticut newspaper and television channel. There were numerous speaking engagements at organizations and on the radio, often with me as the speaker, and work in various peace coalitions.
We pushed against the anti-sovietism in the mass media, sometimes with success. In the especially conservative New Haven Register, there were a series of heated interchanges between me and the editor in 1983, and we launched a "campaign for honest news reporting" in 1984, asking our members to monitor and respond to inaccurate news items about the USSR.
I attended many meetings of the National Council, at first as representative of Connecticut, and later as a member of the Board, including meetings in Philadelphia (twice), Washington, Detroit, Boston, New York (many times), Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Des Moines, Madison (Wisconsin) and Chicago (twice).
And then there were our trips to the Soviet Union. Twice we led tour groups and once Lindsay went with a trade union delegation.
Lindsay on stage on a Volga Cruise Ship. Second from the right is Soviet speaker Misha Kabatchenko and fifth from the right is Jo Butler, known in Washington, D.C. as the Mother of D.C. statehood. Click on photo to enlarge.
In the summer of 1983, Lindsay and I led a tour group to the Soviet Union, including Central Asia. It was a difficult experience, as the group was quite disparate, ranging from leftists to extremely anti-Soviet jews and right wing ideologues. And the heat of Central Asia got to us and almost everyone got sick with fever and extreme stomach cramps. On the other hand, the landscapes, cities and peoples were exotic and helped break down the stereotypes of a monolithic, colorless USSR.
In May of 1985, Lindsay took part in a highly successful trade union delegation to the Soviet Union along with our friend Warren Gould and several activists from the Yale Union Local 34.
In July of 1987, Lindsay and I led a tour on a Volga river cruise. Once again there were difficulties associated with having disparate members of the group, but this time the problem was with the ultra left rather than the right! There was at least one woman on board from an ultra-left sect. I assumed she was an FBI provocateur, as she used her sexuality to influence the Soviets on board and split them from our Association. Over the years the FBI had placed one attractive one woman after another with Alan Thomson, the Director of the National Council, and eventually, as I describe in the section on the People Peace Appeal, they succeeded in entrapping him in a potentially criminal case.
In my work with the National Council for American-Soviet Friendship, I got to work again not only with Lee Dlugin of the Communist Party, but also with Marvel Cooke and through her, the actor Johnny Randolph whom Marvel and I recruited as the new Chairman for the Council. Prior to Randolph, Alan Thomson and I had a wonderful meeting with Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee at their home in New Rochelle, where they told us that ending apartheid in South Africa was their priority for the moment, although they wished us well in our search for a Chairman.
The work of American-Soviet Friendship began to fall apart by 1987 because of problems other than those caused by the FBI. On January 23, 1988, I wrote a long letter of complaint to Alan Thomson, Lee Dlugin and Marvel Cooke about the Soviets' failure to honor their partnership agreements with us with regard to goodwill missions, Volga cruises, pairings for the Peoples Peace Appeal and availability of Soviet publications for our members. It was still another few years before we realized that we were simply feeling the initial tremors of what would eventually be the full collapse of the Soviet Union.
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Stages
1986-1992
Fall of Soviet Empire
1992-1997
UNESCO Culture of Peace Programme