Index  ›  politics  ›  NPR
politics · NPR ↗

In 1949, African-American

NPR Reviewed Jun 30, 2026 ✓ Reviewed by citations.press editors
Citation-ready fact
Paul Robeson travelled to the Soviet Union in 1949.
1949 year ·
View source ↗

In 1949, African-American singer Paul Robeson travelled to the Soviet Union and stumbled into a hornet's nest of controversy. The Stalinist government had launched an anti-Zionist campaign and began to persecute artists and intellectuals. Paul Robeson's response was to alter his program for a performance in Moscow to include a Yiddish song. For years, the recording of that concert was locked in the forbidden section of the Soviet radio and television archives. But that historic recording is about to become commercially available, and Paul Robeson, Junior talks to Martin about his feelings on the occasion.

This article was originally published by NPR ↗. citations.press indexes the source-backed facts above and links to the original. Something wrong? Corrections policy · Report an error