Native name	Союз Советских Социалистических Республик''Soyuz Sovietskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik''
Conventional long name	Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Other names
Common name	Soviet Union
Continent	Eurasia
Status	Federation
Government type	Union socialist soviet republic, single-party communist state
Year start	1922
Year end	1991
Date start	30 December
Date end	26 December
P1	Russian SFSR
Flag p1	Flag RSFSR 1918.svg
P2	Transcaucasian SFSR
Flag p2	Flag of Transcaucasian SFSR.svg
P3	Ukrainian SSR
Flag p3	Flag of the Ukrainian SSR (1927-1937).svg
P4	Byelorussian SSR
Flag p4	Flag of the Byelorussian SSR (1919).svg
S1	Russia
Flag s1	Flag of Russia 1991-1993.svg
S2	Georgia (country)Georgia
Flag s2	Flag of Georgia.svg
S3	Ukraine
Flag s3	Flag of Ukraine.svg
S4	Moldova
Flag s4	Flag of Moldova.svg
S5	Belarus
Flag s5	Flag of Belarus.svg
S6	Armenia
Flag s6	Flag of Armenia.svg
S7	Azerbaijan
Flag s7	Flag of Azerbaijan.svg
S8	Kazakhstan
Flag s8	Flag of Kazakhstan.svg
S9	Uzbekistan
Flag s9	Flag of Uzbekistan.svg
S10	Turkmenistan
Flag s10	Flag of Turkmenistan.svg
S11	Kyrgyzstan
Flag s11	Flag of Kyrgyzstan.svg
S12	Tajikistan
Flag s12	Flag of Tajikistan.svg
S13	EstoniaEstonia3
Flag s13	Flag of Estonia.svg
S14	LatviaLatvia3
Flag s14	Flag of Latvia.svg
S15	LithuaniaLithuania3
Flag s15	Flag of Lithuania.svg
Flag	Flag of the Soviet Union
Image coat	Coat_of_arms_of_the_Soviet_Union.svg
Symbol	State Emblem of the Soviet Union
Symbol type	State Emblem
Image map size	220px
Image map caption	The Soviet Union after World War II
Capital	Moscow
Largest city	Moscow
National motto	Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь!(Translit.: ''Proletarii vsekh stran, soyedinyaytes'!'')English: Workers of the world, unite!
National anthem	''The Internationale'' (1922–1944) ''National Anthem of the Soviet Union'' (1944-1991)
Common languages	Russian, many others
Demonym	Soviet
Currency	Soviet ruble (руб) (SUR)
Currency code	SUR
Leader1	Vladimir Lenin
Leader2	Mikhail Gorbachev
Year leader1	1922–1924 (first)
Year leader2	1985–1991 (last)
Title leader	Leader
Legislature	Congress of Soviets and Central Executive Committee (1922-1937) Supreme Soviet (1937-1989; 1991)Congress of People's Deputies and Supreme Soviet (1989-1991)
Stat year1	1991
Stat area1	22402200
Stat pop1	293047571
Footnotes	1On 21 December 1991, eleven of the former socialist republics declared in Alma-Ata (with the 12th republic – Georgia – attending as an observer) that with the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ceases to exist. 2Assigned on 19 September 1990, existing onwards. 3The governments of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania view themselves as continuous and unrelated to the respective Soviet republics.Russia views the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian SSRs as legal constituent republics of the USSR and predecessors of the modern Baltic states.The Government of the United States and a number of other countries did not recognize the annexation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to the USSR as a legal inclusion.
Utc offset	+2 to +13
Cctld	.su2
Calling code	7 }}

The Soviet Union (), officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, , abbreviated СССР, ''SSSR''), was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991. An informal name used among its residents was the Union (''Soyuz'').

The Soviet Union had a single-party political system dominated by the Communist Party until 1990. Although the USSR was nominally a union of Soviet republics (15 in all after 1956) with the capital in Moscow, it was actually a highly centralized state with a planned economy.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 brought about the downfall of the Russian Empire. Its successor, the Russian Provisional Government, was short-lived. After the Bolsheviks won the ensuing Russian Civil War, the Soviet Union was founded in December 1922 with the merger of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Following the death of the first Soviet leader, Vladimir Lenin, in 1924, Joseph Stalin eventually won a power struggle and led the country through a large-scale industrialization with a command economy and political repression. In World War II, in June 1941, Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union, a country with which it had signed a non-aggression pact. After four years of brutal warfare, the Soviet Union emerged victorious as one of the world's two superpowers, the other being the United States.

The Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite states engaged in the Cold War, a prolonged global ideological and political struggle against the United States and its Western Bloc allies, which it ultimately lost in the face of economic troubles and both domestic and foreign political unrest. In the late 1980s, the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tried to reform the state with his policies of ''perestroika'' and ''glasnost'', but the Soviet Union collapsed and was formally dissolved in December 1991 after the abortive August coup attempt. The Russian Federation assumed its rights and obligations.

Geography, climate and environment

With an area of , the Soviet Union was the world's largest state. Covering a sixth of the Earth's land surface, its size was comparable to that of North America. The European portion accounted for a quarter of the country's area, and was the cultural and economic center. The eastern part in Asia extended to the Pacific Ocean to the east and Afghanistan to the south, and was much less populous. It spanned over east to west across 11 time zones, and almost north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra, taiga, steppes, desert, and mountains.

The Soviet Union had the world's longest border, measuring over , two-thirds of it a coastline of the Arctic Ocean. Across the Bering Strait was the United States. The Soviet Union bordered Afghanistan, China, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Hungary, Iran, Mongolia, North Korea, Norway, Poland, Romania, and Turkey from 1945 to 1991.

The Soviet Union's longest river was the Irtysh. Its highest mountain was Communism Peak (now Ismail Samani Peak) in Tajikistan, at . The world's largest lake, the Caspian Sea, lay mainly within the Soviet Union. The world's largest freshwater and deepest lake, Lake Baikal, was in the Soviet Union.

History

The last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, ruled the Russian Empire until his abdication in March 1917, due in part to the strain of fighting in World War I. A short-lived Russian provisional government took power, to be overthrown in the 1917 October Revolution (N.S. November 1917) by revolutionaries led by the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin.

The Soviet Union was officially established in December 1922 with the union of the Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and Transcaucasian Soviet republics, each ruled by local Bolshevik parties. Despite the foundation of the Soviet state as a federative entity of many constituent republics, each with its own political and administrative entities, the term "Soviet Russia"strictly applicable only to the Russian Federative Socialist Republicwas often incorrectly applied to the entire country by non-Soviet writers and politicians.

Revolution and foundation

Modern revolutionary activity in the Russian Empire began with the Decembrist Revolt of 1825. Although serfdom was abolished in 1861, it was done on terms unfavorable to the peasants and served to encourage revolutionaries. A parliament—the State Duma—was established in 1906 after the Russian Revolution of 1905, but the Tsar resisted attempts to move from absolute to constitutional monarchy. Social unrest continued and was aggravated during World War I by military defeat and food shortages in major cities.

A spontaneous popular uprising in Saint Petersburg, in response to the wartime decay of Russia's economy and morale, culminated in the February Revolution and the toppling of the imperial government in March 1917. The tsarist autocracy was replaced by the Russian Provisional Government, which intended to conduct elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly and to continue fighting on the side of the Entente in World War I.

At the same time, workers' councils, known as Soviets, sprang up across the country. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, pushed for socialist revolution in the Soviets and on the streets. In November 1917, during the October Revolution, they seized power. In December, the Bolsheviks signed an armistice with the Central Powers, though by February 1918, fighting had resumed. In March, the Soviets quit the war for good and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

A long and bloody Russian Civil War ensued between the Reds and the Whites, starting in 1917 and ending in 1923 with the Reds victorious. It included foreign intervention, the execution of Nicholas II and his family and the famine of 1921, which killed about five million. In March 1921, during a related conflict with Poland, the Peace of Riga was signed, splitting disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between the Republic of Poland and Soviet Russia. The Soviet Union had to resolve similar conflicts with the newly established Republic of Finland, the Republic of Estonia, the Republic of Latvia, and the Republic of Lithuania.

Unification of republics

On 28 December 1922, a conference of plenipotentiary delegations from the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR approved the Treaty of Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. These two documents were confirmed by the 1st Congress of Soviets of the USSR and signed by the heads of the delegations, Mikhail Kalinin, Mikha Tskhakaya, Mikhail Frunze, Grigory Petrovsky, and Aleksandr Chervyakov, on 30 December 1922.

On 1 February 1924, the USSR was recognized by the British Empire. The same year, a Soviet Constitution was approved, legitimizing the December 1922 union.

An intensive restructuring of the economy, industry and politics of the country began in the early days of Soviet power in 1917. A large part of this was done according to the Bolshevik Initial Decrees, government documents signed by Vladimir Lenin. One of the most prominent breakthroughs was the GOELRO plan, which envisioned a major restructuring of the Soviet economy based on total electrification of the country. The plan was developed in 1920 and covered a 10- to 15-year period. It included construction of a network of 30 regional power plants, including ten large hydroelectric power plants, and numerous electric-powered large industrial enterprises. The plan became the prototype for subsequent Five-Year Plans and was basically fulfilled by 1931.

Stalin era

From its beginning, the government in the Soviet Union was based on the one-party rule of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks). After the economic policy of War Communism during the Civil War, the Soviet government permitted some private enterprise to coexist alongside nationalized industry in the 1920s and total food requisition in the countryside was replaced by a food tax (see New Economic Policy).

Soviet leaders argued that one-party rule was necessary to ensure that "capitalist exploitation" would not return to the Soviet Union and that the principles of Democratic Centralism would represent the people's will. Debate over the future of the economy provided the background for a power struggle in the years after Lenin's death in 1924. Initially, Lenin was to be replaced by a "troika" consisting of Grigory Zinoviev of Ukraine, Lev Kamenev of Moscow, and Joseph Stalin of Georgia.

On 3 April 1922, Stalin was named the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Lenin had appointed Stalin the head of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate, which gave Stalin considerable power. By gradually consolidating his influence and isolating and out-maneuvering his rivals within the party, Stalin became the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union and, by the end of the 1920s, established totalitarian rule. In October 1927, Grigory Zinoviev and Leon Trotsky were expelled from the Central Committee and forced into exile.

In 1928, Stalin introduced the First Five-Year Plan for building a socialist economy. While encompassing the internationalism expressed by Lenin throughout the course of the Revolution, it also aimed to build socialism in one country. In industry, the state assumed control over all existing enterprises and undertook an intensive program of industrialization. In agriculture, collective farms were established all over the country.

Famines ensued, causing millions of deaths; surviving kulaks were persecuted and many sent to Gulags to do forced labour. Social upheaval continued in the mid-1930s. Stalin's Great Purge resulted in the execution or detainment of many "Old Bolsheviks" who had participated in the October Revolution with Lenin. The death toll is uncertain, with a wide range of estimates. According to declassified Soviet archives, in 1937 and 1938, the NKVD arrested more than one and a half million people, of whom 681,692 were shot – an average of 1,000 executions a day. The excess deaths during the 1930s as a whole were in the range of 10–11 million. Yet despite the turmoil of the mid-to-late 1930s, the Soviet Union developed a powerful industrial economy in the years before World War II.

The 1930s

The early 1930s saw closer cooperation between the West and the USSR. From 1932 to 1934, the Soviet Union participated in the World Disarmament Conference. In 1933, diplomatic relations between the United States and the USSR were established. In September 1934, the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations. After the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, the USSR actively supported the Republican forces against the Nationalists, who were supported by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

In December 1936, Stalin unveiled a new Soviet Constitution. The constitution was seen as a personal triumph for Stalin, who on this occasion was described by ''Pravda'' as a "genius of the new world, the wisest man of the epoch, the great leader of communism." By contrast, western historians and historians from former Soviet occupied countries have viewed the constitution as a meaningless propaganda document.

The late 1930s saw a shift towards the Axis powers. In 1938, after the United Kingdom and France had concluded the Munich Agreement with Germany, the USSR dealt with the Nazis as well, both militarily and economically during extensive talks. The two countries concluded the German–Soviet Nonaggression Pact and the German–Soviet Commercial Agreement. The nonaggression pact made possible Soviet occupation of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bessarabia, northern Bukovina, and eastern Poland. In late November of the same year, unable to coerce the Republic of Finland by diplomatic means into moving its border back from Leningrad, Joseph Stalin ordered the invasion of Finland.

In the east, the Soviet military won several decisive victories during border clashes with the Japanese Empire in 1938 and 1939. However, in April 1941, USSR signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact with the Empire of Japan, recognizing the territorial integrity of Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state.

World War II

Although it has been debated whether the Soviet Union had any intention of invading Germany once it was strong enough, Germany itself broke the treaty and invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, starting what was known in the USSR as the "Great Patriotic War". The Red Army stopped the seemingly-invincible German Army at the Battle of Moscow, aided by an unusually harsh winter. The Battle of Stalingrad, which lasted from late 1942 to early 1943, dealt a severe blow to the Germans from which they never fully recovered and became a turning point of the war. After Stalingrad, Soviet forces drove through Eastern Europe to Berlin before Germany surrendered in 1945. The German Army suffered 80% of its military deaths in the Eastern Front.

The same year, the USSR, in fulfillment of its agreement with the Allies at the Yalta Conference, denounced the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1945 and invaded Manchukuo and other Japan-controlled territories on 9 August 1945. This conflict ended with a decisive Soviet victory, contributing to the unconditional surrender of Japan and the end of World War II.

The Soviet Union suffered greatly in the war, losing around 27 million people. Despite this, it emerged as a military superpower. Once denied diplomatic recognition by the Western world, the Soviet Union had official relations with practically every nation by the late 1940s. A member of the United Nations at its foundation in 1945, the Soviet Union became one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, which gave it the right to veto any of its resolutions (see Soviet Union and the United Nations).

The Soviet Union maintained its status as one of the world's two superpowers for four decades through its hegemony in Eastern Europe, military strength, economic strength, aid to developing countries, and scientific research, especially in space technology and weaponry.

Cold War

During the immediate postwar period, the Soviet Union rebuilt and expanded its economy, while maintaining its strictly centralized control. It aided post-war reconstruction in the countries of Eastern Europe, while turning them into satellite states, binding them in a military alliance (the Warsaw Pact) in 1955, and an economic organization (The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance or Comecon) from 1949 to 1991, the latter a counterpart to the European Economic Community. Later, the Comecon supplied aid to the eventually victorious Chinese Communist Party, and saw its influence grow elsewhere in the world. Fearing its ambitions, the Soviet Union's wartime allies, the United Kingdom and the United States, became its enemies. In the ensuing Cold War, the two sides clashed indirectly using mostly proxies.

Khrushchev era

Stalin died on 5 March 1953. In the absence of a mutually-agreeable successor, the highest Communist Party officials opted to rule the Soviet Union jointly. Nikita Khrushchev, who had won the power struggle by the mid-1950s, denounced Stalin's use of repression in 1956 and eased repressive controls over party and society. This was known as de-Stalinization.

Moscow considered Eastern Europe to be a buffer zone for the forward defense of its western borders, and ensured its control of the region by transforming the East European countries into satellite states. Soviet military force was used to suppress anti-communist uprisings in Hungary and Poland in 1956.

In the late 1950s, a confrontation with China regarding the USSR's rapprochement with the West and what Mao Zedong perceived as Khrushchev's revisionism led to the Sino–Soviet split. This resulted in a break throughout the global Communist movement, with Communist regimes in Albania, Cambodia and Somalia choosing to ally with China in place of the USSR.

During this period, the Soviet Union continued to realize scientific and technological exploits: launching the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1; a living dog, Laika; and later, the first human being, Yuri Gagarin, into Earth's orbit. In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space, and Alexey Leonov became the first person to walk in space, in 1965.

Khrushchev initiated "The Thaw" better known as Khrushchev's Thaw, a complex shift in political, cultural and economic life in the Soviet Union. That included some openness and contact with other nations and new social and economic policies with more emphasis on commodity goods, allowing living standards to rise dramatically while maintaining high levels of economic growth. Censorship was relaxed as well.

Khrushchev's reforms in agriculture and administration, however, were generally unproductive. In 1962, he precipitated a crisis with the United States over the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba. The Soviet Union backed down after the United States initiated a naval blockade, causing Khrushchev much embarrassment and loss of prestige. He was removed from power in 1964.

Brezhnev era

Following the ousting of Khrushchev, another period of collective leadership ensued, consisting of Leonid Brezhnev as General Secretary, Alexei Kosygin as Premier and Nikolai Podgorny as Chairman of the Presidium, lasting until Brezhnev established himself in the early 1970s as the preeminent Soviet leader. In 1968 the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies invaded Czechoslovakia to halt the Prague Spring reforms. Brezhnev presided over a period of ''détente'' with the West (see SALT I, SALT II, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty) while at the same time building up Soviet military might.

In October 1977, the third Soviet Constitution was unanimously adopted. The prevailing mood of the Soviet leadership at the time of Brezhnev's death in 1982 was one of aversion to change. The long period of Brezhnev's rule had come to be dubbed one of "standstill", with an aging and ossified top political leadership.

Reforms and dissolution

Two developments dominated the decade that followed: the increasingly apparent crumbling of the Soviet Union's economic and political structures, and the patchwork attempts at reforms to reverse that process. Kenneth S. Deffeyes argued in ''Beyond Oil'' that the Reagan administration encouraged Saudi Arabia to lower the price of oil to the point where the Soviets could not make a profit selling their oil, so that the USSR's hard currency reserves became depleted.

Brezhnev's next two successors, transitional figures with deep roots in his tradition, did not last long. Yuri Andropov was 68 years old and Konstantin Chernenko 72 when they assumed power; both died in less than two years. In an attempt to avoid a third short-lived leader, in 1985, the Soviets turned to the next generation and selected Mikhail Gorbachev.

Gorbachev made significant changes in the economy and party leadership, called ''perestroika''. His policy of ''glasnost'' freed public access to information after decades of heavy government censorship. Gorbachev also moved to end the Cold War. In 1988, the Soviet Union abandoned its nine-year war in Afghanistan and began to withdraw its forces. In the late 1980s, he refused military support to the Soviet Union's former satellite states, resulting in the toppling of multiple communist regimes. With the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and with East Germany and West Germany pursuing unification, the Iron Curtain came down.

In the late 1980s, the constituent republics of the Soviet Union started legal moves towards or even declaration of sovereignty over their territories, citing Article 72 of the USSR constitution, which stated that any constituent republic was free to secede. On 7 April 1990, a law was passed allowing a republic to secede if more than two-thirds of its residents voted for it in a referendum. Many held their first free elections in the Soviet era for their own national legislatures in 1990. Many of these legislatures proceeded to produce legislation contradicting the Union laws in what was known as the "War of Laws".

In 1989, the Russian SFSR, which was then the largest constituent republic (with about half of the population) convened a newly elected Congress of People's Deputies. Boris Yeltsin was elected its chairman. On 12 June 1990, the Congress declared Russia's sovereignty over its territory and proceeded to pass laws that attempted to supersede some of the USSR's laws. The period of legal uncertainty continued throughout 1991 as constituent republics slowly became de facto independent.

A referendum for the preservation of the USSR was held on 17 March 1991, with the majority of the population voting for preservation of the Union in nine out of the 15 republics. The referendum gave Gorbachev a minor boost. In the summer of 1991, the New Union Treaty, which would have turned the Soviet Union into a much looser federation, was agreed upon by eight republics.

The signing of the treaty, however, was interrupted by the August Coup—an attempted coup d'état by hardline members of the government and the KGB who sought to reverse Gorbachev's reforms and reassert the central government's control over the republics. After the coup collapsed, Yeltsin was seen as a hero for his decisive actions, while Gorbachev's power was effectively ended. The balance of power tipped significantly towards the republics. In August 1991, Latvia and Estonia immediately declared the restoration of their full independence (following Lithuania's 1990 example), while the other twelve republics continued discussing new, increasingly looser, models of the Union.

On 8 December 1991, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed the Belavezha Accords, which declared the Soviet Union dissolved and established the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in its place. While doubts remained over the authority of the accords to do this, on 21 December 1991, the representatives of all Soviet republics except Georgia signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, which confirmed the accords. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev yielded to the inevitable and resigned as the President of the USSR, declaring the office extinct. He turned the powers that had been vested in the presidency over to Yeltsin, the President of Russia.

The following day, the Supreme Soviet, the highest governmental body of the Soviet Union, dissolved itself. This is generally recognized as marking the official, final dissolution of the Soviet Union as a functioning state. Many organizations, such as the Soviet Army and police forces, continued to remain in place in the early months of 1992, but were slowly phased out and either withdrawn from or absorbed by the newly independent states.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 26 December 1991, Russia was internationally recognized as its legal successor on the international stage. To that end, Russia voluntarily accepted all Soviet foreign debt and claimed overseas Soviet properties as its own. Since then, the Russian Federation has assumed the Soviet Union's rights and obligations.

Politics

There were three power hierarchies in the Soviet Union: the legislative branch represented by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, the government represented by the Council of Ministers and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the only legal party and the ultimate policymaker in the country.

Communist Party

At the top of the Communist Party was the Central Committee, elected at Party Congresses and Conferences. The Central Committee in turn voted for a Politburo (called the Presidium between 1952–1966), Secretariat and the General Secretary (First Secretary from 1953 to 1966), the highest office in the USSR. Depending on the degree of power consolidation, it was either the Politburo as a collective body or the General Secretary, who always was one of the Politburo members, that effectively led the party and the country (except for the period of the highly personalized authority of Stalin, exercised directly through his position in the Council of Ministers rather than the Politburo after 1941). They were not controlled by the general party membership, as the key principle of the party organization was democratic centralism, demanding strict subordination to higher bodies, and elections went uncontested, endorsing the candidates proposed from above.

The Communist Party maintained its dominance over the state largely through its control over the system of appointments. All senior government officials and most deputies of the Supreme Soviet were members of the CPSU. Of the party heads themselves, Stalin in 1941–1953 and Khrushchev in 1958–1964 were Premiers. Upon the forced retirement of Khrushchev, the party leader was prohibited from this kind of double membership, but the later General Secretaries for at least some part of their tenure occupied the largely ceremonial position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the nominal head of state. The institutions at lower levels were overseen and at times supplanted by primary party organizations.

In practice, however, the degree of control the party was able to exercise over the state bureaucracy, particularly after the death of Stalin, was far from total, with the bureaucracy pursuing different interests that were at times in conflict with the party. Nor was the party itself monolithic from top to bottom, although factions were officially banned.

Government

The Supreme Soviet (successor of the Congress of Soviets and Central Executive Committee) was nominally the highest state body for most of the Soviet history, at first acting as a rubber stamp institution, approving and implementing all decisions made by the party. However, the powers and functions of the Supreme Soviet were extended in the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, including the creation of new state commissions and committees. It gained additional powers when it came to the approval of the Five-Year Plans and the Soviet state budget. The Supreme Soviet elected a Presidium to wield its power between plenary sessions, ordinarily held twice a year, and appointed the Supreme Court, the Procurator General and the Council of Ministers (known before 1946 as the Council of People's Commissars), headed by the Chairman (Premier) and managing an enormous bureaucracy responsible for the administration of the economy and society. State and party structures of the constituent republics largely emulated the structure of the central institutions, although the Russian SFSR, unlike the other constituent republics, for most of its history had no republican branch of the CPSU, being ruled directly by the union-wide party until 1990. Local authorities were organized likewise into party committees, local Soviets and executive committees. While the state system was nominally federal, the party was unitary.

The state security police (the KGB and its predecessor agencies) played an important role in Soviet politics. It was instrumental in the Stalinist terror, but after the death of Stalin, the state security police was brought under strict party control. Under Yuri Andropov, KGB chairman in 1967–1982 and General Secretary from 1982 to 1983, the KGB engaged in the suppression of political dissent and maintained an extensive network of informers, reasserting itself as a political actor to some extent independent of the party-state structure, culminating in the anti-corruption campaign targeting high party officials in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Separation of power and reform

The Soviet constitutions, which were promulgated in 1918, 1924, 1936 and 1977, did not limit state power. No formal separation of powers existed between the Party, Supreme Soviet and Council of Ministers that represented executive and legislative branches of the government. The system was governed less by statute than by informal conventions, and no settled mechanism of leadership succession existed. Bitter and at times deadly power struggles took place in the Politburo after the deaths of Lenin and Joseph Stalin, as well as after Khrushchev's dismissal, itself due to a coup in both the Politburo and the Central Committee. All Soviet party leaders before Gorbachev died in office, except Georgy Malenkov and Khrushchev, both dismissed from the party leadership amid internal struggle within the party. In 1988–1990, facing considerable opposition, Mikhail Gorbachev enacted reforms shifting power away from the highest bodies of the party and making the Supreme Soviet less dependent on them. The Congress of People's Deputies was established, the majority of whose members were directly elected in competitive elections held in March 1989. The Congress now elected the Supreme Soviet, which became a full-time parliament, much stronger than before. For the first time since the 1920s, it refused to rubber stamp proposals from the party and Council of Ministers. In 1990, Gorbachev introduced and assumed the position of the President of the Soviet Union, concentrated power in his executive office, independent of the party, and subordinated the government, now renamed the Cabinet of Ministers of the USSR, to himself.

Tensions grew between the union-wide authorities under Gorbachev, reformists led in Russia by Boris Yeltsin and controlling the newly elected Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR, and Communist Party hardliners. On 19–21 August 1991, a group of hardliners staged an abortive coup attempt. Following the failed coup, the State Council of the Soviet Union became the highest organ of state power "in the period of transition". Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary, only remaining President for the final months of the existence of the USSR.

Judicial system

The judiciary was not independent of the other branches of government. The Supreme Court supervised the lower courts (People's Court) and applied the law as established by the Constitution or as interpreted by the Supreme Soviet. The Constitutional Oversight Committee reviewed the constitutionality of laws and acts. The Soviet Union utilized the inquisitorial system of Roman law, where the judge, procurator, and defense attorney collaborate to establish the truth.

Political divisions

Constitutionally, the Soviet Union was a union of Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs) and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), although the rule of the highly centralized Communist Party made the union merely nominal. The Treaty on the Creation of the USSR was signed in December 1922 by four founding republics, the RSFSR, Transcaucasian SFSR, Ukrainian SSR and Belorussian SSR. In 1924, during the national delimitation in Central Asia, the Uzbek and Turkmen SSRs were formed from parts of the RSFSR's Turkestan ASSR and two Soviet dependencies, the Khorezm and Bukharan SSR. In 1929, the Tajik SSR was split off from the Uzbek SSR. With the constitution of 1936, the constituents of the Transcaucasian SFSR, namely the Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijan SSRs, were elevated to union republics, while the Kazakh and Kirghiz SSRs were split off from the RSFSR. In August 1940, the Soviet Union formed the Moldavian SSR from parts of the Ukrainian SSR and parts of Bessarabia annexed from Romania. It also annexed the Baltic states as the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian SSRs. The Karelo-Finnish SSR was split off from the RSFSR in March 1940 and merged back in 1956. Between July 1956 and September 1991, there were 15 union republics (see map below).

On 16 November 1988, the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR passed the Estonian Sovereignty Declaration that asserted Estonia's sovereignty and declared the supremacy of Estonian laws over those of the Soviet Union. In March 1990, the newly-elected Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR declared independence, followed by the Georgian Supreme Soviet in April 1991. Although the symbolic right of the republics to secede was nominally guaranteed by the constitution and the union treaty, Soviet authorities at first refused to recognize it. After the August coup attempt, most of the other republics followed suit. The Soviet Union ultimately recognized the secession of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on 6 September 1991. The remaining republics were recognized as independent with the Soviet Union's final dissolution in December 1991.

! #	! Republic	! Map of the Union Republics between 1956–1991
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15

Economy

The Soviet Union became the first country to adopt a planned economy, whereby production and distribution of goods were centralized and directed by the government. The first Bolshevik experience with a command economy was the policy of War Communism, which involved nationalization of industry, centralized distribution of output, coercive requisition of agricultural production, and attempts to eliminate the circulation of money, as well as private enterprises and free trade. As it had aggravated a severe economic collapse caused by the war, in 1921, Lenin replaced War Communism with the New Economic Policy (NEP), legalizing free trade and private ownership of smaller businesses. The economy recovered fairly quickly.

Following a lengthy debate among the members of Politburo over the course of economic development, by 1928–1929, upon gaining control of the country, Joseph Stalin abandoned the NEP and pushed for full central planning, starting forced collectivization of agriculture and enacting draconian labor legislation. Resources were mobilized for rapid industrialization, which greatly expanded Soviet capacity in heavy industry and capital goods during the 1930s. Preparation for war was one of the main driving forces behind industrialization, mostly due to distrust of the outside capitalistic world. As a result, the USSR was transformed from a largely agrarian economy into a great industrial power, leading the way for its emergence as a superpower after World War II. During the war, the Soviet economy and infrastructure suffered massive devastation and required extensive reconstruction.

By the early 1940s, the Soviet economy had become relatively self-sufficient; for most of the period up until the creation of Comecon, only a very small share of domestic products was traded internationally. After the creation of the Eastern Bloc, external trade rose rapidly. Still the influence of the world economy on the USSR was limited by fixed domestic prices and a state monopoly on foreign trade. Grain and sophisticated consumer manufactures became major import articles from around the 1960s. During the arms race of the Cold War, the Soviet economy was burdened by military expenditures, heavily lobbied for by a powerful bureaucracy dependent on the arms industry. At the same time, the Soviet Union became the largest arms exporter to the Third World. Significant amounts of Soviet resources during the Cold War were allocated in aid to the other socialist states.

From the 1930s until its collapse in the late 1980s, the way the Soviet economy operated remained essentially unchanged. The economy was formally directed by central planning, carried out by Gosplan and organized in five-year plans. In practice, however, the plans were highly aggregated and provisional, subject to ''ad hoc'' intervention by superiors. All key economic decisions were taken by the political leadership. Allocated resources and plan targets were normally denominated in rubles rather than in physical goods. Credit was discouraged, but widespread. Final allocation of output was achieved through relatively decentralized, unplanned contracting. Although in theory prices were legally set from above, in practice the actual prices were often negotiated, and informal horizontal links were widespread.

style="background:#d3d3d3;" colspan="3"	Comparison between USSR and US economies (1989)according to 1990 CIA World Factbook
!	USSR
GNP (Purchasing power parity	PPP adjusted, 1989)	US$2.6595 trillion
Population (July 1990)	290,938,469
GNP	GNP per capita (PPP adjusted)	US$9,211
Labour force (1989)	152,300,000

A number of basic services were state-funded, such as education and healthcare. In the manufacturing sector, heavy industry and defense were assigned higher priority than the production of consumer goods. Consumer goods, particularly outside large cities, were often in short supply, of poor quality and limited choice. Under command economy, consumers had almost no influence over production, so the changing demands of a population with growing incomes could not be satisfied by supplies at rigidly fixed prices. A massive unplanned second economy grew up alongside the planned one at low levels, providing some of the goods and services that the planners could not. Legalization of some elements of the decentralized economy was attempted with the reform of 1965.

Although statistics of the Soviet economy are notoriously unreliable and its economic growth difficult to estimate precisely, by most accounts, the economy continued to expand until the mid 1980s. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Soviet economy experienced comparatively high growth and was catching up to the West. However, after 1970, the growth, while still positive, steadily declined, much more quickly and consistently than in other countries, despite a rapid increase in the capital stock, (the rate of increase in capital was only surpassed by Japan).

Overall, between 1960 and 1989, the growth rate of per capita income in the Soviet Union was slightly above the world average (based on 102 countries). However, given the very high level of investment in physical capital, high percentage of people with a secondary education, and low population increase, the economy should have grown much faster. According to Stanley Fischer and William Easterly, the Soviet growth record was among "the worst in the world". By their calculation, per capita income of Soviet Union in 1989 should have been twice as high as it was, if investment, education and population had their typical effect on growth. The authors attribute this poor performance to low productivity of capital in the Soviet Union.

In 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev tried to reform and revitalize the economy with his program of ''perestroika''. His policies relaxed state control over enterprises, but did not yet allow it to be replaced by market incentives, ultimately resulting in a sharp decline in production output. The economy, already suffering from reduced petroleum export revenues, started to collapse. Prices were still fixed, and property was still largely state-owned until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. For most of the period after World War II up to its collapse, the Soviet economy was the second largest in the world by GDP (PPP), though in per capita terms the Soviet GDP was behind that of the First World countries.

Energy

The need for fuel declined in the Soviet Union from the 1970s to the 1980s, both per ruble of gross social product and per ruble of industrial product. At the start, this decline grew very rapidly, but gradually slowed down between 1970 and 1975. From 1975 and 1980, it grew even slower, only 2.6 percent. David Wilson, a historian, believed that the gas industry would account for 40 percent of Soviet fuel production by the end of the century. His theory did not come to fruition because of the USSR's collapse. The USSR, in theory, would have continued to have an economic growth rate of 2–2.5 percent during the 1990s because of Soviet energy fields. However, the energy sector faced many difficulties, among them the country's high military expenditure and hostile relations with the First World (pre-Gorbachev era).

In 1991, the Soviet Union had a pipeline network of for crude oil and another for natural gas. Petroleum and petroleum-based products, natural gas, metals, wood, agricultural products, and a variety of manufactured goods, primarily machinery, arms and military equipment, were exported. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet Union heavily relied on fossil fuel exports to earn hard currency. At its peak in 1988, it was the largest producer and second largest exporter of crude oil, surpassed only by Saudi Arabia.

Science and technology

The Soviet Union placed great emphasis on science and technology within its economy, however, the most remarkable Soviet successes in technology, such as producing the world's first space satellite, typically were the responsibility of the military. Lenin believed that the USSR would never overtake the developed world if it remained as technologically backward as it was. Soviet authorities proved their commitment to Lenin's belief by developing massive networks, research and development organizations. By 1989, Soviet scientists were among the world's best-trained specialists in several areas, such as energy physics, selected areas of medicine, mathematics, welding and military technologies. Due to rigid state planning and bureaucracy, the Soviets remained far behind technologically in chemistry, biology, and computers when compared to the First World.

Project Socrates, under the Reagan administration, determined that the Soviet Union addressed the acquisition of science and technology in a manner that was radically different than what the US was using at that time. In the case of the US, economic prioritization was being used for indigenous R&D; as the means to acquire science and technology in both the private and public sectors. In contrast, the Soviet Union was offensively and defensively maneuvering in the acquisition and utilization of the worldwide technology, to increase the competitive advantage that they acquired from the technology, while preventing the US from acquiring a competitive advantage. However, in addition, the Soviet Union's technology-based planning was executed in a centralized, government-centric manner that greatly hindered its flexibility. It was this significant lack of flexibility that was exploited by the US to undermine the strength of the Soviet Union and thus foster its reform.

Transport

Transport was a key component of the nation's economy. The economic centralisation of the late 1920s and 1930s led to the development of infrastructure on a massive scale, most notably the establishment of Aeroflot, an aviation enterprise. The country had a wide variety of modes of transport by land, water and air. However, due to bad maintenance, much of the road, water and Soviet civil aviation transport were outdated and technologically backward compared to the First World.

Soviet rail transport was the largest and most intensively used in the world; it was also better developed than most of its Western counterparts. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Soviet economists were calling for the construction of more roads to alleviate some of the burden from the railways and to improve the Soviet state budget. The road network and automobile industry remained underdeveloped, and dirt roads were common outside major cities. Soviet maintenance projects proved unable to take care of even the few roads the country had. By the early to mid-1980s, the Soviet authorities tried to solve the road problem by ordering the construction of new ones. The underdeveloped road network led to a growing demand for public transport.

Despite improvements, several aspects of the transport sector were still riddled with problems due to outdated infrastructure, lack of investment, corruption and bad decision-making. Soviet authorities were unable to meet the growing demand for transport infrastructure and services.

The Soviet merchant fleet was one of the largest in the world.

Demographics

The first fifty years of the 20th century in tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union were marked by a succession of disasters, each accompanied by large–scale population losses. Excess deaths over the course of World War I and the Russian Civil War (including the postwar famine) amounted to a combined total of 18 million, some 10 million in the 1930s, and more than 26 million in 1941–5. The postwar Soviet population was 45 to 50 million smaller than it would have been if pre-war demographic growth had continued.

The crude birth rate of the USSR decreased from 44.0 per thousand in 1926 to 18.0 in 1974, largely due to increasing urbanization and the rising average age of marriages. The crude death rate demonstrated a gradual decrease as well – from 23.7 per thousand in 1926 to 8.7 in 1974. In general, the birth rates of the southern republics in Transcaucasia and Central Asia were considerably higher than those in the northern parts of the Soviet Union, and in some cases even increased in the post–World War II period, a phenomenon partly attributed to slower rates of urbanization and traditionally earlier marriages in the southern republics. Soviet Europe moved towards sub-replacement fertility, while Soviet Central Asia continued to exhibit population growth well above replacement-level fertility.

The late 1960s and the 1970s witnessed a reversal of the declining trajectory of the rate of mortality in the USSR, and was especially notable among men of working age, but was also prevalent in Russia and other predominantly Slavic areas of the country. An analysis of the official data from the late 1980s showed that after worsening in the late-1970s and the early 1980s, adult mortality began to improve again. The infant mortality rate increased from 24.7 in 1970 to 27.9 in 1974. Some researchers regarded the rise as largely real, a consequence of worsening health conditions and services. The rises in both adult and infant mortality were not explained or defended by Soviet officials, and the Soviet government simply stopped publishing all mortality statistics for ten years. Soviet demographers and health specialists remained silent about the mortality increases until the late-1980s, when the publication of mortality data resumed and researchers could delve into the real causes.

Education

Prior to 1917, in the Russian Empire, education was not free, and was therefore either inaccessible or barely accessible for many children from lower-class working and peasant families. Estimates from 1917 recorded that 75–85 percent of the Russian population was illiterate.

Anatoly Lunacharsky became the first People's Commissariat for Education of Soviet Russia. At the beginning, the Soviet authorities placed great emphasis on the elimination of illiteracy. People who were literate were automatically hired as teachers. For a short period, quality was sacrificed for quantity. By 1940, Joseph Stalin could announce that illiteracy had been eliminated. In the aftermath of the Great Patriotic War, the country's educational system expanded dramatically. This expansion had a tremendous effect. In the 1960s, nearly all Soviet children had access to education, the only exception being those living in remote areas. Nikita Khrushchev tried to make education more accessible, making it clear to children that education was closely linked to the needs of society. Education also became important in creating the New Soviet Man.

Access to higher education was restricted, however; only 20 percent of all applicants were accepted. The rest entered the labor market or learned a skill at a vocational technical school or technicum. Students from families of dubious political reliability were barred from higher education. The Brezhnev administration introduced a rule that required all university applicants to present a reference from the local Komsomol party secretary. According to statistics from 1986, the number of students per 10,000 population was 181 for the USSR, compared to 517 for the US.

Ethnic groups

The Soviet Union was a very ethnically diverse country, with more than 100 distinct ethnic groups. The total population was estimated at 293 million in 1991. According to a 1990 estimate, the majority were Russians (50.78%), followed by Ukrainians (15.45%) and Uzbeks (5.84%).

All citizens of the USSR had their own ethnic affiliation. The ethnicity of a person was chosen at the age of sixteen by the child's parents. If the parents did not agree, the child was automatically assigned the ethnicity of the mother. Partly due to Soviet policies, some of the smaller minority ethnic groups were considered part of larger ones, such as the Mingrelians of the Georgian SSR, who were classified with the linguistically related Georgians. Some ethnic groups voluntarily assimilated, while others were brought in by force. Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians shared close cultural ties, while other groups did not. With multiple nationalities living in the same territory, ethnic antagonisms developed over the years.

Health

In 1917, before the Bolshevik uprising, health conditions were significantly behind the developed countries. As Lenin later noted, "Either the lice will defeat socialism, or socialism will defeat the lice". The Soviet principle of health care was conceived by the People's Commissariat for Health in 1918. Health care was to be controlled by the state and would be provided to its citizens free of charge. Article 42 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution gave all citizens the right to health protection and free access to any health institutions in the USSR. However, the Soviet Union's health care system was not able to fulfill all the needs of its people. Before Leonid Brezhnev rose to power, Soviet socialised medicine was held in high esteem by many foreign specialists. This changed however, from Brezhnev's accession and Mikhail Gorbachev's tenure as leader, the Soviet health care system was heavily criticised for many basic faults, such as the quality of service and the unevenness in its provision. Minister of Health Yevgeniy Chazov, during the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, while highlighting such Soviet success as having the most doctors and hospitals in the world, recognised the system's deficiencies and felt that billions of Soviet rubles were squandered.

After the communist takeover, the life expectancy for all age groups went up. This statistic was used by authorities to "prove" that the socialist system was superior to the capitalist system. These improvements continued into the 1960s, when the life expectancy in the Soviet Union surpassed that of the United States. It remained fairly stable during most years, although in the 1970s, it went down slightly, probably because of alcohol abuse. Most western sources put the blame on growing alcohol abuse and poor health care; this theory was also implicitly accepted by the Soviet authorities. At the same time, infant mortality began to rise. After 1974, the government stopped publishing statistics on this. This trend can be partly explained by the number of pregnancies rising drastically in the Asian part of the country where infant mortality was highest, while declining markedly in the more developed European part of the Soviet Union.

Language

The Soviet government headed by Vladimir Lenin gave small language groups their own writing systems. The development of these writing systems was very successful, even though some flaws were detected. During the later days of the USSR, countries with the same multilingual situation implemented similar policies. A serious problem when creating these writing systems was that the languages differed dialectally greatly from each other. When a language had been given a writing system and appeared in a notable publication, that language would attain "official language" status. There were many minority languages which never received their own writing system, therefore their speakers were forced to have a second language. There are examples where the Soviet government retreated from this policy, most notable under Stalin's regime, where education was discontinued in languages which were not widespread enough. These languages were then assimilated into another language, mostly Russian. During the Great Patriotic War (World War II), some minority languages were banned, and their speakers accused of collaborating with the enemy.

As the most widely-spoken of the Soviet Union's many languages, Russian ''de facto'' functioned as an official language as the "language of interethnic communication" (), but only assumed the ''de jure'' status of the official national language in 1990.

Religion

Christianity and Islam had the greatest number of adherents among the Soviet state's religious citizens. Eastern Christianity predominated among Christians, with Russia's traditional Russian Orthodox Church being the Soviet Union's largest Christian denomination. About 90 percent of the Soviet Union's Muslims were Sunnis, with Shiites concentrated in the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic. Smaller groups included Roman Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, and a variety of Protestant sects.

Religious influence had been strong in the Russian Empire. The Russian Orthodox Church enjoyed a privileged status as the church of the monarchy and took part in carrying out official state functions. The immediate period following the establishment of the Soviet state included a struggle against the Orthodox Church, which the revolutionaries considered an ally of the former ruling classes.

In Soviet law, the "freedom to hold religious services" was constitutionally guaranteed, although the ruling Communist Party regarded religion as incompatible with the Marxist spirit of scientific materialism. Among further restrictions, those adopted in 1929, a half-decade into Stalin's rule, included express prohibitions on a range of church activities, including meetings for organized Bible study.

Convinced that religious anti-Sovietism had become a thing of the past, the Stalin regime began shifting to a more moderate religion policy in the late 1930s. Soviet religious establishments overwhelmingly rallied to support the war effort during the Soviet war with Nazi Germany. Amid other accommodations to religious faith, churches were reopened, Radio Moscow began broadcasting a religious hour, and a historic meeting between Stalin and Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Sergius I of Moscow was held in 1943.

The Soviet establishment again clashed with the churches under General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev's leadership in 19581964, a period when atheism was emphasized in the educational curriculum, and numerous state publications promoted atheistic views. The number of working mosques also declined, falling from 1,500 to 500 within a decade. Official relations between the Orthodox Church and the Soviet government again warmed to the point that the Brezhnev government twice honored Orthodox Patriarch Alexey II with Soviet decorations, including the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.

Culture

The culture of the Soviet Union passed through several stages during the USSR's 70-year existence. During the first eleven years following the Revolution (1918–1929), there was relative freedom and artists experimented with several different styles in an effort to find a distinctive Soviet style of art. Lenin wanted art to be accessible to the Russian people. On the other hand, hundreds of intellectuals, writers, and artists were exiled or executed, and their work banned, for example Nikolay Gumilev (shot for conspiring against the Bolshevik regime) and Yevgeny Zamyatin (banned).

The government encouraged a variety of trends. In art and literature, numerous schools, some traditional and others radically experimental, proliferated. Communist writers Maksim Gorky and Vladimir Mayakovsky were active during this time. Film, as a means of influencing a largely illiterate society, received encouragement from the state; much of director Sergei Eisenstein's best work dates from this period.

Later, during Stalin's rule, Soviet culture was characterised by the rise and domination of the government-imposed style of socialist realism, with all other trends being severely repressed, with rare exceptions, for example Mikhail Bulgakov's works. Many writers were imprisoned and killed.

Following the Khrushchev Thaw of the late 1950s and early 1960s, censorship was diminished. Greater experimentation in art forms became permissible once again, with the result that more sophisticated and subtly critical work began to be produced. The regime loosened its emphasis on socialist realism; thus, for instance, many protagonists of the novels of author Yury Trifonov concerned themselves with problems of daily life rather than with building socialism. An underground dissident literature, known as ''samizdat'', developed during this late period. In architecture the Khrushchev era mostly focused on functional design as opposed to the highly decorated style of Stalin's epoch.

In the second half of the 1980s, Gorbachev's policies of ''perestroika'' and ''glasnost'' significantly expanded freedom of expression in the media and press.

See also

Index of Soviet Union-related articles

Evil empire

Notes

Bibliography

Madhavan K. Palat, Social Identities in Revolutionary Russia, ed. (Macmillan, Palgrave, UK, and St Martin’s Press, New York, 2001)

Further reading

;Surveys

''A Country Study: Soviet Union (Former)''. Library of Congress Country Studies, 1991.

Brown, Archie, et al., eds.: ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union'' (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

Gilbert, Martin: ''The Routledge Atlas of Russian History'' (London: Routledge, 2002).

Goldman, Minton: ''The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe'' (Connecticut: Global Studies, Dushkin Publishing Group, Inc., 1986).

Grant, Ted: ''Russia, from Revolution to Counter-Revolution'', London, Well Red Publications,1997

Howe, G. Melvyn: ''The Soviet Union: A Geographical Survey'' 2nd. edn. (Estover, UK: MacDonald and Evans, 1983).

Pipes, Richard. ''Communism: A History'' (2003), by a leading conservative scholar

;Lenin and Leninism

Clark, Ronald W. ''Lenin'' (1988). 570 pp.

Debo, Richard K. ''Survival and Consolidation: The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1918–1921'' (1992).

Marples, David R. ''Lenin's Revolution: Russia, 1917–1921'' (2000) 156pp. short survey

Pipes, Richard. ''A Concise History of the Russian Revolution'' (1996) excerpt and text search, by a leading conservative

Pipes, Richard. ''Russia under the Bolshevik Regime.'' (1994). 608 pp.

Service, Robert. ''Lenin: A Biography'' (2002), 561pp; standard scholarly biography; a short version of his 3 vol detailed biography

Volkogonov, Dmitri. ''Lenin: Life and Legacy'' (1994). 600 pp.

;Stalin and Stalinism

Daniels, R. V., ed. ''The Stalin Revolution'' (1965)

Davies, Sarah, and James Harris, eds. ''Stalin: A New History,'' (2006), 310pp, 14 specialized essays by scholars excerpt and text search

De Jonge, Alex. ''Stalin and the Shaping of the Soviet Union'' (1986)

Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ed. ''Stalinism: New Directions,'' (1999), 396pp excerpts from many scholars on the impact of Stalinism on the people (little on Stalin himself) online edition

Hoffmann, David L. ed. ''Stalinism: The Essential Readings,'' (2002) essays by 12 scholars

Laqueur, Walter. ''Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations'' (1990)

Kershaw, Ian, and Moshe Lewin. ''Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison'' (2004) excerpt and text search

Lee, Stephen J. ''Stalin and the Soviet Union'' (1999) online edition

Lewis, Jonathan. ''Stalin: A Time for Judgement'' (1990)

McNeal, Robert H. ''Stalin: Man and Ruler'' (1988)

Martens, Ludo. ''Another view of Stalin'' (1994), a highly favorable view from a Maoist historian

Service, Robert. ''Stalin: A Biography'' (2004), along with Tucker the standard biography

Trotsky, Leon. ''Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence,'' (1967), an interpretation by Stalin's worst enemy

Tucker, Robert C. ''Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879–1929'' (1973); ''Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1929–1941.'' (1990) online edition with Service, a standard biography; online at ACLS e-books

;World War II

Bellamy, Chris. ''Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War'' (2008), 880pp excerpt and text search

Broekmeyer, Marius. ''Stalin, the Russians, and Their War, 1941–1945.'' 2004. 315 pp.

Overy, Richard. ''Russia's War: A History of the Soviet Effort: 1941–1945'' (1998) excerpt and text search

Roberts, Geoffrey. ''Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939–1953'' (2006).

Seaton, Albert. ''Stalin as Military Commander,'' (1998) online edition

;Cold war

Brzezinski, Zbigniew. ''The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century'' (1989)

Edmonds, Robin. ''Soviet Foreign Policy: The Brezhnev Years'' (1983)

Goncharov, Sergei, John Lewis and Litai Xue, ''Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao and the Korean War'' (1993) excerpt and text search

Gorlizki, Yoram, and Oleg Khlevniuk. ''Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953'' (2004) online edition

Holloway, David. ''Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956'' (1996) excerpt and text search

Mastny, Vojtech. ''Russia's Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism, 1941–1945'' (1979)

Mastny, Vojtech. ''The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years'' (1998) excerpt and text search; online complete edition

Nation, R. Craig. ''Black Earth, Red Star: A History of Soviet Security Policy, 1917–1991'' (1992)

Sivachev, Nikolai and Nikolai Yakolev, ''Russia and the United States'' (1979), by Soviet historians

Taubman, William. ''Khrushchev: The Man and His Era'' (2004), Pulitzer Prize; excerpt and text search

Ulam, Adam B. ''Expansion and Coexistence: Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1973'', 2nd ed. (1974)

Zubok, Vladislav M. ''Inside the Kremlin's Cold War'' (1996) 20% excerpt and online search

Zubok, Vladislav M. ''A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev'' (2007)

;Collapse

Beschloss, Michael, and Strobe Talbott. ''At the Highest Levels:The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War'' (1993)

Bialer, Seweryn and Michael Mandelbaum, eds. ''Gorbachev's Russia and American Foreign Policy'' (1988).

Garthoff, Raymond. ''The Great Transition: American–Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War'' (1994), detailed narrative

Grachev, A.S. ''Gorbachev's Gamble: Soviet Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War'' (2008) excerpt and text search

Hogan, Michael ed. ''The End of the Cold War. Its Meaning and Implications'' (1992) articles from ''Diplomatic History''

Kotkin, Stephen. ''Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970–2000'' (2008) excerpt and text search

Matlock, Jack. ''Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union'' (1995)

Pons, S., Romero, F., ''Reinterpreting the End of the Cold War: Issues, Interpretations, Periodizations'', (2005) ISBN 978–0–7146–5695–X

Remnick, David. ''Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire'', (1994), ISBN 978–0–679–75125–4

;Specialty studies

Armstrong, John A. ''The Politics of Totalitarianism: The Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1934 to the Present.'' New York: Random House, 1961.

Katz, Zev, ed.: ''Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities'' (New York: Free Press, 1975).

Moore, Jr., Barrington. ''Soviet politics: the dilemma of power.'' Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950.

Dmitry Orlov, ''Reinventing Collapse'', New Society Books, 2008, ISBN 978–0–86571–606–3

Rizzi, Bruno: "The Bureaucratization of the World : The First English edition of the Underground Marxist Classic That Analyzed Class Exploitation in the USSR", New York, NY : Free Press, 1985.

Schapiro, Leonard B. ''The Origin of the Communist Autocracy: Political Opposition in the Soviet State, First Phase 1917–1922.'' Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955, 1966.

External links

Impressions of Soviet Russia, by John Dewey.

Documents and other forms of media from the Soviet Union: 1917–1991.

A Country Study: Soviet Union (Former)

Soviet Union Exhibit at Global Museum on Communism with essay by Richard Pipes

The Soviet Union

Category:History of the Soviet Union and Soviet Russia Category:Communism in Russia Category:Communist states Category:Early Soviet republics Category:States and territories established in 1922 Category:Former Slavic countries Category:Single-party states Category:History of Russia Category:Former polities of the Cold War Category:Superpowers Category:Former member states of the United Nations

af:Sowjetunie als:Sowjetunion am:ሶቪዬት ሕብረት ang:Sofiete Ȝesamnung ar:الاتحاد السوفيتي an:Unión de Republicas Socialistas Sovieticas ast:Xunión Soviética az:Sovet Sosialist Respublikaları İttifaqı bn:সোভিয়েত ইউনিয়ন zh-min-nan:Soviet Siā-hōe-chú-gī Kiōng-hô-kok Liân-ha̍p ba:Советтар Союзы be:Саюз Савецкіх Сацыялістычных Рэспублік be-x-old:Саюз Савецкіх Сацыялістычных Рэспублік bar:Sowjetunion bs:Savez sovjetskih socijalističkih republika br:Unaniezh ar Republikoù Sokialour ha Soviedel bg:Съюз на съветските социалистически републики ca:Unió de Repúbliques Socialistes Soviètiques cv:СССР ceb:Unyong Sobyet cs:Sovětský svaz cy:Yr Undeb Sofietaidd da:Sovjetunionen de:Sowjetunion dsb:Sowjetski zwězk et:Nõukogude Liit el:Ένωση Σοβιετικών Σοσιαλιστικών Δημοκρατιών es:Unión Soviética eo:Sovetunio ext:Union Soviética eu:Sobietar Errepublika Sozialisten Batasuna fa:اتحاد جماهیر شوروی سوسیالیستی fo:Sovjetsamveldið fr:Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques fy:Sowjetuny ga:An tAontas Sóivéadach gv:Unnaneys ny Pobblaghtyn Soveidjagh Soshiallagh gd:Aonadh Sobhiat gl:Unión Soviética gan:蘇聯 gu:સોવિયેત યુનિયન ko:소비에트 연방 hy:Խորհրդային Սոցիալիստական Հանրապետությունների Միություն hi:सोवियत संघ hsb:Sowjetski zwjazk hr:Sovjetski Savez io:Soviet-Uniono id:Uni Soviet ia:Union Sovietic os:Советон Цæдис is:Sovétríkin it:Unione Sovietica he:ברית המועצות jv:Uni Sovyèt kn:ಸೊವಿಯೆಟ್ ಒಕ್ಕೂಟ ka:საბჭოთა სოციალისტური რესპუბლიკების კავშირი kk:Кеңестік Социалистік Республикалар Одағы kw:URSS ky:Советтик Социалисттик Республикалар Союзу sw:Umoja wa Kisovyeti ku:Yekîtiya Komarên Sovyet ên Sosyalîst la:Unio Rerum Publicarum Sovieticarum Socialisticarum lv:Padomju Savienība lb:Sowjetunioun lt:Tarybų Sąjunga lij:Union de e Repubbriche Soçialiste Sovietiche jbo:sofygu'e hu:Szovjetunió mk:Сојуз на Советските Социјалистички Републики ml:സോവിയറ്റ് യൂണിയന്‍ mr:सोव्हियेत संघ arz:الاتحاد السوفييتى mzn:شوروی ms:Kesatuan Republik Sosialis Soviet mdf:Советонь Соткс mn:Зөвлөлт Холбоот Улс my:ဆိုဗီယက် ပြည်ထောင်စု nl:Sovjet-Unie nds-nl:Sovjet-Unie ne:सोवियत संघ ja:ソビエト連邦 frr:Sowjetunion no:Sovjetunionen nn:Sovjetunionen nrm:Unnion Soviétique oc:Union de las Republicas Socialistas Sovieticas mhr:Совет Ушем uz:Sovet Sotsialistlik Respublikalar Ittifoqi pnb:سویت یونین pap:Union Sovietiko km:សហភាព​សូវៀត nds:Sowjetunion pl:Związek Socjalistycznych Republik Radzieckich pt:União Soviética kbd:Республикэ Совет Социал Зэгуэтхэр crh:Şuralar Sotsialistik Cumhuriyetler Birligi ro:Uniunea Republicilor Sovietice Socialiste qu:Susyalista Suwit Republikakunap Huñun ru:Союз Советских Социалистических Республик sah:Сэбиэт Социалист Республикалар Холбоhуга se:Sovjetlihttu sco:Soviet Union stq:Sowjetunion sq:Bashkimi Sovjetik scn:Unioni Suviètica si:සෝවියට් සංගමය simple:Union of Soviet Socialist Republics sk:Sovietsky zväz cu:Съвѣтьскъ Социалистичьскъ Димократїи Съвѫꙁъ sl:Sovjetska zveza szl:Sojusz Socjalistycznych Sowjeckich Republik so:Midowga Sofiyet sr:Савез Совјетских Социјалистичких Република sh:Sovjetski Savez fi:Neuvostoliitto sv:Sovjetunionen tl:Unyong Sobyet ta:சோவியத் ஒன்றியம் tt:Sovet Sosialist Cömhüriätlär Berlege te:సోవియట్ యూనియన్ th:สหภาพโซเวียต tg:Иттиҳоди Шӯравӣ tr:Sovyet Sosyalist Cumhuriyetler Birliği udm:Советской Социалистической Республикаослэн Союззы uk:Союз Радянських Соціалістичних Республік ur:سوویت اتحاد ug:سوۋېت ئىتتىپاقى za:Suhlienz vec:Union Sovietica vi:Liên Xô fiu-vro:Nõvvokogo Liit wa:URSS war:Unyon Sobyet wo:Soviet Yi Benno yi:סאוועטן פארבאנד yo:Ìsọ̀kan Sófìẹ̀tì zh-yue:蘇聯 diq:YCSS bat-smg:Tarību Sājonga zh:苏联

Name	Mikhail GorbachevМихаил Горбачёв
Order	Head of state of the Soviet Union(President of the Soviet Union from 15 March 1990)
Term start	1 October 1988
Term end	25 December 1991
Vicepresident	Gennady Yanayev
Primeminister	Nikolai RyzhkovValentin PavlovIvan Silayev
Predecessor	Andrei Gromyko
Successor	Office abolished
Order2	6th General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Deputy2	Vladimir Ivashko
Term start2	11 March 1985
Term end2	24 August 1991
Predecessor2	Konstantin Chernenko
Successor2	Vladimir Ivashko (Acting)
Birth date	March 02, 1931
Birth place	Privolnoye, Stavropol Krai, Russian SFSR, USSR
Birthname	Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
Party	Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1950–1991)Social Democratic Party of Russia (2001–2004)Union of Social Democrats (2007–present)Independent Democratic Party of Russia (2008–present)
Spouse	Raisa Gorbachova(d. 1999)
Alma mater	Moscow State University
Profession	Lawyer
Religion	See religious affiliation
Signature	Gorbachev Signature.svg
Website	The Gorbachev Foundation }}

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (; born 2 March 1931) is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991. He was the only general secretary in the history of the Soviet Union to have been born during the Communist rule.

Gorbachev was born in Stavropol Krai into a peasant Ukrainian-Russian family, and in his teens operated combine harvesters on collective farms. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1955 with a degree in law. While he was at the university, he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and soon became very active within it. In 1970, he was appointed the First Party Secretary of the Stavropol Kraikom, First Secretary to the Supreme Soviet in 1974, and appointed a member of the Politburo in 1979. Within three years of the deaths of Soviet Leaders Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko, Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo in 1985. Already before he reached the post, he had occasionally been mentioned in western newspapers as a likely next leader and a man of the younger generation at the top level.

Gorbachev's attempts at reform as well as summit conferences with United States President Ronald Reagan and his reorientation of Soviet strategic aims contributed to the end of the Cold War, ended the political supremacy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), and led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. For these efforts, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 and the Harvey Prize in 1992.

In September 2008, Gorbachev and billionaire Alexander Lebedev announced they would form the Independent Democratic Party of Russia, and in May 2009 Gorbachev announced that the launch was imminent. This was Gorbachev's third attempt to establish a political party, after having started the Social Democratic Party of Russia in 2001 and the Union of Social-Democrats in 2007.

Early life

Gorbachev was born on 2 March 1931 in Stavropol, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union into a mixed Russian-Ukrainian family of migrants from Voronezh and Chernigov Governorates. His father was a combine harvester operator and World War II veteran called Sergey Andreyevich Gorbachev. His mother, Maria Panteleyevna Gorbacheva (née Gopkalo) was a kolkhoz worker. In his teens he operated combine harvesters on collective farms. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1955 with a degree in law. In 1967 he qualified as an agricultural economist via correspondence masters degree at the Stavropol Institute of Agriculture. While at university, he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and soon became very active within it.

Marriage and family

Gorbachev met his future wife, Raisa Titarenko, at Moscow State University. They married in September 1953 and moved to Stavropol upon graduation. She gave birth to their only child, daughter Irina Mikhailovna Virganskaya (Ири́на Миха́йловна Вирга́нская), in 1957. Raisa Gorbachova died of leukemia in 1999.

Rise in the Communist Party

Gorbachev attended the important twenty-second Party Congress in October 1961, where Nikita Khrushchev announced a plan to surpass the U.S. in per capita production within twenty years. At this point in his life, Gorbachev would rise in the Communist League hierarchy and worked his way up through territorial leagues of the party. He was promoted to Head of the Department of Party Organs in the Stavropol Agricultural Kraikom in 1963.

In 1970, he was appointed First Party Secretary of the Stavropol Kraikom, a body of the CPSU, becoming one of the youngest provincial party chiefs in the nation. In this position he helped reorganise the collective farms, improve workers' living conditions, expand the size of their private plots, and gave them a greater voice in planning.

He was soon made a member of the Communist Party Central Committee in 1971. Three years later, in 1974, he was made a Deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and Chairman of the Standing Commission on Youth Affairs. He was subsequently appointed to the Central Committee's Secretariat for Agriculture in 1978, replacing Fyodor Kulakov, who had supported Gorbachev's appointment, after Kulakov died of a heart attack. In 1979, Gorbachev was promoted to the Politburo, the highest authority in the country, and received full membership in 1980. Gorbachev owed his steady rise to power to the patronage of Mikhail Suslov, the powerful chief ideologist of the CPSU.

During Yuri Andropov's tenure as General Secretary (1982–1984), Gorbachev became one of the Politburo's most visible and active members. With responsibility over personnel, working together with Andropov, 20 percent of the top echelon of government ministers and regional governors were replaced, often with younger men. During this time Grigory Romanov, Nikolai Ryzhkov, and Yegor Ligachev were elevated, the latter two working closely with Gorbachev, Ryzhkov on economics, Ligachev on personnel.

Gorbachev's positions within the CPSU created more opportunities to travel abroad, and this would profoundly affect his political and social views in the future as leader of the country. In 1972, he headed a Soviet delegation to Belgium, and three years later he led a delegation to West Germany; in 1983 he headed a delegation to Canada to meet with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and members of the Commons and Senate. In 1984, he travelled to the United Kingdom, where he met British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Upon Andropov's death in 1984, the aged Konstantin Chernenko took power; after his death the following year, it became clear to the party hierarchy that younger leadership was needed. Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo on 11 March 1985, only three hours after Chernenko's death. Upon his accession at age 54, he was the youngest member of the Politburo.

General Secretary of the CPSU

Mikhail Gorbachev was the Party's first leader to have been born after the Revolution. As de facto ruler of the USSR, he tried to reform the stagnating Party and the state economy by introducing ''glasnost'' ("openness"), ''perestroika'' ("restructuring"), ''demokratizatsiya'' ("democratization"), and ''uskoreniye'' ("acceleration" of economic development), which were launched at the 27th Congress of the CPSU in February 1986.

Domestic reforms

Gorbachev's primary goal as General Secretary was to revive the Soviet economy after the stagnant Brezhnev years. In 1985, he announced that the Soviet economy was stalled and that reorganization was needed. Gorbachev proposed a "vague programme of reform", which was adopted at the April Plenum of the Central Committee. He called for fast-paced technological modernization and increased industrial and agricultural productivity, and he attempted to reform the Soviet bureaucracy to be more efficient and prosperous.

Gorbachev soon realized that fixing the Soviet economy would be nearly impossible without reforming the political and social structure of the Communist nation. Gorbachev also initiated the concept of ''gospriyomka'' (state acceptance of production) during his time as leader, which represented state approval of goods in an effort to maintain quality control and combat inferior manufacturing.

He made a speech in May 1985 in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) advocating widespread reforms. The reforms began in personnel changes; the most notable change was the replacement of Andrei Gromyko as Minister of Foreign Affairs with Eduard Shevardnadze. Gromyko, disparaged as "Mr Nyet" in the West, had served for 28 years as Minister of Foreign Affairs and was considered an 'old thinker'. Robert D. English notes that, despite Shevardnadze's diplomatic inexperience, Gorbachev "shared with him an outlook" and experience in managing an agricultural region of the Soviet Union (Georgia), which meant that both had weak links to the powerful military-industrial complex.

A number of reformist ideas were discussed by Politburo members. One of the first reforms Gorbachev introduced was the anti-alcohol campaign, begun in May 1985, which was designed to fight widespread alcoholism in the Soviet Union. Prices of vodka, wine, and beer were raised, and their sales were restricted. It was pursued vigorously and cut both alcohol sales and government revenue. It was a serious blow to the state budget—a loss of approximately 100 billion rubles according to Alexander Yakovlev—after alcohol production migrated to the black market economy. The program proved to be a useful symbol for change in the country, however.

The purpose of reform, however, was to prop up the centrally-planned economy, not transition to market socialism. Speaking in late summer 1985 to the secretaries for economic affairs of the central committees of the East European communist parties, Gorbachev said: "Many of you see the solution to your problems in resorting to market mechanisms in place of direct planning. Some of you look at the market as a lifesaver for your economies. But, comrades, you should not think about lifesavers but about the ship, and the ship is socialism."

''Perestroika''

Gorbachev initiated his new policy of ''perestroika'' and its attendant radical reforms in 1986; they were sketched, but not fully spelled out, at the XXVIIth Party Congress in February–March 1986. The new policy of "reconstruction" was introduced in an attempt to overcome the economic stagnation by creating a dependable and effective mechanism for accelerating economic and social progress.

According to Gorbachev, ''perestroika'' was the "conference of development of democracy, socialist self-government, encouragement of initiative and creative endeavor, improved order and disciple, more glasnost, criticism and self-criticism in all spheres of our society. It is utmost respect for the individual and consideration for personal dignity."

Domestic changes continued apace. In a bombshell speech during Armenian SSR's Central Committee Plenum of the Communist Party the young First Secretary of Armenia's Hrazdan Regional Communist Party, Hayk Kotanjian, criticised rampant corruption in the Armenian Communist Party's highest echelons, implicating Armenian SSR Communist Party First Secretary Karen Demirchyan and calling for his resignation. Symbolically, intellectual Andrei Sakharov was invited to return to Moscow by Gorbachev in December 1986 after six years of internal exile in Gorky. During the same month, however, signs of the nationalities problem that would haunt the later years of the Soviet Union surfaced as riots, named Jeltoqsan, occurred in Kazakhstan after Dinmukhamed Kunayev was replaced as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan.

The Central Committee Plenum in January 1987 would see the crystallisation of Gorbachev's political reforms, including proposals for multi-candidate elections and the appointment of non-Party members to government positions. He also first raised the idea of expanding co-operatives at the plenum. Economic reforms took up much of the rest of 1987, as a new law giving enterprises more independence was passed in June and Gorbachev released a book, ''Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World'', in November, elucidating his main ideas for reform. In 1987 he rehabilitated many opponents of Joseph Stalin, another part of the De-Stalinization, which began in 1956, when Lenin's Testament was published.

''Glasnost''

1988 would see Gorbachev's introduction of ''glasnost'', which gave new freedoms to the Soviet people, including greater freedom of speech. This was a radical change, as control of speech and suppression of government criticism had previously been a central part of the Soviet system. The press became far less controlled, and thousands of political prisoners and many dissidents were released. Gorbachev's goal in undertaking ''glasnost'' was to pressure conservatives within the CPSU who opposed his policies of economic restructuring, and he also hoped that through different ranges of openness, debate and participation, the Soviet people would support his reform initiatives. At the same time, he opened himself and his reforms up for more public criticism, evident in Nina Andreyeva's critical letter in a March edition of ''Sovetskaya Rossiya''. Gorbachev acknowledged that his liberalising policies of ''glasnost'' and ''perestroika'' owed a great deal to Alexander Dubček's "Socialism with a human face".

The Law on Cooperatives enacted in May 1988 was perhaps the most radical of the economic reforms during the early part of the Gorbachev era. For the first time since Vladimir Lenin's New Economic Policy, the law permitted private ownership of businesses in the service, manufacturing, and foreign-trade sectors. The law initially imposed high taxes and employment restrictions, although these were ignored by some SSRs. Later the restrictions were revised to avoid discouraging private-sector activity. Under the provision for private ownership, cooperative restaurants, shops, and manufacturers became part of the Soviet scene. Under the new law, the restructuring of large 'All-Union' industrial organisations also began. Aeroflot was split up, eventually becoming several independent airlines. These newly autonomous business organisations were encouraged to seek foreign investment.

In June 1988, at the CPSU's Party Conference, Gorbachev launched radical reforms meant to reduce party control of the government apparatus. He proposed a new executive in the form of a presidential system, as well as a new legislative element, to be called the Congress of People's Deputies. Elections to the Congress of People's Deputies were held throughout the Soviet Union in March and April 1989. This was the first free election in the Soviet Union since 1917. Gorbachev became Chairman of the Supreme Soviet (or head of state) on 25 May 1989.

Presidency of the USSR

On 15 March 1990, Gorbachev was elected as the first executive President of the Soviet Union with 59% of the Deputies' votes being an unopposed candidate. The Congress met for the first time on 25 May in order to elect representatives from Congress to sit on the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, the Congress posed problems for Gorbachev; its sessions were televised, airing more criticism and encouraging people to expect ever more rapid reform. In the elections, many Party candidates were defeated. Furthermore, Boris Yeltsin was elected in Moscow and returned to political prominence to become an increasingly vocal critic of Gorbachev.

Foreign engagements

In contrast to his controversial domestic reforms, Gorbachev was largely hailed in the West for his 'New Thinking' in foreign affairs. During his tenure, he sought to improve relations and trade with the West by reducing Cold War tensions. He established close relationships with several Western leaders, such as West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, U.S. President Ronald Reagan, and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher—who famously remarked: "I like Mr. Gorbachev; we can do business together."

Gorbachev understood the link between achieving international détente and domestic reform and thus began extending 'New Thinking' abroad immediately. On 8 April 1985, he announced the suspension of the deployment of SS-20s in Europe as a move towards resolving intermediate-range nuclear weapons (INF) issues. Later that year, in September, Gorbachev proposed that the Soviets and Americans both cut their nuclear arsenals in half. He went to France on his first trip abroad as Soviet leader in October. November saw the Geneva Summit between Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan. Though no concrete agreement was made, Gorbachev and Reagan struck a personal relationship and decided to hold further meetings.

January 1986 would see Gorbachev make his boldest international move so far, when he announced his proposal for the elimination of intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe and his strategy for eliminating all nuclear weapons by the year 2000 (often referred to as the 'January Proposal'). He also began the process of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan and Mongolia on 28 July. Nonetheless, many observers, such as Jack F. Matlock Jr. (despite generally praising Gorbachev as well as Reagan), have criticized Gorbachev for taking too long to achieve withdrawal from the Afghanistan War, citing it as an example of lingering elements of 'old thinking' in Gorbachev.

On 11 October 1986, Gorbachev and Reagan met in Reykjavík, Iceland at Höfði to discuss reducing intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe. To the immense surprise of both men's advisers, the two agreed in principle to removing INF systems from Europe and to equal global limits of 100 INF missile warheads. They also essentially agreed in principle to eliminate all nuclear weapons in 10 years (by 1996), instead of by the year 2000 as in Gorbachev's original outline. Continuing trust issues, particularly over reciprocity and Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), meant that the summit is often regarded as a failure for not producing a concrete agreement immediately, or for leading to a staged elimination of nuclear weapons. In the long term, nevertheless, this would culminate in the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 1987, after Gorbachev had proposed this elimination on 22 July 1987 (and it was subsequently agreed on in Geneva on 24 November).

In February 1988, Gorbachev announced the full withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. The withdrawal was completed the following year, although the civil war continued as the Mujahedin pushed to overthrow the pro-Soviet Najibullah government. An estimated 28,000 Soviets were killed between 1979 and 1989 as a result of the Afghanistan War. Also during 1988, Gorbachev announced that the Soviet Union would abandon the Brezhnev Doctrine, and allow the Eastern bloc nations to freely determine their own internal affairs. Jokingly dubbed the "Sinatra Doctrine" by Gorbachev's Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov, this policy of non-intervention in the affairs of the other Warsaw Pact states proved to be the most momentous of Gorbachev's foreign policy reforms. In his 6 July 1989 speech arguing for a "common European home" before the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, Gorbachev declared: "The social and political order in some countries changed in the past, and it can change in the future too, but this is entirely a matter for each people to decide. Any interference in the internal affairs, or any attempt to limit the sovereignty of another state, friend, ally, or another, would be inadmissible." A month earlier, on 4 June 1989, elections had taken place in Poland and the communist government had already been deposed.

Moscow's abandonment of the Brezhnev Doctrine allowed the rise of popular upheavals in Eastern Europe throughout 1989, in which Communism was overthrown. By the end of 1989, revolts had spread from one Eastern European capital to another, ousting the regimes built in Eastern Europe after World War II. With the exception of Romania, the popular upheavals against the pro-Soviet Communist regimes were all peaceful ones (''see Revolutions of 1989''). The loosening of Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe effectively ended the Cold War, and for this, Gorbachev was awarded the Otto Hahn Peace Medal in Gold in 1989 and the Nobel Peace Prize on 15 October 1990.

The rest of 1989 was taken up by the increasingly problematic nationalities question and the dramatic fragmentation of the Eastern Bloc. Despite international détente reaching unprecedented levels, with the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan completed in January and U.S.-Soviet talks continuing between Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush, domestic reforms were suffering from increasing divergence between reformists, who criticised the pace of change, and conservatives, who criticized the extent of change. Gorbachev states that he tried to find the middle ground between both groups, but this would draw more criticism towards him. The story from this point on moves away from reforms and becomes one of the nationalities question and the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union.

On 9 November, people in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany/GDR) were suddenly allowed to cross through the Berlin Wall into West Berlin, following a peaceful protest against the country's dictatorial administration, including a demonstration by some one million people in East Berlin on 4 November. Unlike earlier riots which were ended by military force with the help of USSR, Gorbachev, who came to be lovingly called "Gorby" in West Germany, now decided not to interfere with the process in Germany. He stated that German reunification was an internal German matter.

Coit D. Blacker wrote in 1990 that the Soviet leadership "appeared to have believed that whatever loss of authority the Soviet Union might suffer in Eastern Europe would be more than offset by a net increase in its influence in Western Europe." Nevertheless, it is unlikely that Gorbachev ever intended for the complete dismantling of Communism in the Warsaw Pact countries. Rather, he assumed that the Communist parties of Eastern Europe could be reformed in a similar way to the reforms he hoped to achieve in the CPSU. Just as ''perestroika'' was aimed at making the USSR more efficient economically and politically, Gorbachev believed that the Comecon and Warsaw Pact could be reformed into more effective entities. Alexander Yakovlev, a close advisor to Gorbachev, would later state that it would have been "absurd to keep the system" in Eastern Europe. In contrast to Gorbachev, Yakovlev had come to the conclusion that the Soviet-dominated Comecon was inherently unworkable and that the Warsaw Pact had "no relevance to real life."

Dissolution of the Soviet Union

While Gorbachev's political initiatives were positive for freedom and democracy in the Soviet Union and its Eastern bloc allies, the economic policy of his government gradually brought the country close to disaster. By the end of the 1980s, severe shortages of basic food supplies (meat, sugar) led to the reintroduction of the war-time system of distribution using food cards that limited each citizen to a certain amount of product per month. Compared to 1985, the state deficit grew from 0 to 109 billion rubles; gold funds decreased from 2,000 to 200 tons; and external debt grew from 0 to 120 billion dollars.

Furthermore, the democratisation of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe had irreparably undermined the power of the CPSU and Gorbachev himself. The relaxation of censorship and attempts to create more political openness had the unintended effect of re-awakening long-suppressed nationalist and anti-Russian feelings in the Soviet republics. Calls for greater independence from Moscow's rule grew louder, especially in the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia which had been annexed into the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin in 1940. Nationalist feeling also took hold in Georgia, Ukraine, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

In December 1986, the first signs of the nationalities problem that would haunt the later years of the Soviet Union's existence surfaced as riots, named Jeltoqsan, occurred in Alma Ata and other areas of Kazakhstan after Dinmukhamed Kunayev was replaced as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. Nationalism would then surface in Russia in May 1987, as 600 members of Pamyat, a nascent Russian nationalist group, demonstrated in Moscow and were becoming increasingly linked to Boris Yeltsin, who received their representatives at a meeting.

Glasnost hastened awareness of the national sovereignty problem. The free flow of information had been so completely suppressed for so long in the Soviet Union that many of the ruling class had all but forgotten that the Soviet Union was an empire conquered through military force and consolidated by the persecution of millions of people, and not a union voluntarily entered into by local populations. Thus, the extremity of local desire for independent control of their own affairs took these leaders by surprise, and the leaders were unprepared for the depth of the long pent-up feelings that were released.

Violence erupted in Nagorno-Karabakh—an Armenian-populated enclave of Azerbaijan—between February and April, when Armenians living in the area began a new wave of demands to transfer of NKAO from Azerbaijan to Armenia which eventually led to full scale Nagorno-Karabakh War. Gorbachev imposed a temporary solution, but it did not last, as fresh trouble arose in Nagorno-Karabakh between June and July. Turmoil would once again return in late 1988, this time in Armenia itself, when the Leninakan Earthquake hit the region on 7 December. Poor local infrastructure magnified the hazard and some 25,000 people died. Gorbachev was forced to break off his trip to the U.S. and cancel planned travels to Cuba and Britain.

In March and April 1989 elections to the Congress of People's Deputies took place throughout the Soviet Union. This returned many pro-independence republicans, as many CPSU candidates were rejected. The televised Congress debates allowed the dissemination of pro-independence propositions. Indeed, 1989 would see numerous nationalistic protests. Initiated by the Baltic republics in January, laws were passed in most non-Russian republics giving precedence for the republican language over Russian.

9 April would see the crackdown of nationalist demonstrations by Soviet troops in Tbilisi. There would be further bloody protests in Uzbekistan in June, where Uzbeks and Meskhetian Turks clashed in Fergana. Apart from this violence, three major events that altered the face of the nationalities issue occurred in 1989. Estonia had declared its sovereignty on November 16, 1988, to be followed by Lithuania in May 1989 and by Latvia in July (the Communist Party of Lithuania would also declare its independence from the CPSU in December). This brought the Union and the republics into clear confrontation and would form a precedent for other republics.

Following this, in July, on the eve of the anniversary of the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, it was formally revealed that the treaty did indeed include a plan for the annexation of the Baltic countries into the USSR (as happened in 1940) and the division of Poland between the two countries. The unsavory past was exposed and gave impetus to the peoples of the Baltic countries who could now even more legitimately claim that they were subject to oppression. Finally, the Eastern bloc fragmented in the autumn of 1989, raising hopes that Gorbachev would extend his non-interventionist doctrine to the internal workings of the USSR.

Crisis of the Union: 1990–1991

1990 began with nationalist turmoil in January. Azerbaijanis rioted and troops were sent in to restore order; many Moldavians demonstrated in favour of unification with the post-Communist Romania; and Lithuanian demonstrations continued. The same month, in a hugely significant move, Armenia asserted its right to veto laws coming from the All-Union level, thus intensifying the 'war of laws' between republics and Moscow.

Soon after, the CPSU, which had already lost much of its control, began to lose even more power as Gorbachev deepened political reform. The February Central Committee Plenum advocated multi-party elections; local elections held between February and March returned a large number of pro-independence candidates. The Congress of People's Deputies then amended the Soviet Constitution in March, removing Article 6, which guaranteed the monopoly of the CPSU. The process of political reform was therefore coming from above and below, and was gaining a momentum that would augment republican nationalism. Soon after the constitutional amendment, Lithuania declared independence and elected Vytautas Landsbergis as Chairman of the Supreme Council (head of state).

On 15 March, Gorbachev himself was elected as the only President of the Soviet Union by the Congress of People's Deputies and chose a Presidential Council of 15 politicians. Gorbachev was essentially creating his own political support base independent of CPSU conservatives and radical reformers. The new Executive was designed to be a powerful position to guide the spiraling reform process, and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and Congress of People's Deputies had already given Gorbachev increasingly presidential powers in February. This would be again a source of criticism from reformers. Despite the apparent increase in Gorbachev's power, he was unable to stop the process of nationalistic assertion. Further embarrassing facts about Soviet history were revealed in April, when the government admitted that the NKVD had carried out the infamous Katyn Massacre of Polish army officers during World War II; previously, the USSR had blamed Nazi Germany. More significantly for Gorbachev's position, Boris Yeltsin was reaching a new level of prominence, as he was elected Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR in May, effectively making him the de jure leader of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Problems for Gorbachev would once more come from the Russian parliament in June, when it declared the precedence of Russian laws over All-Union level legislation.

Gorbachev's personal position continued changing. At 28th CPSU Congress in July, Gorbachev was re-elected General Secretary but this position was now completely independent of Soviet government, and the Politburo had no say in the ruling of the country. Gorbachev further reduced Party power in the same month, when he issued a decree abolishing Party control of all areas of the media and broadcasting. At the same time, Gorbachev was working to consolidate his presidential position, culminating in the Supreme Soviet granting him special powers to rule by decree in September in order to pass a much-needed plan for transition to a market economy. However, the Supreme Soviet could not agree on which program to adopt. Gorbachev pressed on with political reform, his proposal for setting up a new Soviet government, with a Soviet of the Federation consisting of representatives from all 15 republics, was passed through the Supreme Soviet in November. In December, Gorbachev was once more granted increased executive power by the Supreme Soviet, arguing that such moves were necessary to counter "the dark forces of nationalism". Such moves led to Eduard Shevardnadze's resignation; Gorbachev's former ally warned of an impending dictatorship. This move was a serious blow to Gorbachev personally and to his efforts for reform.

Meanwhile, Gorbachev was losing further ground to nationalists. October 1990 saw the founding of DemoRossiya, the Russian pro-reform coalition; a few days later, both Ukraine and Russia declared their laws completely sovereign over Soviet level laws. The 'war of laws' had become an open battle, with the Supreme Soviet refusing to recognise the actions of the two republics. Gorbachev would publish the draft of a new union treaty in November, which envisioned a continued union called the Union of Sovereign Soviet Republics, but, going into 1991, the actions of Gorbachev were steadily being overtaken by the centrifugal secessionist forces.

January and February would see a new level of turmoil in the Baltic republics. On 10 January 1991 Gorbachev issued an ultimatum-like request addressing the Lithuanian Supreme Council demanding the restoration of the validity of the constitution of the Soviet Union in Lithuania and the revoking of all anti-constitutional laws. In his ''Memoirs'', Gorbachev asserts that, on 12 January, he convened the Council of the Federation and political measures to prevent bloodshed were agreed, including sending representatives of the Council of the Federation on a "fact-finding mission" to Vilnius. However, before the delegation arrived, the local branches of the KGB and armed forces had worked together to seize the TV tower in Vilnius; Gorbachev asked the heads of the KGB and military if they had approved such action, and there is no evidence that they, or Gorbachev, ever approved this move. Gorbachev cites documents found in the RSFSR Prokuratura after the August coup, which only mentioned that "some 'authorities'" had sanctioned the actions.

A book called ''Alpha – the KGB's Top Secret Unit'' also suggests that a "KGB operation co-ordinated with the military" was undertaken by the KGB Alpha Group. Archie Brown, in ''The Gorbachev Factor'', uses the memoirs of many people around Gorbachev and in the upper echelons of the Soviet political landscape, to implicate General Valentin Varennikov, a member of the August coup plotters, and General Viktor Achalov, another August coup conspirator. These persons were characterised as individuals "who were prepared to remove Gorbachev from his presidential office unconstitutionally" and "were more than capable of using unauthorised violence against nationalist separatists some months earlier". Brown criticises Gorbachev for "a conscious tilt in the direction of the conservative forces he was trying to keep within an increasingly fragile coalition" who would later betray him; he also criticises Gorbachev "for his tougher line and heightened rhetoric against the Lithuanians in the days preceding the attack and for his slowness in condemning the killings" but notes that Gorbachev did not approve any action and was seeking political solutions.

As a result of continued violence, at least 14 civilians were killed and more than 600 injured from 11–13 January 1991 in Vilnius, Lithuania. The strong Western reaction and the actions of Russian democratic forces put the president and government of the Soviet Union into an awkward situation, as news of support for Lithuanians from Western democracies started to appear. Further problems surfaced in Riga, Latvia, on 20 and 21 January, where OMON (special Ministry of the Interior) troops killed 4 people. Archie Brown suggests that Gorbachev's response this time was better, condemning the rogue action, sending his condolences and suggesting that secession could take place if it went through the procedures outlined in the Soviet constitution. According to Gorbachev's aide, Shakhnazarov (quoted by Archie Brown), Gorbachev was finally beginning to accept the inevitability of "losing" the Baltic republics, although he would try all political means to preserve the Union. Brown believes that this put him in "imminent danger" of being overthrown by hard-liners against the secession.

Gorbachev thus continued to draw up a new treaty of union which would have created a truly voluntary federation in an increasingly democratised Soviet Union. The new treaty was strongly supported by the Central Asian republics, who needed the economic power and markets of the Soviet Union to prosper. However, the more radical reformists, such as Russian SFSR President Boris Yeltsin, were increasingly convinced that a rapid transition to a market economy was required and were more than happy to contemplate the disintegration of the Soviet Union if that was required to achieve their aims. Nevertheless, a referendum on the future of the Soviet Union was held in March (with a referendum in Russia on the creation of a presidency), which returned an average of 76.4% in the nine republics where it was taken, with a turn-out of 80% of the adult population. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Armenia, Georgia and Moldova did not participate. Following this, an April meeting at Novo-Ogarevo between Gorbachev and the heads of the nine republics issued a statement on speeding up the creation of a new Union treaty.

In May, a hardline newspaper published “Architect amidst the Ruins”, an open letter criticizing Yakovlev (often referred to as the Architect of Perestroika) which was signed by Gennady Zyuganov. Many also saw this publication as the start of a campaign to oust Gorbachev.

Meanwhile, on 12 June 1991 Boris Yeltsin was elected President of the Russian Federation by 57.3% of the vote (with a turnout of 74%).

The August 1991 coup

In contrast to the reformers' moderate approach to the new treaty, the hard-line apparatchiks, still strong within the CPSU and military establishment, were completely opposed to anything which might lead to the break-up of the Soviet Union. On the eve of the treaty's signing, the hardliners struck.

Hardliners in the Soviet leadership, calling themselves the 'State Emergency Committee', launched the August coup in 1991 in an attempt to remove Gorbachev from power and prevent the signing of the new union treaty. During this time, Gorbachev spent three days (19, 20 and 21 August) under house arrest at a dacha in the Crimea before being freed and restored to power. However, upon his return, Gorbachev found that neither union nor Russian power structures heeded his commands as support had swung over to Yeltsin, whose defiance had led to the coup's collapse.

Furthermore, Gorbachev was forced to fire large numbers of his Politburo and, in several cases, arrest them. Those arrested for high treason included the "Gang of Eight" that had led the coup, including Kryuchkov, Yazov, Pavlov and Yanayev. Pugo was found shot; and Akhromeyev, who had offered his assistance but was never implicated, was found hanging in his Kremlin office. Most of these men had been former allies of Gorbachev's or promoted by him, which drew fresh criticism.

Aftermath of the coup and the final collapse

Between 20 August and 22 September, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan declared their intention to leave the Soviet Union. Simultaneously, Boris Yeltsin ordered the CPSU to suspend its activities on the territory of Russia and closed the Central Committee building at Staraya Ploschad. The Russian flag now flew beside the Soviet flag at the Kremlin. In light of these circumstances, Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary of the CPSU on 24 August and advised the Central Committee to dissolve. Gorbachev's hopes of a new Union were further hit when the Congress of People's Deputies dissolved itself on 5 September. Though Gorbachev and the representatives of eight republics (excluding Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) signed an agreement on forming a new economic community on 18 October, events were overtaking Gorbachev.

With the country in a rapid state of deterioration, the final blow to Gorbachev's vision was effectively dealt by a Ukrainian referendum on 1 December, where the Ukrainian people voted for independence. The presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus met in Belovezh Forest, near Brest, Belarus, on 8 December, founding the Commonwealth of Independent States and declaring the end of the Soviet Union in the Belavezha Accords. Gorbachev was presented with a ''fait accompli'' and reluctantly agreed with Boris Yeltsin, on 17 December, to dissolve the Soviet Union. Gorbachev resigned on 25 December and the Soviet Union was formally dissolved the following day on 26 December 1991. Two days after Gorbachev left office, on 27 December, Yeltsin moved into Gorbachev's old office.

Gorbachev had aimed to maintain the CPSU as a united party but move it in the direction of social democracy. But when the CPSU was proscribed after the August coup, Gorbachev was left with no effective power base beyond the armed forces.

Post-Presidency

[[File:Mulroney Thatcher and Gorbachev at Reagan's funeral.jpg|thumb|right|Gorbachev (left) with former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at the funeral of Ronald Reagan, 11 June 2004]] Following his resignation and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev remained active in Russian politics. During the early years of the post-Soviet era, he expressed criticism at the reforms carried out by Russian president Boris Yeltsin. When Yeltsin called a referendum for 25 April 1993 in an attempt to achieve even greater powers as president, Gorbachev did not vote and instead called for new presidential elections.

Following a failed run for the presidency in 1996, Gorbachev established the Social Democratic Party of Russia, a union between several Russian social democratic parties. He resigned as party leader in May 2004 following a disagreement with the party's chairman over the direction taken in the 2003 election campaign. The party was later banned in 2007 by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation due to its failure to establish local offices with at least 500 members in the majority of Russian regions, which is required by Russian law for a political organization to be listed as a party. Later that year, Gorbachev founded a new political party, called the Union of Social-Democrats. In June 2004, Gorbachev represented Russia at the funeral of Ronald Reagan.

Gorbachev has also appeared in numerous media channels since his resignation from office. In 1993, Gorbachev appeared as himself in the Wim Wenders film ''Faraway, So Close!'', the sequel to ''Wings of Desire''. In 1997, Gorbachev appeared with his granddaughter Anastasia in an internationally screened television commercial for Pizza Hut. The U.S. corporation's payment for the 60-second ad went to Gorbachev's not-for-profit Gorbachev Foundation. In 2007, French luxury brand Louis Vuitton announced that Gorbachev would be shown in an ad campaign for their signature luggage.

Following Boris Yeltsin's death on 23 April 2007, Gorbachev released a eulogy for him, stating that Yeltsin was to be commended for assuming the "difficult task of leading the nation into the post-Soviet era", and "on whose shoulders are both great deeds for the country and serious errors."

On 16 June 2009, Gorbachev announced that he had recorded an album of old Russian romantic ballads entitled ''Songs for Raisa'' to raise money for a charity dedicated to his late wife. On the album, he sings the songs himself accompanied by Russian musician Andrei Makarevich.

Since his resignation, Gorbachev has remained involved in world affairs. He founded the Gorbachev Foundation in 1992, headquartered in San Francisco. He later founded Green Cross International, with which he was one of three major sponsors of the Earth Charter. He also became a member of the Club of Rome and the Club of Madrid, an independent non-profit organization composed of 81 democratic former presidents and Prime Ministers from 57 different countries.

In the decade that followed the Cold War, Gorbachev opposed both the U.S.-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and the U.S.-led Iraq War in 2003. On 27 July 2007, Gorbachev criticized U.S. foreign policy: “What has followed are unilateral actions, what has followed are wars, what has followed is ignoring the UN Security Council, ignoring international law and ignoring the will of the people, even the American people,” he said. That same year, he visited New Orleans, a city hard-hit by Hurricane Katrina, and promised he would return in 2011 to personally lead a local revolution if the U.S. government had not repaired the levees by that time. He said that revolutionary action should be a last resort. Concerning the 2008 South Ossetia war, in a 12 August 2008 op-ed essay in ''The Washington Post'', Gorbachev criticized the U.S. support for Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and for moving to bring the Caucasus into the sphere of its national interest. He later said the following:

In September 2008 Gorbachev announced he would make a comeback to Russian politics along with a former KGB officer, Alexander Lebedev. Their party is known as the Independent Democratic Party of Russia. He also is part owner of the opposition newspaper ''Novaya Gazeta''.

On 20 March 2009, Gorbachev met with United States President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in efforts to "reset" strained relations between Russia and the United States.

On 27 March 2009, Gorbachev visited Eureka College, Illinois, which is the alma mater of former president Ronald Reagan. He toured the campus and later traveled to Peoria, Illinois, as the keynote speaker at the Reagan Day Dinner.

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gorbachev accompanied former Polish leader Lech Wałęsa and German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a celebration in Berlin on 9 November 2009.

On 27 October 2010, it was announced that a gala evening is being prepared to celebrate Gorbachev’s 80th birthday at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Senior statesmen including Sir John Major and Gerhard Schroeder will be in attendance for the charity event in March 2011. The event's objective is to raise £5 million for cancer charities and the fundraising is supported by stars including Bono, Jose Carreras, Hugh Grant, Elizabeth Hurley and Alan Rickman.

On 7 June 2010, Gorbachev gave an interview before an "almost an annual pilgrimage" to London for a summer gala to raise money for The Raisa Gorbachev Foundation, which funds cancer care for children. The clinic in St. Petersburg can house 80 child patients. From the Interview: "Her death, after several years of ill-health, left Gorbachev bereft. He lives in Moscow, has not remarried and finds solace with his daughter and grand-daughters. He would not be coaxed to talk about Raisa, except fleetingly in the context of the charity. "

Criticism of Vladimir Putin

In recent years Gorbachev has become critical of Putin and Medvedev's government. His main grievances about the "tandem" are backsliding on democracy, corruption and the dominance of security officers. Gorbachev is also dissatisfied by the fact that he has not been allowed to register his social democratic party.

When being interviewed by the BBC to reflect on the 20th anniversary of the August Coup, Gorbachev again announced his dissatisfaction with the policies and rule of Putin. Speaking of the status of democracy in the Russian Federation, he proclaimed: "The electoral system we had was nothing remarkable but they have literally castrated it." Gorbachev also stated that he believes Putin should not seek a third term as the Russian president in 2012.

Call for global restructuring

Gorbachev calls for a kind of perestroika or restructuring of societies around the world, starting in particular with that of the United States, because he is of the view that the economic crisis of 2007–present shows that the Washington Consensus economic model is a failure that will sooner or later have to be replaced. According to Gorbachev, countries that have rejected the Washington consensus and the International Monetary Fund approach to economic development, such as Brazil and China, have done far better economically on the whole and achieved far more fair results for the average citizen, than countries that have accepted it.

Honours and accolades

In 1990, Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "his leading role in the peace process which today characterizes important parts of the international community."

On 4 May 1992, Gorbachev was awarded the first ever Ronald Reagan Freedom Award at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.

In 1993 Gorbachev was awarded a Legum Doctor, ''honoris causa'' from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He was also given an honorary degree from The University of Calgary in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Gorbachev was the 1994 recipient of the Grawemeyer Award for improving world order, awarded by the University of Louisville, Kentucky.

In 1995, Gorbachev received an Honorary Doctorate from Durham University, County Durham, England for his contribution to "the cause of political tolerance and an end to Cold War-style confrontation".

For his historic role in the evolution of ''glasnost'', and for his leadership in the disarmament negotiations with the United States during the Reagan administration, Gorbachev was awarded the Courage of Conscience award 20 October 1996.

In 2002, Gorbachev received an honorary degree of a Doctor in Laws (LL.D.) "in recognition of his political service and contribution to peace" from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.

Gorbachev, together with Bill Clinton and Sophia Loren, were awarded the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children for their recording of Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf.

In 2005, Gorbachev was awarded the Point Alpha Prize for his role in supporting German reunification. He also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Münster.

Religious affiliation

Gorbachev was baptised in the Russian Orthodox Church as a child and later campaigned for establishment of freedom of religion laws in the former Soviet Union. This was largely achieved with the 1990 Freedom of Conscience Act, which guaranteed religious liberty.

Remarks by Gorbachev to Ronald Reagan in discussions during their summits, made the U.S. President deeply intrigued by the possibility that the leader of the Soviet Union might be a "closet Christian." Reagan seems to have seen this as the most interesting aspect of his meeting with the Soviet leader in Geneva.

At the end of a November 1996 interview on CSPAN's Booknotes, Gorbachev described his plans for future books. He made the following reference to God: "I don't know how many years God will be giving me, [or] what His plans are."

In 2005, he said that Pope John Paul II's "devotion to his followers is a remarkable example to all of us" following the pontiff's death. "What can I say—it must have been the will of God. He acted really courageously." In a 1989 meeting, he had told him "We appreciate your mission on this high pulpit, we are convinced that it will leave a great mark on history."

Gorbachev was the recipient of the Athenagoras Humanitarian Award of the Order of St. Andrew Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople on 20 November 2005.

On 19 March 2008, during a surprise visit to pray at the tomb of Saint Francis in Assisi, Italy, Gorbachev made an announcement which has been interpreted to the effect that he was a Christian. Gorbachev stated that "St Francis is, for me, the ''alter Christus'', another Christ. His story fascinates me and has played a fundamental role in my life." He added, "It was through St Francis that I arrived at the Church, so it was important that I came to visit his tomb."

However, a few days later, he reportedly told the Russian news agency Interfax, "Over the last few days some media have been disseminating fantasies—I can't use any other word—about my secret Catholicism, [...] To sum up and avoid any misunderstandings, let me say that I have been and remain an atheist." In response, a spokesman for the Russian Orthodox patriarch Alexei II told the Russian media: "In Italy, he (Gorbachev) spoke in emotional terms, rather than in terms of faith. He is still on his way to Christianity. If he arrives, we will welcome him."

Naevus flammeus

Though some suggested that he might have his prominent port wine birthmark surgically removed, Gorbachev opted not to, as once he was publicly known to have the mark, he believed it would be perceived as his being more concerned with his appearance than other more important issues.

See also

Index of Soviet Union-related articles

Black January – Soviet crackdown on Azeri protests in 1990

Earth Charter

Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev, key Gorbachev advisor and ally

Sergei M. Plekhanov, other former Gorbachev advisor on the United States and Canada.

References

External links

Gorby80 Gorbachev 80th Birthday Gala Celebration at the Royal Albert Hall London

The Gorbachev Foundation

Green Cross International

Column and op-ed archives at Journalisted

Column and op-ed archives at Project Syndicate

Column and op-ed archives at ''The Guardian''

;Interviews and articles

Public Opinion about Gorbachev

The Encyclopaedia of Marxism, from which parts of this article have been taken.

Out in the Cold Guardian interview 8 March 2005

TIME 100 for 2004: Mikhail Gorbachev

CNN Cold War – Profile: Mikhail Gorbachev from the 1998 series

*September 1997 interview

Biography, talks, tributes and quotes

Ubben Lecture at DePauw University

Commanding Heights: Mikhail Gorbachev (PBS interview), April 2001.

USSR – USA: Summit Documents and Materials, Washington 30 May – 3 June 1990

Gorbachev on 1989 – 2009 interview by ''The Nation''

Speech by Yegor Gaidar (acting prime minister of Russia, minister of economy, and first deputy prime minister between 1991 and 1994), explaining the underlying reasons for Gorbachev's politics

Gorbachev's Legacy Examined, 25 Years After His Rise To Power article by Brian Whitmore

Chernobyl 25 years later: Many lessons learned free article by Mikhail Gorbachev published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 2011

Category:Article Feedback Pilot Category:1931 births Category:Living people Category:Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Category:Cold War leaders Category:Communist rulers Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grawemeyer Award winners Category:Heads of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Category:Moscow State University alumni Category:Nobel Peace Prize laureates Category:People of the Soviet war in Afghanistan Category:People from Stavropol Category:Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Category:Recipients of the Indira Gandhi Peace Prize Category:Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour Category:Grand Crosses Special Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Category:Russian communists Category:Russian Nobel laureates Category:Russian politicians Category:Russian people of Ukrainian descent Category:Soviet politicians Category:Collars of the Order of the White Lion Category:Free Your Mind Award winners Category:Heads of state of the Soviet Union

af:Michail Gorbatsjof als:Michail Gorbatschow ar:ميخائيل غورباتشوف an:Mikhail Gorbachev ast:Mikhaíl Gorbachov az:Mixail Qorbaçov bn:মিখাইল গর্বাচেভ ba:Михаил Горбачёв be:Міхаіл Сяргеевіч Гарбачоў be-x-old:Міхаіл Гарбачоў bcl:Mikhail Gorbachev bs:Mihail Sergejevič Gorbačov br:Mikhail Gorbatchev bg:Михаил Горбачов ca:Mikhaïl Gorbatxov cv:Горбачев Михаил Сергеевич cs:Michail Sergejevič Gorbačov cy:Mikhail Gorbachev da:Mikhail Gorbatjov de:Michail Sergejewitsch Gorbatschow et:Mihhail Gorbatšov el:Μιχαήλ Γκορμπατσώφ es:Mijaíl Gorbachov eo:Miĥail Gorbaĉov eu:Mikhail Gorbatxov fa:میخائیل گورباچف fr:Mikhaïl Gorbatchev fy:Mikhail Gorbatsjov ga:Míchail Gorbaitsov gd:Mikhail Gorbachev gl:Mikhail Gorbachev gan:戈爾巴喬夫 ko:미하일 고르바초프 hi:मिखाइल गोर्बाचोफ hr:Mihail Gorbačov io:Mihail Gorbachov id:Mikhail Gorbachev os:Горбачёв, Михаил Сергейы фырт is:Mikhaíl Gorbatsjev it:Michail Gorbačëv he:מיכאיל גורבצ'וב jv:Mikhail Gorbachev ka:მიხეილ გორბაჩოვი kk:Михаил Сергейұлы Горбачев ku:Mîxaîl Gorbaçov mrj:Горбачёв, Михаил Сергеевич la:Michael Gorbačëv lv:Mihails Gorbačovs lb:Michail Sergejewitsch Gorbatschow lt:Michailas Gorbačiovas hu:Mihail Szergejevics Gorbacsov mk:Михаил Горбачов ml:മിഖായേൽ ഗോർബച്ചേവ് mt:Mikhail Gorbachev mr:मिखाईल गोर्बाचोव arz:ميخائيل جورباتشوف mzn:میخائیل گورباچف ms:Mikhail Gorbachev my:မစ်ဟေး ဂေါ်ဗာချော့ဗ် nl:Michail Gorbatsjov ja:ミハイル・ゴルバチョフ no:Mikhail Gorbatsjov nn:Mikhail Gorbatsjov oc:Mikhaïl Gorbachov mhr:Горбачёв, Михаил Сергеевич pnb:مائیکہیل گوربیچیو pl:Michaił Gorbaczow pt:Mikhail Gorbachev ro:Mihail Gorbaciov qu:Mikhail Gorbachov ru:Горбачёв, Михаил Сергеевич sah:Горбачёв Михаил Сергеевич sa:मिखाइल गोर्बाचोफ sc:Michail Gorbačëv sq:Mikhail Gorbachev simple:Mikhail Gorbachev sk:Michail Sergejevič Gorbačov sl:Mihail Sergejevič Gorbačov szl:Michaił Gorbaczow sr:Михаил Горбачов sh:Mihail Gorbačov fi:Mihail Gorbatšov sv:Michail Gorbatjov tl:Mihail Gorbačëv ta:மிக்கைல் கொர்பசோவ் tt:Михаил Горбачев th:มิคาอิล กอร์บาชอฟ tr:Mihail Gorbaçov uk:Горбачов Михайло Сергійович vi:Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachyov wa:Mixhail Sergeyevitch Gorbatchyov war:Mikhail Gorbachev yo:Mikaẹli Gọrbatsẹf zh-yue:戈巴卓夫 zh:米哈伊尔·戈尔巴乔夫

name	Eddy Huntington
background	solo_singer
born	29 October 1965
genre	Italo disco, Europop
occupation	Singer, teacher
years active	1983–present
label	ZYX
notable instruments	}}

Edward "Eddy" Huntington (born 29 October 1965) is a pop star from the UK, popular in Europe and the former USSR.

Huntington was born in the north east of England and moved to London at the age of 18, where he became a music video extra and model.

He was discovered by Baby records, an Italian record label who took him to Milan to record the song "USSR" written by R. Turatti, M. Chieregato and T. Hooker.

When "USSR" was released throughout Europe in 1986 on ZYX Records it became a hit in mainland Europe and in the Soviet Union and is widely popular to this day. Huntington went on to have other lesser hits including "May Day" and "Meet My Friend". He also released the album ''Bang Bang Baby'' in 1988.

Huntington left the music industry in the early 1990s and trained to become a primary school teacher in the UK. He taught at Eldon Grove Primary School in Hartlepool teaching children in year 1. He provided after school drama and singing lessons as well as everyday lessons. He then moved to Thailand for 2 years with his wife teaching at Bangkok Patana School. There his youngest son was born, which prompted a move back to England, where he is the deputy head of a community primary school.

In 2005 Huntington made a brief return to music opening the Discoteka '80s concerts in Russia. These were two performances of European and Soviet 1980s pop stars held in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, also headlining were; Bonnie Tyler, Alphaville, Sabrina Salerno, Mike Mareen and Savage. Both concerts played to large stadium crowds, appeared on national television and were released on DVD.

References

External links

http://www.disco80.ru/?an=fest2005

Category:1965 births Category:Living people Category:English male singers

bg:Едуард Хънтингтън de:Eddy Huntington es:Eddy Huntington it:Eddy Huntington sv:Eddy Huntington

name	Sir Paul McCartneyMBE
birth name	James Paul McCartney
background	solo_singer
alt	Black-and-white image of McCartney, in his sixties, holding an electric bass. He wears a black buttoned-up suit jacket with black pants.
birth name	James Paul McCartney
born	June 18, 1942Liverpool, England
instrument	Vocals,Bass guitar,guitar, piano, organ, mellotron, keyboards, drums, ukulele, mandolin, recorder
genre	Rock, pop, psychedelic rock, experimental rock, rock and roll, hard rock, classical music
occupation	Musician, singer-songwriter, record producer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, film producer, painter, activist, businessman
years active	1957–present
label	Hear Music, Apple, Parlophone, Capitol, Columbia, Concord Music Group, EMI, One Little Indian, Vee-Jay
associated acts	The Quarrymen, The Beatles, Wings, The Fireman, Linda McCartney, John Lennon, Denny Laine
website
notable instruments	Höfner 500/1Rickenbacker 4001SGibson Les PaulEpiphone TexanEpiphone CasinoFender EsquireFender Jazz BassYamaha BB1200 BassWal 5-String BassMartin D-28 }}

Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE (born 18 June 1942) is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles (1960–1970) and Wings (1971–1981), McCartney is the most commercially successful songwriter in the history of popular music, according to ''Guinness World Records''.

McCartney gained worldwide fame as a member of The Beatles, alongside John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. McCartney and Lennon formed one of the most influential and successful songwriting partnerships and wrote some of the most popular songs in the history of rock music. After leaving The Beatles, McCartney launched a successful solo career and formed the band Wings with his first wife, Linda Eastman, and singer-songwriter Denny Laine. McCartney is listed in ''Guinness World Records'' as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100 million singles in the United Kingdom.

BBC News Online readers named McCartney the "greatest composer of the millennium", and BBC News cites his Beatles song "Yesterday" as the most covered song in the history of recorded music—by over 2,200 artists—and since its 1965 release, has been played more than 7,000,000 times on American television and radio according to the BBC. Wings' 1977 single "Mull of Kintyre" became the first single to sell more than two million copies in the UK, and remains the UK's top selling non-charity single. Based on the 93 weeks his compositions have spent at the top spot of the UK chart, and 24 number one singles to his credit, McCartney is the most successful songwriter in UK singles chart history. As a performer or songwriter, McCartney was responsible for 31 number one singles on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 chart in the United States, and has sold 15.5 million RIAA certified albums in the US alone.

McCartney has composed film scores, classical and electronic music, released a large catalogue of songs as a solo artist, and has taken part in projects to help international charities. He is an advocate for animal rights, for vegetarianism, and for music education; he is active in campaigns against landmines, seal hunting, and Third World debt. He is a keen football fan, supporting both Everton and Liverpool football clubs. His company MPL Communications owns the copyrights to more than 3,000 songs, including all of the songs written by Buddy Holly, along with the publishing rights to such musicals as ''Guys and Dolls'', ''A Chorus Line'', and ''Grease''. McCartney is one of the UK's wealthiest people, with an estimated fortune of £475 million in 2010.

Childhood

McCartney was born in Walton Hospital in Liverpool, England, where his mother, Mary (née Mohan), had worked as a nurse in the maternity ward. He has one brother, Michael, born 7 January 1944. McCartney was baptised Roman Catholic but was raised non-denominationally: his mother was Roman Catholic and his father James, or "Jim" McCartney, was a Protestant turned agnostic.

In 1947, he began attending Stockton Wood Road Primary School. He then attended the Joseph Williams Junior School and passed the 11-plus exam in 1953 with three others out of the 90 examinees, thus gaining admission to the Liverpool Institute. In 1954, while taking the bus from his home in the suburb of Speke to the Institute, he met George Harrison, who lived nearby. Passing the exam meant that McCartney and Harrison could go to a grammar school rather than a secondary modern school, which the majority of pupils attended until they were eligible to work, but as grammar school pupils, they had to find new friends.

In 1955, the McCartney family moved to 20 Forthlin Road in Allerton. Mary McCartney rode a bicycle to houses where she was needed as a midwife, and an early McCartney memory is of her leaving when it was snowing heavily. On 31 October 1956, Mary McCartney died of an embolism after a mastectomy operation to stop the spread of her breast cancer. The early loss of his mother later connected McCartney with John Lennon, whose mother Julia died after being struck by a car when Lennon was 17.

McCartney's father was a trumpet player and pianist who had led Jim Mac's Jazz Band in the 1920s and encouraged his two sons to be musical. Jim had an upright piano in the front room that he had bought from Epstein's North End Music Stores. McCartney's grandfather, Joe McCartney, played an E-flat tuba. Jim McCartney used to point out the different instruments in songs on the radio, and often took McCartney to local brass band concerts. McCartney's father gave him a nickel-plated trumpet, but when skiffle music became popular, McCartney swapped the trumpet for a £15 Framus Zenith (model 17) acoustic guitar. As he was left-handed, McCartney found right-handed guitars difficult to play, but when he saw a poster advertising a Slim Whitman concert, he realised that Whitman played left-handed with his guitar strung the opposite way to a right-handed player. McCartney wrote his first song ("I Lost My Little Girl") on the Zenith, and also played his father's Framus Spanish guitar when writing early songs with Lennon. He later learned to play the piano and wrote his second song, "When I'm Sixty-Four". On his father's advice, he took music lessons, but since he preferred to learn 'by ear' he never paid much attention to them.

McCartney was heavily influenced by American Rhythm and Blues music. He has stated that Little Richard was his idol when he was in school and that the first song he ever sang in public was "Long Tall Sally", at a Butlins holiday camp talent competition.

Musical career

1957–1960

At the age of 15, McCartney met John Lennon and The Quarrymen at the St. Peter's Church Hall fête in Woolton on 6 July 1957. He formed a close working relationship with Lennon and they collaborated writing many songs. Harrison joined the group in early 1958 as lead guitarist, followed in early 1960 by Lennon's art school friend, Stuart Sutcliffe on bass. By May 1960, they had tried several new names, including "Johnny and the Moondogs" and "The Silver Beetles", playing a tour of Scotland under that name with Johnny Gentle. They finally changed the name of the group to "The Beatles" in mid-August 1960 and recruited Pete Best at short-notice to become their drummer for an imminent engagement in Hamburg.

1960–1970: The Beatles

From August 1960, The Beatles were booked by Allan Williams, to perform at a club in Hamburg. During extended stays over the next two years, The Beatles performed as a resident group in a number of Hamburg clubs. On returns to Liverpool they played at the Cavern club. Prior to the end of the residency, Sutcliffe left the band, so McCartney, reluctantly, became The Beatles' bass player. The Beatles recorded their first published musical material in Hamburg, performing as the backing group for Tony Sheridan on the single "My Bonnie". This recording later brought the Beatles to the attention of a key figure in their subsequent development and commercial success, Brian Epstein, who became their next manager. Epstein eventually negotiated a record contract for the group with Parlophone in May 1962. After replacing Best with Ringo Starr on drums, The Beatles became popular in the UK in 1963 and in the US in 1964. In 1965, they were each appointed Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). After performing concerts, plays, and tours almost non-stop for a period of nearly four years, and giving more than one thousand four hundred live performances internationally, The Beatles gave their last commercial concert at the end of their 1966 US tour. They continued to work in the recording studio from 1966 until their break-up in 1970. In the eight years from 1962 to 1970, the group had released twenty-four UK singles and twelve studio albums, often released in different configurations in the USA and other countries (see discography).

Since 1970

After the break-up of The Beatles, McCartney continued his musical career, in solo work as well as in collaborations with other musicians. After releasing his solo album ''McCartney'' in 1970, he worked with Linda McCartney to record the album ''Ram'' in 1971. Later the same year, the pair were joined by guitarist Denny Laine and drummer Denny Seiwell to form the group Wings, which was active between 1971 and 1981 and released numerous successful singles and albums (see discography). McCartney also collaborated with a number of other popular artists including Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Eric Stewart, and Elvis Costello. In 1985, McCartney played "Let It Be" at the Live Aid concert in London, backed by Bob Geldof, Pete Townshend, David Bowie, and Alison Moyet.

In 1989, he joined forces with fellow Merseysiders including Gerry Marsden of Gerry and the Pacemakers and Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes to Hollywood to record a new version of Ferry Cross the Mersey (originally recorded 25 years earlier by Gerry and the Pacemakers) to generate money for the appeal fund of the Hillsborough disaster, which occurred on 15 April that year and in which 96 Liverpool F.C. fans died as a result of their injuries.

The 1990s saw McCartney venture into orchestral music, and in 1991 the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society commissioned a musical piece by McCartney to celebrate its sesquicentennial.

He collaborated with Carl Davis to release ''Liverpool Oratorio''; involving the opera singers Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Sally Burgess, Jerry Hadley and Willard White, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the choir of Liverpool Cathedral. The Prince of Wales later honoured McCartney as a Fellow of The Royal College of Music and Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music (2008). Other forays into classical music included ''Standing Stone'' (1997), ''Working Classical'' (1999), and ''Ecce Cor Meum'' (2006). It was announced in the 1997 New Year Honours that McCartney was to be knighted for services to music, becoming Sir Paul McCartney. In 1999, McCartney was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist and in May 2000, he was awarded a Fellowship by the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters. The 1990s also saw McCartney, Harrison, and Starr working together on Apple's ''The Beatles Anthology'' documentary series.

Having witnessed the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks from the JFK airport tarmac, McCartney took a lead role in organising The Concert for New York City. In November 2002, on the first anniversary of George Harrison's death, McCartney performed at the Concert for George. He has also participated in the National Football League's Super Bowl, performing in the pre-game show for Super Bowl XXXVI and headlining the halftime show at Super Bowl XXXIX.

McCartney has continued to work in the realms of popular and classical music, touring the world and performing at a large number of concerts and events; on more than one occasion he has performed again with Ringo Starr. In 2008, he received a BRIT award for Outstanding Contribution to Music and an honorary degree, Doctor of Music, from Yale University. The same year, he performed at a concert in Liverpool to celebrate the city's year as European Capital of Culture. In 2009, he received two nominations for the 51st annual Grammy awards, while in October of the same year he was named songwriter of the year at the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Awards. On 15 July 2009, more than 45 years after The Beatles first appeared on American television on ''The Ed Sullivan Show'', McCartney returned to the Ed Sullivan Theater and performed atop the marquee of ''Late Show with David Letterman''. McCartney was portrayed in the 2009 film ''Nowhere Boy'', about Lennon's teenage years, by Thomas Sangster.

On 2 June 2010, McCartney was honoured by Barack Obama with the Gershwin Prize for his contributions to popular music in a live show for the White House with performances by Stevie Wonder, Lang Lang and many others.

McCartney's enduring popularity has helped him schedule performances in new venues. He played three sold out concerts at newly-built Citi Field in Queens, New York (built to replace the Shea Stadium) in July 2009. On 18 August 2010, McCartney opened the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

McCartney has been touring since 2001 with guitarists Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray, Paul "Wix" Wickens on keyboards and drummer Abe Laboriel, Jr.

There are plans for an upcoming Paul McCartney tribute album with recordings of McCartney songs by Kiss, Garth Brooks, Billy Joel, B.B. King and others.

Creative outlets

During the 1960s, McCartney was often seen at major cultural events, such as the launch party for the ''International Times'' and at The Roundhouse (28 January and 4 February 1967 respectively). He also delved into the visual arts, becoming a close friend of leading art dealers and gallery owners, explored experimental film, and regularly attended movie, theatrical and classical music performances. His first contact with the London avant-garde scene was through John Dunbar, who introduced him to the art dealer Robert Fraser, who in turn introduced McCartney to an array of writers and artists. McCartney later became involved in the renovation and publicising of the Indica Gallery in Mason's Yard, London—John Lennon first met Yoko Ono at the Indica. The Indica Gallery brought McCartney into contact with Barry Miles, whose underground newspaper, the ''International Times'', McCartney helped to start. Miles would become ''de facto'' manager of the Apple's short-lived Zapple Records label, and wrote McCartney's official biography, ''Many Years From Now'' (1997).

While living at the Asher house, McCartney took piano lessons at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, which The Beatles' producer Martin had previously attended. McCartney studied composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Luciano Berio. McCartney later wrote and released several pieces of modern classical music and ambient electronica, besides writing poetry and painting. McCartney is lead patron of the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, an arts school in the building formerly occupied by the Liverpool Institute for Boys. The 1837 building, which McCartney attended during his schooldays, had become derelict by the mid-1980s. On 7 June 1996, Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the redeveloped building.

Electronic music

After the recording of "Yesterday" in 1965, McCartney contacted the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in Maida Vale, London, to see if they could record an electronic version of the song, but never followed it up. When visiting John Dunbar's flat in London, McCartney would take along tapes he had compiled at Jane Asher's house. The tapes were mixes of various songs, musical pieces and comments made by McCartney that he had Dick James make into a demo record for him. Heavily influenced by John Cage, he made tape loops by recording voices, guitars, and bongoes on a Brenell tape recorder, and splicing the various loops together. He reversed the tapes, sped them up, and slowed them down to create the effects he wanted, some of which were later used on Beatles' recordings, such as "Tomorrow Never Knows". McCartney referred to the tapes as "electronic symphonies".

In the spring of 1966 McCartney rented a ground floor and basement flat from Ringo Starr at 34 Montagu Square, to be used as a small demo studio for spoken-word recordings by poets, writers (including William S. Burroughs) and avant-garde musicians. The Beatles' Apple Records then launched a sub-label, Zapple with Miles as its manager, ostensibly to release recordings of a similar aesthetic, although few releases would ultimately result as Apple and The Beatles slid into business and personal difficulties.

In 1995, McCartney recorded a radio series called "Oobu Joobu" for the American network Westwood One, which he described as being "wide-screen radio". During the 1990s, McCartney collaborated with Youth of Killing Joke under the name The Fireman, and released two ambient electronic albums: ''Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest'' (1993) and ''Rushes'' (1998). In 2000, he released an album titled ''Liverpool Sound Collage'' with Super Furry Animals and Youth, utilising the sound collage and musique concrète techniques that fascinated him in the mid-1960s. In 2005, he worked on a project with bootleg producer and remixer Freelance Hellraiser, consisting of remixed versions of songs from throughout his solo career which were released under the title ''Twin Freaks''. The Fireman's third album ''Electric Arguments'' was released on 25 November 2008. Unlike the first two Fireman albums, this one was more song-based in its structure. McCartney told ''L.A. Weekly'' in a January 2009, "Fireman is improvisational theatre ... I formalise it a bit to get it into the studio, and when I step up to a microphone, I have a vague idea of what I’m about to do. I usually have a song, and I know the melody and lyrics, and my performance is the only unknown."

Film

McCartney was interested in animated films as a child, and later had the financial resources to ask Geoff Dunbar to direct a short animated film called ''Rupert and the Frog Song'', in 1981. McCartney was the producer, he wrote the music and the script, and also added some of the character voices. McCartney wrote and starred in the 1984 film ''Give My Regards to Broad Street''. The film and soundtrack featured the popular hit "No More Lonely Nights", and the album reached No.1 in the UK, but the film did not do well commercially or critically. Roger Ebert awarded the film a single star and wrote, "You can safely skip the movie and proceed directly to the sound track." Dunbar worked again with McCartney on an animated film about the work of French artist Honoré Daumier, in 1992, which won both of them a Bafta award. They also worked on Tropic Island Hum, in 1997. In 1995, McCartney made a guest appearance in the Lisa the Vegetarian episode of The Simpsons, and directed a short documentary about The Grateful Dead.

In May 2000, McCartney released ''Wingspan: An Intimate Portrait'', a retrospective documentary that features behind-the-scenes films and photographs that Paul and Linda McCartney (who had died in 1998) took of their family and bands. Interspersed throughout the 88 minute film is an interview by Mary McCartney with her father. Mary was the baby photographed inside McCartney's jacket on the back cover of his first solo album, ''McCartney'', and was one of the producers of the documentary.

Painting

In 1966, McCartney met art gallery-owner Robert Fraser, whose flat was visited by many well-known artists. McCartney met Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Peter Blake, and Richard Hamilton there, and learned about art appreciation. McCartney later started buying paintings by Magritte, and used Magritte's painting of an apple for the Apple Records logo. He now owns Magritte's easel and spectacles.

McCartney's love of painting surfaced after watching artist Willem de Kooning paint, in Kooning's Long Island studio. McCartney took up painting in 1983. In 1999, he exhibited his paintings (featuring McCartney's portraits of John Lennon, Andy Warhol, and David Bowie) for the first time in Siegen, Germany, and included photographs by Linda. He chose the gallery because Wolfgang Suttner (local events organiser) was genuinely interested in his art, and the positive reaction led to McCartney showing his work in UK galleries. The first UK exhibition of McCartney's work was opened in Bristol, England with more than 50 paintings on display. McCartney had previously believed that "only people that had been to art school were allowed to paint"—as Lennon had.

In October 2000, Yoko Ono and McCartney presented art exhibitions in New York and London. McCartney said, "I've been offered an exhibition of my paintings at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool where John and I used to spend many a pleasant afternoon. So I'm really excited about it. I didn't tell anybody I painted for 15 years but now I'm out of the closet."

As an artist, Paul McCartney designed a series of six postage stamps issued by the Isle of Man Post on 1 July 2002. According to BBC News, McCartney seems to be the first major rock star in the world who is also known as a stamp designer.

Writing and poetry

When McCartney was young, his mother read him poems and encouraged him to read books. McCartney's father was interested in crosswords and invited the two young McCartneys (Paul and his brother Michael) to solve them with him, so as to increase their "word power". McCartney was later inspired—in his school years—by Alan Durband, who was McCartney's English literature teacher at the Liverpool Institute. Durband was a co-founder and fund-raiser at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool, where Willy Russell also worked, and introduced McCartney to Geoffrey Chaucer's works. McCartney later took his A-level exams, but passed only one subject—Art.

In 2001 McCartney published 'Blackbird Singing', a volume of poems, some of which were lyrics to his songs, and gave readings in Liverpool and New York City. Some of them were serious: "Here Today" (about Lennon) and some humorous ("Maxwell's Silver Hammer"). In the foreword of the book, McCartney explained that when he was a teenager, he had "an overwhelming desire" to have a poem of his published in the school magazine. He wrote something "deep and meaningful", but it was rejected, and he feels that he has been trying to get some kind of revenge ever since. His first "real poem" was about the death of his childhood friend, Ivan Vaughan.

In October 2005, McCartney released a children's book called ''High in the Clouds: An Urban Furry Tail''. In a press release publicising the book, McCartney said, "I have loved reading for as long as I can remember", singling out ''Treasure Island'' as a childhood favourite. McCartney collaborated with author Philip Ardagh and animator Geoff Dunbar to write the book.

Contact with fellow ex-Beatles

John Lennon

Although McCartney's post-Beatles relationship with John Lennon was troubled, they became close again briefly in 1974 and even played together for the only time since The Beatles split (see A Toot and a Snore in '74). In later years, the two grew apart again. McCartney would often call Lennon, but was never sure of what sort of reception he would get, such as when McCartney once called Lennon and was told, "You're all pizza and fairytales!" McCartney understood that he could not just phone Lennon and only talk about business, so they often talked about cats, baking bread, or babies. According to May Pang, during Lennon's "Lost Weekend" with her they planned to visit McCartney in New Orleans, where McCartney was recording the ''Venus and Mars'' album, but Lennon went back to Ono the day before the planned visit after Ono said she had a new cure for Lennon's smoking habit.

In a 1980 interview, Lennon said that the last time he had seen McCartney was when they had watched the episode of ''Saturday Night Live'' (May 1976) in which Lorne Michaels had made his $3,000 cash offer to get Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr to reunite on the show. McCartney and Lennon had seriously considered going to the studio, but were too tired. This event was fictionalised in the 2000 television film ''Two of Us''. His last telephone call to Lennon, which was just before Lennon and Ono released ''Double Fantasy'', was friendly. During the call, Lennon said (laughing) to McCartney, "This housewife wants a career!" which referred to Lennon's househusband years, while looking after Sean Lennon. In 1984, McCartney said this about the phone call: "Yes. That is a nice thing, a consoling factor for me, because I do feel it was sad that we never actually sat down and straightened our differences out. But fortunately for me, the last phone conversation I ever had with him was really great, and we didn't have any kind of blow-up." Linda McCartney, speaking in the same 1984 interview stated: "I know that Paul was desperate to write with John again. And I know John was desperate to write. Desperate. People thought, well, he's taking care of Sean, he's a househusband and all that, but he wasn't happy. He couldn't write and it drove him crazy. And Paul could have helped him... easily."

;Reaction to Lennon's murder On the morning of 9 December 1980, McCartney awoke to the news that Lennon had been murdered outside his home in the Dakota building in New York. Lennon's death created a media frenzy around the surviving members of The Beatles. On the evening of 9 December, as McCartney was leaving an Oxford Street recording studio, he was surrounded by reporters and asked for his reaction to Lennon's death. He was later criticised for what appeared, when published, to be an utterly superficial response: "It's a drag". McCartney explained, "When John was killed somebody stuck a microphone at me and said: 'What do you think about it?' I said, 'It's a dra-a-ag' and meant it with every inch of melancholy I could muster. When you put that in print it says, 'McCartney in London today when asked for a comment on his dead friend said, "It's a drag."' It seemed a very flippant comment to make." McCartney was also to recall: }} In 1983, McCartney said: }} In a ''Playboy'' interview in 1984, McCartney said that he went home that night and watched the news on television—while sitting with all his children—and cried all evening.

McCartney carried on recording after the death of Lennon but did not play any live concerts for some time. He explained that this was because he was nervous that he would be "the next" to be murdered. This led to a disagreement with Denny Laine, who wanted to continue touring and subsequently left Wings, which McCartney disbanded in 1981. Also in June 1981, six months after Lennon's death, McCartney sang backup on George Harrison's tribute to Lennon, "All Those Years Ago", which also featured Ringo Starr on drums. McCartney would go on to record "Here Today", a tribute song to Lennon.

George Harrison

In 1977, Harrison had this to say about working with McCartney: "There were a lot of tracks though where I played bass...because what Paul would do, if he's written a song, he'd learn all the parts for Paul and then come in the studio and say, 'Do this.' He'd never give you the opportunity to come out with something. Paul would always help along when you'd done his ten songs—then when he got 'round to doing one of my songs, he would help. It was silly. It was very selfish, actually." While being interviewed circa 1988, Harrison said McCartney had recently mentioned the possibility of the two of them writing together, to which Harrison laughed, "I've only been there about 30 years in Paul's life and it's like now he wants to write with me."

In September 1980, Lennon said of Harrison and McCartney's working relationship: "I remember the day [Harrison] called to ask for help on "Taxman", one of his bigger songs. I threw in a few one-liners to help the song along, because that's what he asked for. He came to me because he could not go to Paul, because Paul would not have helped him at that period." Despite this statement, McCartney did contribute to the song, playing the track's guitar solo.

In late 2001, McCartney learned that Harrison was losing his battle with cancer. Upon Harrison's death on 29 November 2001, McCartney told ''Entertainment Tonight'', ''Access Hollywood'', ''Extra'', ''Good Morning America'', ''The Early Show'', ''MTV'', ''VH1'' and ''Today'' that George was like his "baby brother". Harrison spent his last days in a Hollywood Hills mansion that was once leased by McCartney. On the day Harrison died, McCartney said, "George was a fantastic guy...still laughing and joking...a very brave man...and I love him like...he's my brother." While guesting on ''Larry King Live'' alongside Ringo Starr, McCartney said of the last time he saw Harrison, "We just sat there stroking hands. And this is a guy, and, you know, you don't stroke hands with guys, like that, you know it was just beautiful. We just spent a couple of hours and it was really lovely it was like...a favourite memory of mine." On the first anniversary of Harrison's death, McCartney played Harrison's "Something" on a ukulele at the Concert for George.

Personal relationships

One of McCartney's first girlfriends, in 1959, was called Layla, a name he remembers being unusual in Liverpool at the time. Layla was slightly older than McCartney and used to ask him to baby-sit with her. Julie Arthur, another girlfriend, was Ted Ray's niece.

Dot Rhone

McCartney's first serious girlfriend in Liverpool was Dot Rhone, whom he met at the Casbah club in 1959. McCartney chose clothes and make-up for Rhone, and he paid for her to have her hair styled like Brigitte Bardot's. When McCartney first went to Hamburg with The Beatles, he wrote to Rhone regularly, and she accompanied Cynthia Lennon to Hamburg when The Beatles played there again in 1962. The couple had a three-year relationship, and were due to marry until Rhone's miscarriage.

Jane Asher

McCartney first met the British actress Jane Asher on 18 April 1963, when a photographer asked them to pose together at a Beatles performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The two began a relationship and McCartney took up residence with Asher at her parents' house at 57 Wimpole Street London, where he lived for nearly three years before the couple moved to McCartney's own house in St. John's Wood. McCartney wrote several songs while at the Ashers', including "Yesterday" and several inspired by Asher, among them "And I Love Her", "You Won't See Me", and "I'm Looking Through You". McCartney and Asher had a five-year relationship, and they planned to marry, but Asher broke off the engagement when she discovered McCartney had become involved with another woman, Francie Schwartz. However, Schwartz stated that McCartney and Asher had already broken up before the incident.

Linda McCartney

In 1969, McCartney married American photographer Linda Eastman, whom he described as the woman who gave him "the strength and courage to work again" after the break-up of The Beatles. The pair had met previously at a 1967 Georgie Fame concert at The Bag O'Nails club, during her UK assignment to take photographs of "Swinging Sixties" musicians in London. Paul and Linda were both vegetarian and supported the animal rights organisation People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. They had four children—Linda's daughter Heather (who was adopted by Paul), Mary, Stella and James—and remained married until Linda's death from breast cancer in 1998.

Heather Mills

In 2002, McCartney married Heather Mills, a former model and anti-landmines campaigner. The couple had a child, Beatrice, in 2003. They separated in May 2006 and were divorced in May 2008. Widespread animosity towards McCartney's wives was reported in 2004. "They [the British public] didn't like me giving up on Jane Asher", McCartney said. "I married a New York divorcee with a child, and at the time they didn't like that."

Nancy Shevell

McCartney has been dating New Yorker Nancy Shevell since November 2007. She is a member of the board of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority as well as vice president of a family-owned transportation conglomerate which owns New England Motor Freight. On 6 May 2011, it was reported that McCartney would wed Shevell.

Lifestyle

Drugs

McCartney's introduction to drugs started in Hamburg, Germany. The Beatles had to play for hours, and they were often given "Prellies" (Preludin) by German customers or by Astrid Kirchherr (whose mother bought them). McCartney would usually take one, but Lennon would often take four or five.

McCartney remembered getting "very high" and giggling when The Beatles were introduced to cannabis by Bob Dylan in New York, in 1964. McCartney's use of cannabis became regular, and he was quoted as saying that any future Beatles' lyrics containing the words "high", or "grass" were written specifically as a reference to cannabis, as was the phrase "another kind of mind" in "Got to Get You into My Life". John Dunbar's flat at 29 Lennox Gardens, in London, became a regular hang-out for McCartney, where he talked to musicians, writers and artists, and smoked cannabis. In 1965, Barry Miles introduced McCartney to hash brownies by using a recipe for hash fudge he found in the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook. During the filming of ''Help!'', he occasionally smoked a spliff in the car on the way to the studio during filming, which often made him forget his lines. ''Help!'' director Dick Lester said that he overheard "two beautiful women" trying to cajole McCartney into taking heroin, but he refused.

McCartney's attitude about cannabis was made public in the 1960s, when he added his name to an advertisement in ''The Times'', on 24 July 1967, which asked for the legalisation of cannabis, the release of all prisoners imprisoned because of possession, and research into marijuana's medical uses. The advertisement was sponsored by a group called Soma and was signed by 65 people, including The Beatles, Epstein, RD Laing, 15 doctors, and two MPs.

McCartney was introduced to cocaine by Robert Fraser, and it was available during the recording of ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band''. He admitted that he used the drug multiple times for about a year but stopped because of the unpleasant comedown.

In 1967, on a sailing trip to Greece (with the idea of buying an island for the whole group) McCartney said everybody sat around and took LSD, although McCartney had first taken it with Tara Browne, in 1966. He took his second "acid trip" with Lennon on 21 March 1967 after a studio session. McCartney was the first British pop star to openly admit using LSD, in an interview in the now-defunct "Queen" magazine. His admission was followed by a TV interview in the UK on ITN on 19 June 1967, and when McCartney was asked about his admission of LSD use, he said:

McCartney was not arrested by Norman Pilcher's Drug Squad, as had been Donovan, and several members of the Rolling Stones. In 1972, however, police found cannabis plants growing on his Scottish farm.

On 16 January 1980, Wings went to Tokyo for 11 concerts in Japan. As McCartney was going through customs, officials found 7.7 ounces (218.3 g) of cannabis in his luggage. He was arrested and taken to a Tokyo prison while the Japanese government decided what to do. McCartney had been previously denied a visa to Japan (in 1975) because he had been convicted twice in Europe for possession of cannabis. Public figures called for McCartney to be put on trial for drug-smuggling. Had he been convicted, he would have faced up to seven years in prison. The Wings Japanese tour was cancelled and the other members of Wings left Japan. After ten days in jail, McCartney was released and deported. He was told that he would not be welcome in Japan again, although a decade later he played a concert in Tokyo. In 1984, Paul and Linda McCartney were both arrested for possession of cannabis.

In an interview in 2004 he stated the he no longer smoked marijuana, He also admitted to taking Heroin, LSD and Cocaine but said his drug use was never excessive.

Meditation

On 24 August 1967, McCartney met the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the London Hilton, and later went to Bangor, in North Wales, to attend a weekend 'initiation' conference, at which time he and the other Beatles learned Transcendental Meditation (TM). "The whole meditation experience was very good and I still use the mantra. . . I find it soothing and I can imagine that the more you were to get into it, the more interesting it would get." The time McCartney later spent in India at the Maharishi's ashram was highly productive, as practically all of the songs that would later be recorded for ''The White Album'' and ''Abbey Road'' were composed there by McCartney, Lennon, or both together. Although McCartney was told that he was never to repeat the mantra to anyone else, he did tell Linda McCartney, and said he meditated a lot while he was in jail in Japan. In 2009, McCartney, along with Ringo Starr, headlined a benefit concert at Radio City Music Hall, raising three million dollars for the David Lynch Foundation to fund instruction in Transcendental Meditation for at-risk youth.

Activism

Paul and Linda McCartney became outspoken vegetarians and animal-rights activists. They said that their vegetarianism was realised when they happened to see lambs in a field as they ate a meal of lamb. McCartney has also credited the 1942 Disney film ''Bambi''—in which the young deer's mother is shot by a hunter—as the original inspiration for him to take an interest in animal rights. In his first interview after Linda's death, he promised to continue working for animal rights. In 1999, McCartney spent £3,000,000 to make sure Linda McCartney's food range remained free of GM ingredients. In 2002, McCartney gave his support to a campaign against a proposed ban on the sale of certain vitamins, herbs, and mineral products in the European Union. Following his marriage to Heather Mills, McCartney joined with her to campaign against landmines; both McCartney and Mills are patrons of Adopt-A-Minefield. In 2003, he played a personal concert for the wife of a wealthy banker and donated his one million dollar fee to the charity. He also wore an anti-landmines t-shirt on the Back in the World tour.

In 2006, the McCartneys travelled to Prince Edward Island to bring international attention to the seal hunt (their final public appearance together). Their arrival sparked attention in Newfoundland and Labrador where the hunt is of economic significance. The couple also debated with Newfoundland's Premier Danny Williams on the CNN show ''Larry King Live''. They further stated that the fishermen should quit hunting seals and begin a seal watching business. McCartney has also criticised China's fur trade and supports the Make Poverty History campaign.

McCartney has been involved with a number of charity recordings and performances. In 2004, he donated a song to an album to aid the "US Campaign for Burma", in support of Burmese Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, and he had previously been involved in the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea, Ferry Aid, Band Aid, Live Aid, and the recording of "Ferry Cross the Mersey" (released 8 May 1989) following the Hillsborough disaster.

In a December 2008 interview with ''Prospect Magazine'', McCartney mentioned that he tried to convince the Dalai Lama to become a vegetarian. In a letter to the Dalai Lama, McCartney took issue with Buddhism and meat-eating being considered compatible, saying, "Forgive me for pointing this out, but if you eat animals then there is some suffering somewhere along the line." The Dalai Lama replied to McCartney by saying his doctors advised him to eat meat for health reasons. In the interview McCartney said, "I wrote back saying they were wrong."

Football

The Beatles were advised by Epstein to make no comments about the football clubs they supported because it could alienate some fans, though it was well known that McCartney was a supporter of Everton Football Club, and that his father and relatives used to take him to matches. His allegiance later shifted to Liverpool F.C., as on 28 July 1968, The Beatles were photographed in a photographer's studio at 192–212 Gray's Inn Road, with McCartney wearing a Liverpool F.C. rosette. Linda McCartney later said: "We spent last night listening to Liverpool football team on the radio, wanting them to win so badly. Paul supports Liverpool. He was for Everton for a while because of his family — but it's all Liverpool now."

Lennon and McCartney were present to watch the 1966 FA Cup Final at Wembley, between Everton and Sheffield Wednesday, and McCartney attended the 1968 FA Cup Final (18 May 1968) which was played by West Bromwich Albion against Everton. After the end of the match, McCartney shared cigarettes and whisky with other football fans. The ex-Liverpool player, Albert Stubbins, was the only footballer shown on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover. McCartney tried to listen (on a radio) to the Liverpool v Manchester United 1977 FA Cup Final, while sailing in the Caribbean, and the video for McCartney's "Pipes of Peace" (in 1983) recreated the 1915 football game played between German and British troops during World War I, at Christmas.

At the end of the live version of "Coming Up" recorded in Glasgow in 1979 (later to become a US number one single) the crowd begins to sing "Paul McCartney!" until McCartney takes over and changes the chant to "Kenny Dalglish!", referring to the current Liverpool and Scotland striker. At the same concert, Gordon Smith, former football player who played for Rangers and Brighton & Hove Albion, met the McCartneys, and later accepted an invitation to visit their home in East Sussex in 1980. Smith later said that McCartney was "thrilled I knew Kenny Dalglish", to which Linda added: "I like Gordon McQueen of Man United", and Smith replied, "I know him too."

McCartney attended the 1986 FA Cup Final between Liverpool and Everton, and in 1989, he contributed to the Ferry Cross the Mersey charity single that was recorded to aid victims of the Hillsborough Disaster, which happened during a match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. McCartney performed at the Liverpool F.C. Anfield stadium on 1 June 2008, as a part of Liverpool's European Capital of Culture year. Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters sang with McCartney on "Band on the Run", and played drums on "Back in the U.S.S.R.". Ono and Olivia Harrison attended the concert, along with Ken Dodd, and the former Liverpool F.C. football manager Rafael Benítez.

In an interview in 2008, McCartney ended speculation about his allegiance when he said:

"Here's the deal: my father was born in Everton, my family are officially Evertonians, so if it comes down to a derby match or an FA Cup final between the two, I would have to support Everton. But after a concert at Wembley Arena I got a bit of a friendship with Kenny Dalglish, who had been to the gig and I thought 'You know what? I am just going to support them both because it's all Liverpool and I don't have that Catholic-Protestant thing.' So I did have to get special dispensation from the Pope to do this but that's it, too bad. I support them both. They are both great teams, but if it comes to the crunch, I'm Evertonian."

In 2010, there was heavy speculation surrounding McCartney that he was to head up a consortium launching a take-over bid for struggling Charlton Athletic. Links between the club and the famous musician go a long way back with Charlton's famous supporters anthem – Valley, Floyd Road – using the tune and a number of lyrics from the Wings song "Mull of Kintyre".

Business

McCartney is one of Britain's wealthiest musicians, with an estimated fortune of £750 million ($1.2 billion) in 2009, although Justice Bennett, in his judgement on McCartney's divorce case found no evidence that McCartney was worth more than £400 million. In December 1998, he was approached to purchase a stake in Everton Football Club by former school friend Bill Kenwright who wished to put a consortium together but McCartney chose to decline the offer. In addition to his interest in Apple Corps, McCartney's MPL Communications owns a significant music publishing catalogue, with access to over 25,000 copyrights. McCartney earned £40 million in 2003, making him Britain's highest media earner. This rose to £48.5 million by 2005. In the same year he joined the top American talent agency Grabow Associates, who arrange private performances for their richest clients. Northern Songs was established in 1963, by Dick James, to publish the songs of Lennon/McCartney.

The Beatles' partnership was replaced in 1968 by a jointly held company, Apple Corps, which continues to control Apple's commercial interests. Northern Songs was purchased by Associated Television (ATV) in 1969, and was sold in 1985 to Michael Jackson. For many years McCartney was unhappy about Jackson's purchase and handling of Northern Songs.

MPL Communications is an umbrella company for McCartney's business interests, which owns a wide range of copyrights, as well as the publishing rights to musicals. In 2006, the Trademarks Registry reported that MPL had started a process to secure the protections associated with registering the name "Paul McCartney" as a trademark. The 2005 films, ''Brokeback Mountain'' and ''Good Night and Good Luck'', feature MPL copyrights.

In April 2009, it was revealed that McCartney, in common with other wealthy musicians, had seen a significant decline in his net worth over the preceding year. It was estimated that his fortune had fallen by some £60m, from £238m to £175m. The losses were attributed to the ongoing global recession, and the resultant decline in value of property and stock market holdings.

Critique, recognition and achievements

McCartney is listed in ''The Guinness Book Of Records'' as the most successful musician and composer in popular music history with sales of 100 million singles and 60 gold discs, "Sir Paul McCartney became the Most Successful Songwriter who has written/co written 188 charted records, of which 91 reached the Top 10 and 33 made it to No.1 totalling 1,662 weeks on the chart (up to the beginning of 2008)."

In the US, McCartney has achieved thirty-two number-one singles on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, including twenty-one with The Beatles, one as a co-writer on Elton John's cover of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", nine solo, with Wings or other collaborators, and one as the composer of "A World Without Love", a number one single for Peter and Gordon. In the UK, McCartney has been involved in more number-one singles than any other artist under a variety of credits, although Elvis Presley has achieved more as a solo artist. McCartney has twenty four number-one singles in the UK, including seventeen with the Beatles, one solo, and one each with Wings, Stevie Wonder, Ferry Aid, Band Aid, Band Aid 20 and one with "The Christians et all". McCartney is the only artist to reach the UK number one as a soloist ("Pipes of Peace"), duo ("Ebony and Ivory" with Stevie Wonder), trio ("Mull of Kintyre", Wings), quartet ("She Loves You", The Beatles), quintet ("Get Back", The Beatles with Billy Preston), and as part of a musical ensemble for charity (Ferry Aid).

McCartney was voted the "Greatest Composer of the Millennium" by BBC News Online readers and McCartney's song "Yesterday" is thought to be the most covered song in history with more than 2,200 recorded versions and according to the BBC, "The track is the only one by a UK writer to have been aired more than seven million times on American TV and radio and is third in the all-time list. Sir Paul McCartney's Yesterday is the most played song by a British writer this century in the US." After its 1977 release, the Wings single "Mull of Kintyre" became the highest-selling record in British chart history, and remained so until 1984. (Three charity singles have since surpassed it in sales; the first to do so, in 1984, was Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in which McCartney was a participant.)

On 2 July 2005, he was involved with the fastest-released single in history. His performance of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" with U2 at Live 8 was released only 45 minutes after it was performed, before the end of the concert. The single reached number six on the ''Billboard'' charts, just hours after the single's release, and hit number one on numerous online download charts across the world. McCartney played for the largest stadium audience in history when 184,000 people paid to see him perform at Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on 21 April 1990.

McCartney's scheduled concert in St Petersburg, Russia was his 3,000th concert and took place in front of 60,000 fans in Russia, on 20 June 2004. Over his career, McCartney has played 2,523 gigs with The Beatles, 140 with Wings, and 325 as a solo artist. Only his second concert in Russia, with the first just the year before on Moscow's Red Square as the former Communist U.S.S.R. had previously banned music from The Beatles as a "corrupting influence", McCartney hired 3 jets, at a reported cost of $36,000 (€29,800) (£28,000), to spray dry ice in the clouds above Saint Petersburg's Winter Palace Square in a successful attempt to prevent rain.

The day McCartney flew into the former Soviet country, he celebrated his 62nd birthday, and after the concert, according to ''RIA Novosti'' news agency, he received a phone call from a fan; then-President Vladimir Putin, who telephoned him after the concert to wish him a happy birthday. In the concert programme for his 1989 world tour, McCartney wrote that Lennon received all the credit for being the avant-garde Beatle, and McCartney was known as "baby-faced", which he disagreed with. People also assumed that Lennon was the "hard-edged one", and McCartney was the "soft-edged" Beatle, although McCartney admitted to "bossing Lennon around." Linda McCartney said that McCartney had a "hard-edge"—and not just on the surface—which she knew about after all the years she had spent living with him. McCartney seemed to confirm this edge when he commented that he sometimes meditates, which he said is better than "sleeping, eating, or shouting at someone".

The minor planet 4148, discovered in 1983, was named "McCartney" in his honour.

On 18 June 2006, McCartney celebrated his 64th birthday, a milestone that was the subject of one of the first songs he ever wrote, at the age of sixteen, The Beatles' song "When I'm Sixty-Four". Paul Vallely noted in ''The Independent'': }}

Discography

Tours

Arms

Notes	Sir Paul McCartney's agent was Hubert Chesshyre, LVO, Clarenceux King of Arms
Crest	On a Wreath of the Colours A Liver Bird calling Sable supporting with the dexter claws a Guitar Or stringed Sable.
Escutcheon	Or between two Flaunches fracted fesswise two Roundels Sable over all six Guitar Strings palewise throughout counterchanged.
Motto	ECCE COR MEUM (Behold my heart)
Previous versions	}}

References

;Footnotes

;Bibliography

External links

Paul McCartney's Official Website

Paul McCartney's Animation Website

Paul McCartney Ecce Cor Meum audio Podcast

Liverpool celebrates Irish ancestry

Paul McCartney: Financial Accounts

Category:1942 births Category:English-language singers Category:English male singers Category:English multi-instrumentalists Category:English pop singers Category:English rock bass guitarists Category:English rock guitarists Category:English rock pianists Category:English rock singers Category:English singer-songwriters Category:English people of Irish descent Category:English vegetarians Category:Backing vocalists Category:20th-century classical composers Category:Apple Records artists Category:Best Original Music Score Academy Award winners Category:BRIT Award winners Category:Capitol Records artists Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Ivor Novello Award winners Category:Knights Bachelor Category:Members of the Order of the British Empire Category:Music from Liverpool Category:Parlophone artists Category:Mercury Records artists Category:People convicted of drug offenses Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Category:The Beatles members Category:The Quarrymen members Category:Wings members Category:Musicians from Liverpool Category:Living people Category:Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music Category:Transcendental Meditation practitioners Category:People educated at Liverpool Institute High School for Boys Category:Silver Clef Awards winners Category:Animal rights advocates

ar:بول مكارتني ay:Paul McCartney bn:পল ম্যাককার্টনি zh-min-nan:Paul McCartney be:Пол Макартні bs:Paul McCartney br:Paul McCartney bg:Пол Маккартни ca:Paul McCartney cs:Paul McCartney cy:Paul McCartney da:Paul McCartney de:Paul McCartney et:Paul McCartney el:Πωλ ΜακΚάρτνεϋ es:Paul McCartney eo:Paul McCartney eu:Paul McCartney fa:پل مک‌کارتنی fo:Paul McCartney fr:Paul McCartney fy:Paul McCartney ga:Paul McCartney gd:Pol MacArtain gl:Paul McCartney ko:폴 매카트니 hy:Փոլ Մաքքարթնի hi:पॉल मॅक्कार्टनी hr:Paul McCartney io:Paul McCartney id:Paul McCartney is:Paul McCartney it:Paul McCartney he:פול מקרטני jv:Paul McCartney ka:პოლ მაკ-კარტნი sw:Paul McCartney la:Paulus McCartney lv:Pols Makartnijs lb:Paul McCartney lt:Paul McCartney lij:Paul McCartney li:Paul McCartney hu:Paul McCartney mk:Пол Мекартни mr:पॉल मॅकार्टनी nah:Paul McCartney nl:Paul McCartney ne:पल मेकार्टनी ja:ポール・マッカートニー no:Paul McCartney nn:Paul McCartney oc:Paul McCartney uz:Paul McCartney pap:Paul McCartney pl:Paul McCartney pt:Paul McCartney ro:Paul McCartney qu:Paul MacCartney ru:Маккартни, Пол sq:Paul McCartney scn:Paul McCartney simple:Paul McCartney sk:Paul McCartney sl:Paul McCartney sr:Пол Макартни sh:Paul McCartney fi:Paul McCartney sv:Paul McCartney tl:Paul McCartney th:พอล แม็กคาร์ตนีย์ tr:Paul McCartney uk:Пол Маккартні vi:Paul McCartney zh-yue:保羅麥卡尼 zh:保罗·麦卡特尼

Name	Paul Robeson
Birth name	Paul Leroy Robeson
Born	April 09, 1898Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.
Died	January 23, 1976Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Instrument	Vocals
Genre	SpiritualsInternational folkMusicals
Occupation	Actor, concert singer, athlete, lawyer, social activist
Years active	1917–63
background	solo_singer }}

Name	Paul "Robey" Robeson
Position	End
Birth date	April 9, 1898
Death date	January 23, 1976
Heightft	6
Heightin	3
Weight	219
Debutyear	1921
Debutteam	Akron Pros
Finalyear	1922
Finalteam	Milwaukee Badgers
College	Rutgers
Teams	Akron Pros () Milwaukee Badgers ()
Statseason	1922
Statlabel1	Games played
Statvalue1	15
Statlabel2	Games started
Statvalue2	13
Statlabel3	TD
Statvalue3	1
Nfl	ROB361120
Collegehof	10080 }}

Paul Leroy Robeson (April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an American concert singer (bass-baritone), recording artist, athlete and actor who became noted for his political radicalism and activism in the civil rights movement. Robeson was the first major concert star to popularize the performance of Negro spirituals. He was the first black actor of the 20th century to portray Shakespeare's ''Othello'' in a production with an otherwise all-white cast.

A nationally renowned football player from 1917 to the early 1920s, Robeson was an All-American athlete, and Phi Beta Kappa Society laureate during his years at Rutgers University. In 1923, Robeson drifted into amateur theater work, and within a decade he had become an international star of stage, screen, radio and film. Robeson was awarded the NAACP's Spingarn Medal, the Stalin Peace Prize and honorary memberships in over half a dozen trade unions. James Earl Jones, Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte have cited Robeson's lead film roles as being the first to display dignity for black actors and pride in African heritage. Though one of the most internationally famous people of the 20th century, Robeson was blacklisted during the Cold War and his activism was nearly erased from mainstream accounts of that period.

At the height of his career, Paul Robeson chose to become primarily a political artist. In 1950, Robeson's passport was revoked under the McCarran Act over his work in the anti-imperialism movement and what the U.S. State Department called Robeson's "frequent criticism while abroad of the treatment of blacks in the US." Under heavy and daily surveillance by both the FBI and the CIA and publicly condemned for his beliefs, Robeson's income fell dramatically and he was blacklisted from performing on stage, screen, radio and television. Robeson's right to travel was restored in 1958, but his already faltering health broke down under controversial circumstances in 1963. By 1965, he was forced into permanent retirement. He spent his final years in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, unapologetic about his political views and career. Advocates of Robeson's legacy have restored his name to history books and sports records, honoring his memory with posthumous recognitions.

Early life

Paul Robeson was born in Princeton, New Jersey in 1898. His father, William Drew Robeson I, was descended from the Igbo people of Nigeria, and had run away during the American Civil War from the Robeson plantation in North Carolina where he was born a slave. He served in the Union Army in Pennsylvania, earned a degree from Lincoln University (Pennsylvania), and became a minister of the gospel. His mother Maria Louisa Bustill was from a prominent black abolitionist Quaker family of mixed ancestry: African, Anglo-American, and Lenape.

From 1881 until 1901, William Robeson was minister of the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church in Princeton. Robeson refused to bow to pressure from the "white residents of Princeton" to cease his tendency to "speak out against social injustice." Louisa Robeson was nearly blind from cataracts and died in a house fire in 1904 when her son Paul was six years old.

The Robesons had four other children: William Drew Robeson II, a physician who practiced in Washington, D.C.; Rev. Benjamin C. Robeson, Pastor of Mother AME Zion Church in NY City, the oldest Black Church in NY State; Reeve Robeson (called Reed); and Marian Robeson, who lived in Philadelphia. William Drew Robeson was said to be a stern disciplinarian when it came to the children's studies and behavior. When he was eight years old, Robeson moved with his family to Westfield, New Jersey, where he attended the public schools together with white children. In 1910, when the family relocated to Somerville, New Jersey, he continued to impress upon Paul that he could achieve anything that white people could.

Scholarship

Robeson was only the third African-American student accepted at Rutgers, and the only black student during his time on campus. Robeson was also one of three classmates at Rutgers accepted into Phi Beta Kappa in his third year, and one of four students selected in 1919 to Cap and Skull, Rutgers' honor society.

Campus clubs and racism

Paul Robeson was also active on the Rutgers debate team and in oratorical contests both on and off campus, winning the statewide prize four years in a row. He sang with the campus Glee club, but due to the racist climate at the time, he was not welcome to travel with the latter group out of town or at social events following its on-campus performances. He was elected to the Rutgers literary society, the Philoclean Society, but was not allowed to fully share in its festivities.

All-American and varsity sports

At Rutgers he also excelled as a sportsman. Robeson earned a total of 15 varsity letters in American football, baseball, basketball, and track and field. For his accomplishments as an end in football, he was named a first-team All-America in 1917 and 1918. He was Rutgers' first All-American football player (of any race). During scrimmages while Robeson initially tried out for the football team, he faced both racism and harsh physical injury: for instance, a senior member of the team injured Robeson's hand with a cleated foot, tearing off fingernails. He was benched on more than one occasion when Southern teams William and Mary and Georgia Tech refused to play against a black man.

Though Robeson later said he gave thought to quitting, he persevered and was described by football coach Walter Camp as "the greatest defensive end to ever trot the gridiron." Lou Little of Columbia University football said of him, "there has never been a greater player in the history of football than Robeson."

Graduation honors

Chosen to be the 1919 class valedictorian, during his oration Robeson exhorted his classmates to "catch a new vision", while the "class prophecy" envisioned that he would become a governor of New Jersey by 1940 and "leader of the colored race in America." Robeson's senior thesis was entitled "The Fourteenth Amendment, the Sleeping Giant of the American Constitution", in which he expressed optimism about white intentions to end segregation. Sports historian Francis C. Harris wrote that Robeson "...established a level of excellence as a scholar-athlete that few others, if any, have ever attained."

Columbia Law School

After graduation from Rutgers, Robeson moved to Harlem and entered Columbia Law School. Between 1920 and 1923, Robeson helped pay his way through law school by working both as an athlete and as a performer.

He played professional football in the American Professional Football Association (later called the National Football League) with the Akron Pros and Milwaukee Badgers. He served as assistant football coach at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. There he was initiated into Alpha Phi Alpha, the fraternity for African-American college men, of which Noble Sissle and W.E.B Du Bois were also members. He also played for the St. Christopher Club traveling basketball team during their 1918–19 season.

His first entry into stage performance was as a Columbia law student. He played Simon in ''Simon the Cyrenian'' at the Harlem YMCA in 1920, followed in 1922 by Jim in ''Taboo'' by Mary Hoyt Wiborg at the Sam Harris Theater in Harlem. Also in 1922, Eubie Blake heard Robeson sing casually and encouraged him to appear in his production of ''Shuffle Along'' and Lew Leslie's ''Plantation Revue'' as a member of the close-harmony singing quartet the Harmony Kings. The production of ''Taboo'', renamed ''Voodoo'', was taken to cities in Britain in summer 1922. Directed by Mrs Patrick Campbell, it gave greater prominence to Robeson's singing, which was praised by critics. In London, Robeson was able to meet with prominent African-American expatriates.

Robeson graduated from Columbia in 1923, in the same law school class as William O. Douglas — later a United States Supreme Court Justice. Robeson's academic record was not as stellar as it had been at Rutgers, and he had a mostly C average. He was not enthusiastic about the law after graduation. His broken tenure at the school due to his work in theater made him ineligible for the ''Columbia Law Review''. Editor-in-chief Charles Ascher in later years said that the "Southerners on the board would have put up a fight..."

Marriage and family

In August 1921, Robeson married Eslanda Cardozo Goode, who headed the pathology laboratory at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City. She came from a distinguished family of a mixed-race ancestry. Her father Cardozo Goode was related to the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo. Essie encouraged Robeson in his career and became his business manager.

Early in their marriage, Eslanda learned that her husband was not dedicated to monogamy and domesticity. Wanting to retain her marriage and status as Robeson's wife, she tolerated his extramarital affairs while also having her own at times. Robeson felt that Essie was instrumental to his success both as his manager and his intellectual partner. Eslanda's diaries and their shared correspondence demonstrates that at times there was anger and recrimination on both sides of their partnership. Despite his ambivalence at times about marriage, Robeson knew that divorcing Eslanda would hurt his stature in the black community. In the 1930s, the couple began legal proceedings toward divorce when Robeson fell in love with Yolanda Jackson, a British woman, but the relationship ended abruptly. Eslanda and Robeson stayed together, continuing an open marriage until Eslanda died on December 23, 1965. Eslanda wrote the first biography of Paul Robeson, ''Paul Robeson: Negro''. Told in the third person, she wrote part fiction, part memoir about the problems in their marriage and Robeson's early life and career. She incorrectly added "Bustill" as Robeson's middle name in this book.

They had one son, Paul Robeson, Jr., born November 2, 1927. He has spent much of his life safeguarding his father's legacy by founding ''The Robeson Family Archives'' and ''The Paul Robeson Foundation''. Paul Robeson also had two grandchildren, David Robeson (1951–1998) and Susan Robeson (1953- ), who became a documentary filmmaker. In 1980, Susan Robeson published a pictorial biography of her grandfather.

Religious views

Robeson did not follow in his father's footsteps as a regular congregant in the African Methodist Episcopal church, but he had a lifelong reverence for the black church. In 1998, close family friend Bishop J. Clinton Hoggard, who eulogized Robeson at his funeral, stated, "He was a Christian, he believed in God, which is why he is one who could sing the great hymns of the church, they come out of his soul." In a 1929 entry in his diary, Robeson expressed the thought that his career and marriage were part of a "higher plan", writing: "God watches over me and guides me. He's with me and let's me fight my own battles and hopes I'll win." Later when his left-wing activism became controversial, accusations that he was a "'godless' Communist" were not accepted by his black churchgoing audiences, who felt he "personified the spirituals in his music". Robeson never expressed "even the remotest allegiance to 'materialistic atheism'". According to his biographer Martin Duberman, Robeson was "not a religious man in any formalistic sense ... nonetheless an intensely spiritual one, convinced that some higher force watched over him." In a 1958 BBC television interview, Robeson reminisced of his days growing up in his father's church, "every Sunday morning there would be a rolling up of a great sermon and 'bow down on bended knees, oh Lord and hail Mary' and it became very much like an opera."

Early career (1920–1928)

Robeson started working for the law firm of Stotesbury (a Rutger's alumnus) and Miner in New York City, assisting on a litigation trial over Jay Gould's estate. Though his brief was used in the Gould trial, Robeson, the only black person in the law firm, quit after a white secretary refused to take dictation from him, saying: "I never take dictation from a nigger."

In the 1920s, Robeson found fame as an actor and singing star of both stage and radio with his bass voice and commanding presence. His voice could descend as low as C below the bass clef. Robeson and his accompanist and arranger Lawrence Brown were the first to bring spirituals to the concert stage; their association lasted through four decades.

Robeson was acclaimed for his 1924 Provincetown Playhouse performance in the title role of Eugene O'Neill's ''The Emperor Jones''. Charles Sidney Gilpin had premiered the role in 1920. He also gained recognition for his starring performance in the premier production of O'Neill's ''All God's Chillun Got Wings'' (1924). He portrayed the husband of an abusive white woman (played by Mary Blair). Resenting him, she destroys his promising career as a lawyer. The interracial marriage was controversial for many members of both black and white audiences. He next played Crown in the stage version of DuBose Heyward's novel ''Porgy''. This work was later adapted by George and Ira Gershwin as the opera ''Porgy and Bess''.

During his days at Columbia Law School, Robeson had sung professionally though giving little thought to a career. In 1924 when unable to whistle for a performance in ''Taboo'', he sang a spiritual instead, pleasing both the cast and audiences. He had reconnected with the accompanist and arranger Lawrence Brown in 1924, and they rapidly established a successful musical partnership. Robeson later credited Brown for guiding him "...to the beauty of my own folk music and to the music of all other Peoples so like our own."

Lawrence Brown had previously worked with the gospel singer Roland Hayes, and he had an extensive repertoire of African-American folk songs. His partnership with Robeson helped bring these works to much wider attention both in the U.S. and abroad. Robeson became a hugely popular concert draw in New York City, and his wife Esland acted as his agent and manager. Carl Sandburg distinguished between Robeson's interpretation of spirituals and that of Roland Hayes, saying that "Hayes imitates white culture... Robeson is the real thing...." Robeson was broadcast in performance on New York radio, usually performing Negro spirituals; on June 7, 1927 he was a featured performer on the ''Edison Hour''. Robeson became interested in the folk music of the world; his standard repertoire after the 1920s included songs in Chinese, Russian, Yiddish and German.

Robeson's earliest film was ''Body and Soul'' (1925), a silent American race film directed by Oscar Micheaux. Robeson played both a conniving preacher, and his twin brother. Disapproving of seeing a preacher as a negative character, the New York Motion Pictures Commission ordered Micheaux to reduce that part.

Move to Britain and political involvement (1928–1939)

In the late 1920s, the Robesons moved to England, where they lived until the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Robeson made extended singing tours of the United States and Europe and appeared in nine films, all but two of them British productions.

''Show Boat''

In 1928 Robeson played the role of Joe, which was written for him, in the London production of the American musical ''Show Boat''. His rendition of ''Ol' Man River'' is widely considered the definitive version of the song. Robeson sang the song as written when he performed in the musical, but in later recitals, he altered the lyrics to transform it to a song of black defiance and perseverance. While ''Show Boat'' was immensely popular with white audiences, black theater reviewers were less than impressed. J.A. Rodgers of ''The Amsterdam News'' wrote that he had spoken to "fully some thirty Negros of intelligence and self respect" who urged "their disapprobation of the play" and he had "heard many harsh things said against Robeson... if anyone had called him (Robeson) a 'nigger', he'd be the first to get offended and there he is singing 'nigger, nigger' before all these white people."

Involvement with Welsh miners

While performing in ''Show Boat'', Robeson met a group of unemployed miners, who had taken part in a hunger march from South Wales. After taking them for their first meal in days, he decided to help their cause. He visited the Rhondda Valley and the Talygarn Miners' Rest Home, and performed for miners and their families in Cardiff, Neath and Aberdare. At the invitation of a group of Labour MPs, he was the first actor to be invited for lunch at the House of Commons.

''Othello''

In 1930, Robeson starred for the first time in the title role in William Shakespeare's ''Othello'' in England. Peggy Ashcroft co-starred as Desdemona. When the play opened on May 19, Robeson became the first black actor in nearly a century, since Ira Aldridge, to play Othello opposite a white cast. The production met with mostly positive reviews with a few lukewarm notices pointing out Robeson's "highly civilized quality" and lack of the "grand style." He had an affair with Ashcroft that lasted on and off until the late 1950s.

Political activities

In an interview with W. R. Titterton in 1930, Robeson rejected "political activism, political advocacy and commitment to a 'cause' as suitable modes for an artist", believing that the artist must be "ultimately accountable only to himself and his art; the prophet and the warrior are by definition at odds with the artist." His son Paul Robeson, Jr. later said, "In 1930, Paul had not yet jettisoned the 'don't upset white folks' dictum of his boyhood days, thus interfering with his ability to project the regal and commanding posture that Othello should deliver from the outset..." In 1938, he performed for an audience of 7,000 at the Welsh International Brigades National Memorial in Mountain Ash, to commemorate the 33 men from Wales killed while fighting on the side of the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War. Because of his public stands, he became a popular cultural figure in Wales. Robeson often stayed in Tiger Bay with his American uncle by marriage, Aaron Mossell, a black Communist active in Pan-Africanism.

In 1940, Robeson appeared in ''The Proud Valley'', playing a black laborer who arrives in the Rhondda and wins the hearts of the local people.

While continuing his professional singing and acting career, through 1939 Robeson became increasingly involved with the struggles of British workers. He performed for them on numerous occasions, entered the pits with miners to see their working conditions, and befriended them. Returning to England in 1949, he said his earlier time there had a profound influence on his political development:

I learned my militancy and my politics, from your Labor Movement here in Britain.... That was how I realized that the fight of my Negro people in America and the fight of oppressed workers everywhere was the same struggle.

Film work

Robeson's second film was the experimental classic ''Borderline''. Shot in Switzerland in 1930 by a trio of ''avant garde'' artists known as the Pool Group, and co-starring his wife, Eslanda, the film chronicles race relations in a small European village. In 1933, he returned briefly to the U.S. where he reprised his title role in Dudley Murphy's film version of Eugene O'Neill's ''The Emperor Jones''. The American version of ''The Emperor Jones'' was censored to leave out a dramatic scene featuring Robeson's killing a white prison guard who had ordered his character to beat a fellow prisoner who had been caught escaping. The 1936 Universal Pictures film ''Show Boat'' was a box office hit for Robeson. It is the most frequently shown of all his films, and his performance of the main song "Ol' Man River" was particularly notable.

At the height of his popularity in the 1930s, Robeson became an international box office attraction in British films such as ''Song of Freedom'' (1936) and ''Sanders of the River'' (1935). He was also King Umbopa in the 1937 version of ''King Solomon's Mines''. In films such as ''Jericho'' and ''Proud Valley'', he portrayed strong black American male leading roles without the subservience typical of roles for blacks at the time. Because of his growing political and racial consciousness, he was one of the first actors of any race to demand (and receive) final cut approval on a film (''Song of Freedom''). He was the first black actor to have roles that expressed both dignity and pride in African heritage.

Theatre work

Robeson played the role of Toussaint L'Ouverture in the 1936 play ''Black Majesty'' by C.L.R. James, alongside the actor Robert Adams. He had long wanted to play the role, but the production closed after two weeks. Adams went on to co-star in two of Robeson's films, ''Song of Freedom'' and ''King Solomon's Mines'', and founded the Negro Repertory Arts Theater.

In 1938, Robeson appeared in a well-received two-month run of Herbert Marshall's ''Plant in the Sun''. The play dealt with sit-down strikes and union organizing in the US, and was produced by the Unity Theatre.

Identification with African anti-imperialism

Living in London, Robeson became aware of knowledge about African history and culture that was not available in the United States. During the 1930s he met with African students in London, who urged him to travel to the Soviet Union. Paul and Eslanda Robeson were named honorary members of the West African Students' Union in London, where they became good friends with future national presidents Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta. In essays such as "I want to be African", Robeson wrote of his desire to embrace his heritage. He compared the issues of peoples in the colonial possessions of Western Europe and African Americans. Robeson's experiences during the 1930s caused him to alter how he felt about the relationship between art and activism. His African studies, contacts in the anti-imperialism movement, and half-decade association with British socialists led him to visit the Soviet Union. He did not make any public declaration of support for socialism, saying: "In England they call me a 'Communist' because of my views, but I'm certainly not a member of the Communist Party." He was so disappointed by the final cut of the ''Sanders of the River'' (1935) , a stereotypical portrayal of Africa under imperialist rule, that he became "more conscious politically." By the end of the 1930s, Robeson had become an outspoken artist-activist.

Though officially enrolled in phonetics and Swahili at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London in 1934, Robeson also studied other languages there and independently while in London, including Igbo, Yoruba, Zulu, Chinese, Russian and Hindi. Robeson is honoured at SOAS through the Paul Robeson House, opened in 1998. In the 1940s he was studying Chinese, when the FBI stole one of his notebooks and had it translated in an unsuccessful attempt to link him to Communist activities. When asked how many languages Robeson spoke, historian Sterling Stuckey answered, "Some claim twelve, others claim twenty; he certainly sang in a great many."

First visit to the Soviet Union

Robeson journeyed to the Soviet Union in December 1934, via Germany, having been given an official invitation. He and Eslanda were nearly attacked by Nazi ''Sturmabteilung'' (Storm troopers) at the stopover in Berlin. In the Soviet Union, Robeson was welcomed by playwrights, artists and filmmakers, among them the film director Sergei Eisenstein, who became a close friend. Robeson also met with African Americans who had migrated to the USSR, including his two brothers-in-law. He found the USSR free of racism and racial segregation; Russians ran up to greet him in the streets. He spoke of the "joy and happiness and friendliness, this utter absence of any embarrassment over a 'race question' is all the more keenly felt by me because of the day I spent in Berlin on the way here, and that was a day of horror—in an atmosphere of hatred, fear and suspicion."

Robeson declared that African American spiritual music resonated to Russian folk traditions. He told the press: "Here, I am not a Negro but a human being for the first time in my life ... I walk in full human dignity."

The Spanish Civil War

Robeson had a long association with the International Brigades who served in the Spanish Civil War. This close association endures to present day. Throughout his life he cited the struggle against fascism in Spain as an essential part of shaping his transformation into a political artist and activist, writing in his autobiography that Spain was "the turning point of my life." Robeson is one of only three people to have been given honorary membership in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the volunteers from the United States who served in the Spanish Civil War for the International Brigades.

As fascism escalated in Europe, "Save Spain" rallies were organized. The first rally was at the Albert Hall in 1937 sponsored by W.H. Auden, Virginia Woolf, and H.G. Wells, among others, as a benefit concert for the National Joint Committee for Spanish Refugees in Aid of the Basque Refugee Children's Fund. The program cover was designed by Pablo Picasso. In Moscow Robeson recorded a message to be related by radio to the concert, but when Germany threatened to jam the broadcast, and the Albert Hall managers did not wish it to be received, he decided to fly to London to attend the rally in person. In his performance, he changed the lyrics of "Old Man River" from "I'm tired of livin' and scared of dyin'" to "I must keep fightin' until I'm dyin'." He also stated, "The liberation of Spain from the oppression of fascist reactionaries is not a private matter of the Spaniards, but the common cause of all advanced and progressive humanity." Robeson's recorded message included this statement, which became his epitaph:

The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative. The history of the capitalist era is characterized by the degradation of my people: despoiled of their lands, their culture destroyed, ... denied equal protection under law, and deprived their rightful place in the respect of their fellows. Not through blind faith or coercion but conscious of my course, I take my place with you.

By December 1937 Robeson had addressed four rallies for the Republican cause. He had also denounced fascist attacks on Ethiopia by Italy and spoke out in favor of the emerging Communist revolution in China. His British entertainment manager was concerned about the implications of his becoming a political artist. Robeson decided to establish his political events as primary, explaining to the press that, "something inside me has turned". No longer would he appear in "decadent Hollywood films", he stated, but instead would portray "the life, hopes and aspirations of the struggling people from which I come."

Visiting Spain in 1938, Robeson met with the American men and women of The Abraham Lincoln Brigade on the battlefields, including about ninety-five African Americans. Back in Europe, he raised funds for the Spanish Republic, and to aid returning wounded Lincoln veterans in need of medical care.

The Council on African Affairs

Robeson co-founded with Max Yergan the International Committee on African Affairs in 1937 (from 1941, the Council on African Affairs, CAA). The CAA provided information about Africa across the U.S., particularly to African-Americans. During World War II, it functioned as a coalition including a variety of activists from varying leftist backgrounds. Its most successful campaign was probably that for South African famine relief in 1946. Under the weight of internal disputes, government repression, and financial hardships, the CAA disbanded in 1955.

Height of fame and World War II (1939–1945)

Ballad for Americans

After his return from Europe in 1939, Robeson quickly became a national celebrity once again when he performed ''Ballad for Americans'', an American patriotic cantata with lyrics by John La Touche and music by Earl Robinson. Originally titled ''The Ballad for Uncle Sam'', it was written for a Works Progress Administration theatre project called ''Sing for Your Supper''. Robeson performed "Ballad" on the CBS radio network in 1943, accompanied by chorus and orchestra. Bing Crosby made a commercially successful recording of the piece, but the song is closely associated with Robeson, standing at the pinnacle of his music and radio career prior to the Cold War.

He sang Ballad for Americans at The Hollywood Bowl to the largest sold-out crowd in its history. The Beverly Wilshire was the only hotel in Los Angeles willing to accommodate Robeson, at the then exorbitant rate of $100 per night and only if he would register under an assumed name. He complied with the requirements, but then arranged to spend two hours every afternoon sitting in the lobby, where he could easily be recognized. When asked why, he responded, "To ensure that the next time Black singers and actors come through, they'll have a place to stay." During that period, Collier's magazine named him both "favorite male Negro singer" and "America's no.1 entertainer."

Wartime performances

When Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war, Robeson was among the first performers to give benefit concerts on behalf of the American war effort, making him one of the top American actors and singers of that era. In an interview published in all the black weeklies and the July–August issue of ''TAC'', magazine of the Theatre Arts Committee, Robeson was asked what prompted his decision to return to the US to live, he replied:

I've learned that my people are not the only ones oppressed. That it is the same for Jews or Chinese as for Negroes, and that such prejudice has no place in a democracy. I have sung my songs all over the world, and everywhere found that some common bond makes the people of all lands take to Negro songs, as to their own....{A]ll oppressed people cry out against their oppressors....[These experiences] have made me come home to sing my songs so that we will see that our democracy does not vanish. If I can contribute to this as an artist, I shall be happy.

Film work

In 1942 Robeson lent his speaking and singing talents to the Frontier Films production of ''Native Land''. A combination of a documentary format and staged reenactments, the film depicted the struggle of trade unions against anti-union corporations. It was based on the 1938 report of the La Follette Committee's investigation of the repression of labor organizing. The FBI labeled it "...obviously a Communist project."

The same year, in Hollywood, Robeson participated in the anthology film ''Tales of Manhattan''. His segment depicted black people's living conditions under the sharecropping system. Robeson was dissatisfied, calling it "very offensive to my people. It makes the Negro childlike and innocent and is in the old plantation hallelujah shouter tradition". He attempted to remove the film from distribution but buying up all prints proved far too expensive. Robeson held a press conference, announcing that he would no longer act in Hollywood films because of the demeaning roles available to black actors and would gladly join others in picketing the film. During this period, Robeson also turned down roles in ''Moby Dick'', ''Gone With The Wind'', ''Song of the South'' and ''Porgy and Bess''.

Japanese Americans

In February 1942, Robeson was approached by the sculptor Isamu Noguchi to join a panel of prominent non-Asians testifying before Congress to the loyalty of Japanese Americans, in order to avert mass removal. Robeson volunteered but the panel idea was dropped once Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066.

Robeson remained attentive to Nisei concerns. In a 1943 speech, he praised "the workers from Mexico and from the east--Japan and the Philippines--whose labor has helped make the west and the southwest a fruitful land." In 1946, he opposed a move by the Canadian government to deport thousands of Japanese Canadians. Robeson accepted honorary life membership of the Japanese Canadian Committee for Democracy and gave a concert in Salt Lake City, then home to the Japanese American Citizens League.

Civil Rights activism

In winter 1943, Robeson traveled to Boston where he called for a full investigation into the recent rash of antisemitic acts of vandalism against a Jewish cemetery and a synagogue. The following month he spoke at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York, at 12th Annual ''Herald Tribune'' Forum, on the participation of African Americans in the fight against the Axis powers. In December, 1943, Robeson addressed an annual meeting of Major League Baseball club owners, demanding they admit black players to major league baseball, helping to pave the way for Jackie Robinson to break the "color bar" in baseball two years later.

The Broadway Othello

Robeson reprised the role of Othello in New York in 1943 under the direction of Margaret Webster, and toured the US with it until 1945. , his run of ''Othello'' is the longest of any Shakespeare play on Broadway, running for 296 performances. Uta Hagen played Desdemona, and José Ferrer played Iago. For his portrayal, Robeson received a Donaldson Award, as well as the Gold Medal for the best diction in the American theater, which had only been awarded nine times since its inception in 1924. The eighteen-disc 78 RPM record album made by Columbia Masterworks from this production was the longest spoken word album made until then, and the first two-hour album ever made of a Shakespeare play. It was later transferred to LP, where it appeared on a three-disc album set, and has been issued on CD by the company Pearl. Unfortunately, its career on LP was extremely brief, since the recording was made in the 1940's and Robeson was blacklisted shortly after. thumb|right|250px|Paul Robeson with Uta Hagen in the Theatre Guild production of ''Othello''.The play had its Broadway run at the Shubert Theatre, and Robeson was the first African American to play the role with a white supporting cast on the Broadway stage. At the opening night performance, the audience gave the cast a twenty-minute standing ovation, for ten curtain calls. Despite his popularity, Robeson was not permitted to dine at Sardi's, a once-segregated restaurant located just across the street from the Theatre. Robeson toured with Othello in the US and Canada until 1945 and continued to perform solo excerpts from the play at his concert performances for the remainder of his career.

Civil rights activism and post war politics (1945–1948)

During World War II, Robeson's support for the Allied War effort had made him the world's most famous African-American and his previous statements and advocacy for socialism had been ignored by both the media and the white establishment. The start of the Cold war led to a social climate in which most civil rights and anti-imperialist groups in the United States were considered "Communist affiliated."Many of Robeson's closest friends and associates including Benjamin Davis, Howard Fast and William L. Patterson, were CPUSA members.

Spingarn medal

In 1945, Robeson was awarded the Spingarn medal by the NAACP for his "distinguished achievements in the theatre and concert stage as well as his active concern for the rights of the common man for every race, color, religion and nationality."

American Crusade to End Lynching

In July 1946, as Chairman of the Council on African Affairs, Robeson telegramed President Truman on the lynching of four African Americans in Georgia, demanding that the federal government "take steps to apprehend and punish the perpetrators ... and to halt the rising tide of lynch law.

In September of that year, Robeson spoke at a large rally against lynching, at Madison Square Gardens. Also that September, Robeson headed a protest at the Lincoln Memorial, for the American Crusade Against Lynching, a coalition of organizations and public figures, including Albert Einstein. Following the rally, he led a delegation to the White House to present a legislative and educational program to President Truman aimed at ending mob violence; demanding that lynchers be prosecuted and calling on Congress to enact a federal anti-lynching law. Robeson then warned Truman that if the government did not do something to end lynching, "the Negroes will". He contrasted the United States lead in prosecuting Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials with the continuation of lynching at home. Truman refused the request to issue a formal public statement against lynching, stating that it was not "the right time." Robeson also gave a radio address, calling on all Americans of all races to demand that Congress pass civil rights legislation.

Tenney Committees

On October 7, 1946, Robeson testified before the Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in California (Tenney Committee) that he was not a Communist Party member. He was never identified as an official member of any Communist organization.

Civil Rights Congress

In 1947 Robeson met with leaders of the NAACP to form a coalition to coordinate anti-lynching efforts with the Civil Rights Congress, an organization close to the Communist Party of the United States of America, regarded as "subversive and communist" by the Truman administration.

Robeson sang and spoke in 1948 at an event organized by the Los Angeles Civil Rights Congress and labor unions to launch a campaign against job discrimination, for passage of the federal Fair Employment Practices Act also known as Executive Order 8802, anti-lynching and anti-poll tax legislation, and citizens’ action to defeat the county loyalty oath climate.

Robeson again sought an appointment with President Truman to confer on anti-poll tax, anti-lynching and fair employment legislation, but repeated requests were rejected.

The Progressive Party

In 1948, Robeson was very active as co-chairman of the presidential campaign to elect Progressive Party candidate Henry A. Wallace, who had served as Vice-President under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Wallace was running on an anti-lynching, pro-civil rights platform and had attracted a diverse group of voters including Communists, liberals and trade unionists. On the campaign trail in June of that year, Robeson went to the deep south, including Georgia, where he sang before "overflow audiences... in Negro churches in Atlanta and Macon." At the party's convention in Philadelphia, Robeson joined forces with the delegates from the Nisei for Wallace. The Progressive Party went on record in favor of evacuation claims for former camp residents, repeal of discriminatory laws against Japanese aliens, plus equal immigration and naturalization rights. During the campaign, Robeson organized a fund-raising concert tour in Hawaii under the auspices of the Longshoreman's Union.

Trade union activism

Robeson's belief that the labor movement and trade unionism were crucial to the civil rights of oppressed people of all races became central to his political beliefs. Many unions during the 1940s and 1950s were still characterized by segregation. Robeson's close friend, the union activist Revels Cayton, pressed for "black caucuses" in each union, with Robeson's encouragement and involvement. Domestically and internationally, Robeson enjoyed long friendships with various unions for his devotion to their causes.

Robeson also supported "Camp Wo-Chi-Ca" (Workers' Children's Camp) in New Jersey, an interracial summer camp for working class children established by the International Workers Order. Robeson would visit the camp every summer from 1940 to 1949, singing playing baseball with the children and developing an extensive musical program. In summer of 1949, Robeson also visited the largely Jewish Camp Kinderland in New York.

Mundt-Nixon bill and Smith Act

Robeson opposed anti-communist legislation. In 1948, he opposed a bill calling for registration of Communist Party members and appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Questioned about his affiliation with the Communist Party, he refused to answer, stating "Some of the most brilliant and distinguished Americans are about to go to jail for the failure to answer that question, and I am going to join them, if necessary." (The bill was ultimately defeated in the Senate.) In 1949, he spoke in favor of the liberty of twelve Communists (including his long-time friend Benjamin Davis, Jr.) convicted under the Smith Act, which criminalized various left- and right-wing activities as seditious.

Controversies and international travels (1949)

Following a successful U.S. and Caribbean tour during late 1948, Robeson took a Christmas break at the family home in Enfield, Connecticut, planning to join accompanist Lawrence Brown in the spring of 1949 for scheduled US concert dates. He soon was informed, however, that the performances were canceled by local booking agents whom the FBI had threatened to brand "pro-Communist." For the first time in his professional life, Robeson was without a U.S. concert audience and his recordings were now banned from radio and stores. Robeson had also become the target of conservative journalists Walter Winchell and Hedda Hopper. With the United States government and media pressuring the entertainment industry into blacklisting him, in 1949 Robeson had to go overseas to work. Robeson's 1949 tour of Europe, took him to France, Britain, Scandinavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Soviet Union.

There had been travel conditions put on him by the U.S. State Department upon the renewal of his passport and he signed a waiver to not make any "political or charitable appearances while on tour." Robeson was also under heavy surveillance by the CIA while abroad.

The Paris Peace Congress

As an authorized speaker for the Coordinating Committee of the Colonial Peoples of London, in April 1949, Robeson attended the Paris Peace Congress sponsored by the Soviet Union and by pro-Communist and Communist organizations. There he sang Joe Hill and spoke extemporaneously about why he thought the progressives in America did not want war. The widely publicized speech caused extreme controversy in the United States when it was misquoted by the Associated Press. Numerous biographers and historians concur that this one single event signaled the start of Robeson's status as an "enemy" of the United States government and the end of his popularity with mainstream America during the Cold War. A direct translation from the French transcripts of the live audio is as follows,

"We in America do not forget that it was the backs of white workers from Europe and on the backs of millions of Blacks that the wealth of America was built. And we are resolved to share it equally. We reject any hysterical raving that urges us to make war on anyone. Our will to fight for peace is strong. We shall not make war upon the Soviet Union. We oppose those who wish to support imperialism Germany and to establish fascism in Greece. We wish peace with Franco's Spain despite her fascism. We shall support peace and friendship among all nations, with Soviet Russia and the People's Republics. "

What came over the wires to news agencies via the AP in the United States was as follows,

"We colonial peoples have contributed to the building of the United States and are determined to share its wealth. We denounce the policy of the United States government which is similar to Hitler and Goebbels. We want peace and liberty and will combat for them along with the Soviet Union and the Democracies of Eastern Europe, China and Indonesia. It is unthinkable that American Negros would go to war on behalf of those who have oppressed us for generations against the Soviet Union which in one generation has lifted our people to full human dignity. "

Research has shown that AP had put the dispatch on the wires as Robeson was starting his speech. The misquote was very similar in structure to previous Robeson speeches and his questioning at the Mundt-Nixon Bill hearings with the difference being that at the hearing Robeson had claimed to be only speaking for himself. The reaction by the press, both liberal and right wing, in the United States was nearly universal condemnation with radio commentator Walter Winchell broadcasting daily vitriolic attacks at Robeson approved by J Edgar Hoover. ''Jersey Home'' newspaper called for Robeson to be "executed in the electric chair"and Boston Sunday called him "an undesirable citizen", regretting that he had been "U.S. born."

At the urging of the State Department to make a formal statement, NAACP leaders dissociated themselves from Robeson. Roy Wilkins stated that regardless of the number of lynchings that were occurring or would occur, Black America would always serve in the armed forces. The black-owned ''Chicago Defender'' was one of the few American newspapers willing to question accuracy of the AP bulletin, while the progressive ''National Guardian'' and the Communist ''Daily Worker'' printed quotes of Robeson's speech verbatim.

USSR and Itzik Feffer

In June, he arrived in the Soviet Union, where he participated in celebrating Alexander Pushkin's 150th anniversary, including performances at Bolshoi Theatre and Tchaikovsky Hall. According to his son, Robeson was disturbed as to why he could not find his many Jewish friends, most notably Itzik Feffer, a Yiddish poet, and Solomon Mikhoels, an actor and director. As Robeson persisted, the KGB brought Feffer to Robeson who told him that the room was bugged and that Solomon Mikhoels had been murdered by the NKVD. Feffer also communicated that his own life was in danger. As neither Robeson nor Feffer ever went public about the meeting, the event and its details remains a matter of both conjecture and controversy. During his concert in Tchaikovsky Hall on June 14 - which was broadcast across the entire country - Robeson publicly paid tribute to Feffer and the late Mikhoels, singing the Vilna Partisan song "Zog Nit Keynmol" in both Russian and Yiddish. Recordings of the concert survived but Robeson's spoken words are lost.

Back in the United States, Robeson stated that he did not encounter any persecution of Jews and other political prisoners, stating that he "met Jewish people all over the place.... I heard no word about it". Herbert Hill, former labor director of the NAACP, commented on the reputed event fifty years later stating "just think what it would have meant if he had denounced this evil while in the Soviet Union and instead he comes back and he lies, he lies again and again and he knows better." Paul Robeson, Jr. said "he wasn't about to come to the United States and criticize the Soviet Union which in his mind was a barrier to world domination by the right wing of the United States."

Congressional statement by Jackie Robinson

This subsequent controversy over Robeson's remarks in Paris caused the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) to investigate Robeson.

HUAC sought Jackie Robinson's testimony on the subject. Robinson was reluctant to testify to HUAC on these matters, in part because of Robeson's prior advocacy on behalf of integration in professional baseball. In July 1949, Robinson eventually agreed to testify before HUAC, fearing that declining to do so might negatively and permanently damage his career. His testimony was a major media event, with Robinson's carefully worded statement appearing on the front page of ''The New York Times'' the following day. While Robeson declined to comment on Robinson personally: "I am not going to permit the issue to boil down to a personal feud between me and Jackie. To do that, would be to do exactly what the other group wants us to do."

Civil Rights Congress and Trotskyists

In January 1949, Robeson led a conference of delegates to march on the White House, again demanding government action against lynching; President Truman refused to see them. Robeson spoke at the "Bill of Rights Conference", in New York, sponsored by CRC, again calling for an end to segregation and lynching. The 1,200 delegates issued a statement which said, in part, "We declare that Robeson does, indeed, speak for us, not only in his fight for full democratic rights, but also in his fight for peace." Robeson also spoke at a mass meeting of 1,500 sponsored by the Civil Rights Congress in support of the Trenton Six. At a Bill of Rights Conference in New York in July 1949, Robeson denounced a motion, which called for the freeing of nineteen members of the Socialist Workers Party convicted in 1941, calling the imprisoned Trotskyists- who were at odds with the Soviet leadership-"the allies of Fascism who want to destroy the new democracies of the world...let's not get confused, they are the enemies of the working class. Would you give civil rights to the Ku Klux Klan?" Biographer Martin Duberman wrote, "it was not Robeson's finest hour." On August 4, 1949 Robeson also led a picket line in front of White House, called by United Public Workers of America to protest racist hiring practices at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, challenging President Truman to make good on his civil rights promises and enforce the Fair Employment Practices Act.

Peekskill Riots

In 1949, a popular concert by Robeson in Peekskill, New York, to benefit the Civil Rights Congress resulted in the Peekskill Riots caused by anti-Communist and anti-civil rights members of local Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion chapters and also by local residents. The concert, organized as a benefit for the Civil Rights Congress, was scheduled to take place on August 27 in Lakeland Acres, just north of Peekskill. Before Robeson arrived, a mob of locals attacked concert-goers with baseball bats and rocks. Thirteen people were seriously injured before the police intervened. The concert was postponed until September 4.

The rescheduled event, on September 4, 1949, was attended by 20,000 people and went off without incident but, after the concert, a violent mob, caught on film by the press, chanting "Go back to Russia you white Niggers" and "Dirty Kikes", threw rocks through the windshields of cars and buses. Standing off the angry mob of rioters, some of the concertgoers, and union members, along with writer Howard Fast and others assembled a non-violent line of resistance, locked arms, and sang the song "We Shall Not Be Moved." Some people were reportedly dragged from their vehicles and beaten. Over 140 people were injured and numerous vehicles were severely damaged as police stood by. Following the riots, more than 300 Robeson supporters went to Albany to voice their indignation to Governor Thomas Dewey, who refused to meet with them, blaming "Communists for provoking the violence." Twenty-seven plaintiffs filed a civil suit against Westchester County and two veterans groups. The charges were dismissed three years later. Paul Robeson called the actions of the New York state troopers, who were caught on film beating concert goers, including World War I veteran and first decorated Black aviator, Eugene Bullard, as "Fascist stormtroopers who will knock down and club anyone who disagrees with them" Photographs of Eugene Bullard being beaten by two policeman, a state trooper and concert-goer were later published in Susan Robeson's pictorial biography of her grandfather.

Passport confiscation and Communist associations (1950–1955)

In March 1950, NBC canceled Robeson's scheduled appearance on former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's television program, ''Today with Mrs. Roosevelt''. A spokesman for NBC declared that Robeson would "never appear on NBC." Press releases of the Civil Rights Congress objected that "censorship of Mr. Robeson's appearance on TV is a crude attempt to silence the outstanding spokesman for the Negro people in their fight for civil and human rights" and that our "basic democratic rights are under attack under the smoke-screen of anti-Communism." Protesters picketed NBC offices and protests arrived from numerous public figures, organizations and others.

Passport confiscated

In 1950, the State Department denied Robeson a passport and issued a "stop notice" at all ports, effectively confining him within the United States. Robeson was not allowed to travel to Canada or Mexico, countries that US citizens could visit without a passport. Far from seeking to revoke his U.S. citizenship and deport him, the FBI and state department records indicate that the US government believed that a blacklisted existence inside the United States borders would offer Robeson less freedom of expression than his presence internationally would. When Robeson and his lawyers met with officials at the State Department on August 23, 1950 and asked why it was "detrimental to the interests of the United States Government" for him to travel abroad, they were told that "his frequent criticism of the treatment of blacks in the United States should not be aired in foreign countries"—it was a "family affair." When Robeson inquired about being re-issued a passport, the State Department declined, citing Robeson's refusal to sign a statement guaranteeing "not to give any speeches while outside the U.S."

In a symbolic act of defiance against the travel ban, labor unions in the U.S. and Canada organized a concert at the International Peace Arch on the border between Washington state and the Canadian province of British Columbia on May 18, 1952. Paul Robeson stood on the back of a flat bed truck on the American side of the U.S.-Canada border and performed a concert for a crowd on the Canadian side, variously estimated at between 20,000 and 40,000 people. Robeson returned to perform a second concert at the Peace Arch in 1953, and over the next two years two further concerts were scheduled. In this period, with the encouragement of his friend the Welsh politician Aneurin Bevan, Robeson recorded a number of radio concerts for supporters in Wales. In 1956, Robeson left the United States for the first time since the travel ban was imposed, performing concerts in two Canadian cities, Sudbury and Toronto, in March of that year. The travel ban ended in 1958 when Robeson's passport was returned to him after eight years of protracted legal struggles and defeats.

"We Charge Genocide" petition

Although unable to travel outside the United States, Robeson continued to be politically active. He presented to the United Nations in New York on December 17, 1951 an anti-lynching petition, "We Charge Genocide". It was also presented to a UN delegation in Paris. The document asserted that the U.S. federal government, by its failure to act against lynching in the United States, was "guilty of genocide" under Article II of the UN Genocide Convention.

"Paul Robeson - the Lost Shepherd"

In 1951 an article titled "Paul Robeson - the Lost Shepherd" was published in ''The Crisis'', the official magazine of the NAACP, under the pseudonym "Robert Alan", described as "a well known New York journalist". In actuality, the author was NAACP chairman Roy Wilkins.

J. Edgar Hoover and the United States State Department arranged for the article to be printed and distributed in Africa. Guidelines issued through the US Consulate in Accra, Ghana, on how to deal with Robeson's reputation included the following instructions:

"USIE in the Gold Coast, and I suspect everywhere else in Africa, badly needs a through-going, sympathetic and regretful but straight talking treatment of the whole Robeson episode...there's no way the Communists score on us more easily and more effectively out here, than on the US. Negro problem in general, and on the Robeson case in particular. And, answering the latter, we go a long way toward answering the former. "

Another article by Roy Wilkins, called "Stalin's Greatest Defeat", denounced Robeson as well as the Communist Party of the USA in terms consistent with the FBI's information. In April 1953, shortly after Stalin's death, Robeson penned a eulogy entitled ''To You Beloved Comrade'', praising Stalin as being dedicated to peace and a guidance to the world: "Through his deep humanity, by his wise understanding, he leaves us a rich and monumental heritage."

After Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalinism at the 1956 Party Congress, Robeson neither publicly denounced nor praised Stalin, though he continued to praise the Soviet Union. In 1956, Robeson, along with close friend W. E. B. Du Bois, compared the anti-Stalinist revolution in Hungary to the "same sort of people who overthrew the Spanish Republican Government" and supported the Soviet invasion and suppression of the revolt.

Robeson is often criticized for accepting the Stalin Peace Prize, eulogizing Stalin, and continuing to support the Soviet Union and not formally denouncing the regime, despite conflicting accounts that show his awareness of state-sponsored intimidation and murder.

Robeson refused pressure to publicly censure the Soviet Union, although it would ostensibly eased his passport restrictions and possibly allowed him back into the mainstream of the entertainment world and the mainstream of the civil rights movement. In his opinion, the existence of the USSR was the guarantee of political balance in the world. Robeson's biographers, including Martin Duberman, Philip S Foner, Scott Allen Nollen, Dr, Charles Wright, Marie Seton, Paul Robeson Jr and Lloyd Brown, argue that he felt that criticism of the Soviet Union by someone of his international standing would only serve to shore up reactionary elements in the U.S. Robeson is on record many times as stating that he felt the "existence of a major socialist power like the USSR was a bulwark against Western European capitalist domination of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean." At no time is Paul Robeson on record of mentioning any unhappiness or regrets about his support for the Soviet Union and his hopes for socialism in Africa and Asia.

Blacklisting and international response (1956–1958)

In 1956, Robeson was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities after he refused to sign an affidavit affirming that he was not a Communist. In response to questions concerning his alleged party membership, Robeson insisted that the Communist Party was a legal party and invited its members to join him in the voting booth before he invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to respond. Robeson refused to discuss Joseph Stalin, calling it "a question for the Soviet Union", instead lambasting committee members on civil rights issues and the enslavement and exploitation of blacks throughout American history. Asked why he had not remained in the Soviet Union, he replied that "because my father was a slave and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you and no fascist minded people will drive me from it! Is that clear?"

"Let Paul Robeson Sing"

Campaigns were simultaneously launched in the USA and UK to protest the passport ban. In the UK, ''The National Paul Robeson Committee'' was formed, sponsored by Members of Parliament as well as writers, scholars, actors, lawyers, trade union leaders and others. The Committee began a "Let Paul Robeson Sing" mass petition, which gathered signatures from tens of thousands of supporters. Over the next four years, many prominent figures in Britain argued for the restoration of Robeson's right to travel. The group held a conference and concert at St Pancras Town Hall, London headed by Cedric Belfrage, on May 26, 1957 with Robeson singing direct from New York over a telephone connection.

Trans-Atlantic telephone concert for the Welsh miners

In 1957, Robeson was invited by Welsh miners to be the honored guest at the annual Eisteddfod Music Festival. An appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States to restitute his confiscated passport had been rejected, but through the newly completed trans-Atlantic telephone hook-up between New York and Porthcawl, Wales, Robeson was able to sing to the 5,000 gathered there as he had earlier in the year to London. Journalist Gil Noble called the concert "perhaps the most emotional and moving in Robeson's long concert career."

Disappearance from the media

Because of the controversy surrounding him, Paul Robeson's recordings and films lost mainstream distribution and he was universally condemned in the mainstream U.S press. During the height of the Cold War it became increasingly difficult in the United States to hear Robeson sing on commercial radio, buy his music or to see any of his films, including ''Show Boat''.

In the United States very little newsreel footage of Robeson now exists, including in the Library of Congress, as the majority of U.S. newsreel footage has been either destroyed or has the sound erased.

Erasure from sports records

The 1950 volume, ''College Football Hall of Fame'', labeled "the most complete record on college football", omits Robeson, identifying only a ten-man team. Martin Duberman wrote that due to his blacklisting within the mainstream media, the concert stage, theater, radio, film and the civil rights movement, Robeson became an outcast, very nearly a nonperson."

Comeback (1958–1961)

Robeson's autobiography, ''Here I Stand'', was published by a British publishing company in 1958. As part of his "comeback", he gave two sold-out recitals that month in Carnegie Hall, which were released on LP and later on CD. They were his only stereo recordings.

Also that year, Robeson's 60th birthday was celebrated in several US cities and twenty-seven countries across Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa, as well as in the Soviet Union. Later, in May 1958, his passport was finally restored and he was able to travel again, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in ''Kent vs. Dulles'', that the Secretary of State had no right to deny a passport or require any citizen to sign an affidavit because of his political beliefs. Robeson and Eslanda moved to the United Kingdom landing there on July 11, 1958 and traveled extensively, using London as their base of operations. During this period Robeson was under constant surveillance by the CIA, MI6 and the State Department.

Tours of Britain and the USSR

In the United Kingdom, Robeson found himself deluged with professional offers. His numerous appearances included a formal concert at the Albert Hall and a book autographing party at Selfridges.

In August, 1959 he left for Moscow where he received a tumultuous reception and needed a police escort at the airport. A crowd of eighteen thousand people filled the Lenin Stadium (Khabarovsk) to capacity on August 17, 1959 where Robeson sang classic Russian songs along with his standards. Robeson and Eslanda then flew to Crimea to spend time at Yalta resting, working with a documentary film crew and spending time with Nikita Khrushchev. Robeson also visited Young Pioneer camp Artek before returning to the UK.

On October 11, 1959 Robeson took part in a historic service at St.Paul's Cathedral, being the first black performer to sing there. Four thousand people attended the evensong performance with hundreds overflowing onto the streets. Robeson had then planned to leave for India as a guest of Nehru but was prevented by the weather. The US State Department had circulated negative literature about him through the media in India; one censored CIA memo suggested that Robeson's appearance could be used to thwart the desegregation of a swimming pool.

In 1960, Robeson made his only appearance on a television variety series, a long-running British entry called ''Spectacular''. He was also the host of this episode, entitled ''The Paul Robeson Show''.

On a trip to Moscow, Robeson started to develop bouts of dizziness and the beginning of heart problems. His trip to India was definitively canceled, and he was hospitalized for two months along with his wife Eslanda who was diagnosed with operable cancer.

Wales and final performance of Othello

Robeson recovered and returned to the U.K. to fulfill his engagements.In 1958, he visited the National Eisteddfod in Ebbw Vale as the guest of the local MP Aneurin Bevan, revisited his ties to the black community in Cardiff's Butetown and gave performances throughout Europe. During his run at the Royal Shakespeare Company playing Othello in Tony Richardson's 1959 production at Stratford-upon-Avon, he befriended actor Andrew Faulds who's family he was staying with in the nearby village of Shottery while performing. Robeson inspired him to take up a career in politics after admonishing him for being apolitical. The production of Othello was geared towards Robeson's health concerns but gave him a lucrative seven month run and chance to participate in an updated version of the play directed by Tony Richardson. In 1960, in what would prove to be Paul Robeson's final concert performance in Great Britain, he sang with the Welsh Male Voice Choir, Côr Meibion Cwmbach, to raise money for the ''Movement for Colonial Freedom'' at the Royal Festival Hall.

Tour of Australia and New Zealand

Though starting to show the beginning of heart problems and fatigue, Robeson accepted a lucrative tour of Australia, and New Zealand in October to November 1960.

The most notable of his appearances was at the Sydney Opera House, still under construction. Robeson stood on the foundations and sang ''Ol Man River'' and '''Joe Hill''. Many of the workers had him autograph their hard hats following the performance.

Apart from his public concerts, he spoke about unionism and the indigenous peoples of both countries then sang several numbers. Robeson also sang to striking waterside workers in Wellington and accepted membership in their union.

Visiting rural community centers and presented with indigenous art including a painting by Australian artist Albert Namatjira, Davis recalled Robeson's arrival in Perth on the last leg of his tour,

"...when he spotted a group of local aborigines shyly hanging back, he instantly headed for them, moving through the crowd like a full back. When he reached them, he literally gathered the nearest half dozen in his great arms, and when he moved toward his waiting transport, the aborigines moved with him. Davies heard one of the little girls say, almost in wonder, 'Mum, he likes us.'"

Lloyd Davis felt that Robeson's words and gestures during his tour "gave a tremendous boost to the aboriginal cause" and writer and broadcaster Phillip Adams recalled, Robeson's tour was like "a second coming" to "aspiring young lefties" in Australia.

During this tour for the first time news-sources of diverse political views reported that he was responding to questions at press conferences with "anger and bitterness." Some headlines included ''The Herald'' printing, "Would Back Russia in a War" and "Robeson Bitterly Critical of the U.S.", with the ''Telegraph'' stating "I Wish He Was Still Bosambo."

In Auckland he reputedly told the press he was only "here to sing" and then declared himself a "rigid Marxist.". While expressing concern about the mistreatment of the Māoris Robeson said, "I want to learn Māori songs and as much as I can of the Māori language." and "...the people of the lands of Socialism want peace dearly,"

The nine week tour would prove to be the final concert tour of his forty year career.

Back in London, he began to plan his return to the U.S. to participate in the Civil Rights Movement, stopping off in Africa, China and Cuba along the way. His wife Eslanda argued to stay in London, fearing that he'd be "killed" if he returned to the US and "unable to make any money" due to harassment by the US government. Robeson disagreed and made his own travel arrangements, stopping off in Moscow in March 1961.

Health breakdown (1961–1965)

In spring of 1961, Robeson again traveled to the Soviet Union, his last visit there. During an uncharacteristically wild party in his Moscow hotel room, he locked himself in his bedroom and attempted suicide by cutting his wrists. Three days later, while under Soviet medical care, he told his son that he felt extreme paranoia, thought that the walls of the room were moving and, overcome by a powerful sense of emptiness and depression, tried to take his own life.

Robeson stayed at the Barvikha Sanatorium until September 1961, when he left Moscow for London. There his depression re-emerged, and after another period of recuperation in Moscow, he returned to London. Three days after arriving back he became suicidal and suffered a panic attack while passing the Soviet Embassy. He was admitted to The Priory hospital, where he underwent electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and was given heavy doses of drugs for nearly two years, with no accompanying psychotherapy.

During his treatment at the Priory, Robeson was being monitored by the British MI5. Both U.S. and British intelligence services were well aware of Robeson's suicidal state of mind. An FBI memo described Robeson's debilitated condition, remarking that his "death would be much publicized" and would be used for Communist propaganda, making continued surveillance imperative. Numerous memos also advised that Robeson should be denied a passport renewal which would ostensibly jeopardize his fragile health and the recovery process he was engaged in overseas.

During his convalescence, while receiving outpatient treatment, he spent frequent periods at his Connaught Square flat with Eslanda. In August 1963, disturbed about his treatment, friends had him transferred to the Buch Clinic in East Berlin. Given psychotherapy and less medication, his physicians found him still "completely without initiative" and they expressed "doubt and anger" about the "high level of barbiturates and ECT" that had been administered in London. He rapidly improved, though his doctor stressed that "what little is left of Paul's health must be quietly conserved."

Paul Robeson, Jr. argued for years that his father's health problems stemmed from attempts by CIA and MI5 to "neutralize" his father. He remembered that his father had such fears prior to his prostate operation. He said that three doctors treating Robeson in London and New York had been CIA contractors, and that his father's symptoms resulted from being "subjected to mind depatterning under MKULTRA", a secret CIA programme. Martin Duberman's view was that given the most available evidence, Paul Robeson's health breakdown was brought on by a combination of factors including extreme emotional and physical stress, bipolar depression, exhaustion and the beginning of circulatory and heart problems. Duberman added that "even without an organic predisposition and accumulated pressures of government harassment he might have been susceptible to a breakdown".

Later years (1966–1976)

In 1963, Robeson eventually returned to the United States and for the remainder of his life lived in quiet seclusion. He had intended to assume a role in the civil rights movement, making a few major public appearances before falling seriously ill during a tour, nearly dying from double pneumonia and a kidney blockage in 1965. He first lived in Harlem with his wife. After Eslanda died of cancer in December 1965, Robeson moved in with his son's family in an Upper West Side apartment in New York City and in 1968, he finally settled at his sister's home in Philadelphia.

In these years Robeson was honored by accolades and celebrations, both in the U.S. and internationally, including public arenas that had previously shunned him.

Civil Rights figures

On January 15, 1965, Robeson gave the eulogy at the Harlem funeral of Lorraine Hansberry recalling her work at Freedomways and her contributions to civil rights. Malcolm X was one of those who attended the funeral. The two men did not meet on that occasion, but Malcolm X, who admired Robeson, subsequently approached Paul Robeson, Jr. about arranging a meeting. (According to Ossie Davis, he was also approached by Malcolm X's intermediaries in hopes of meeting Robeson.) Robeson agreed, but Malcolm X was assassinated before the meeting could be arranged.

Following Hansberry's funeral, Robeson was also contacted by both Bayard Rustin and James L. Farmer, Jr. about the possibility of becoming involved with the mainstream of the Civil Rights movement. Due to Rustin's past anti-Communist stances, Robeson declined to meet with him. Robeson eventually met with Farmer but was asked to denounce Communism and the Soviet Union in order to assume a place in the mainstream, Robeson adamantly declined.

Life in Philadelphia

Living at his sister Marian's home Robeson saw few visitors aside from very close friends and gave few statements apart from a few messages to support current civil rights and international movements, feeling that his record "spoke for itself". Though due to his ailing health, he withdrew from the public to lead a quiet life, close friends and family have disputed the rumors in the mainstream press that he was "broken" and "disillusioned". In her book ''Paul Robeson's Last Days in Philadelphia'', Charlotte Turner Bell, a local music teacher and Robeson friend chronicled the time she spent accompanying Robeson on the piano each Sunday and of his life in retirement.

Birthday celebrations

In 1968, events were held all over the world in honor of Paul Robeson's 70th birthday including a three day celebration in East Germany. There was also an evening of music and poetry in London at the Royal Festival Hall featuring Mary Ure, Peggy Ashcroft, Peter O'Toole and Michael Redgrave. In Moscow, speakers included the writer Boris Nikolaevich Polevoy and the poet Mikhail Kotov. The black commission of the CPUSA celebration remarked that "the white power structure has generated a conspiracy of silence around Paul Robeson. It wants to blot out all knowledge of this pioneering Black American warrior..."

More than 3,000 people gathered in Carnegie Hall to salute Robeson's 75th birthday in 1973, including Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Pete Seeger, Odetta, Angela Davis, Dolores Huerta, Dizzy Gillespie, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte (who also produced the show), James Earl Jones, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Coretta Scott King; birthday greetings arrived from President Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania, Prime Minister Michael Manley of Jamaica, President Cheddi Jagan of Guyana, President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Indira Gandhi and the African National Congress. Robeson was unable to attend because of illness, but a taped message from him was played which said in part, "Though I have not been able to be active for several years, I want you to know that I am the same Paul, dedicated as ever to the worldwide cause of humanity for freedom, peace and brotherhood."

Death and funeral service

On January 23, 1976, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the age of 77, Paul Robeson died of a stroke following "complications from a 'severe cerebral vascular disorder.'" He lay in state for a viewing at Benta's Funeral Home in Harlem for two days. His granddaughter, Susan Robeson, recalled "...watching this parade of humanity who came to pay their respects...from the numbers runner on the corner to Gustaf VI Adolf, King of Sweden."

Condolences came from around the world, including Coretta Scott King, who deplored "America's inexcusable treatment" of a man who had had "the courage to point out her injustices." According to Robeson biographer, Martin Duberman:

"The white press, after decades of harassing Robeson, now tipped its hat to a 'great American,' paid its gingerly respect in editorials that ascribed the vituperation leveled at Robeson in his lifetime to the Bad Old Days of the Cold War, implied those days were forever gone, downplayed the racist component central to his persecution, and ignored the continuing inability of white America to tolerate a black maverick who refused to bend. The black press made no such mistakes. It had never, overall, been as hostile to Robeson as the white press, (though at some points in his career, nearly so)."

The black press universally celebrated Robeson, with ''The Amsterdam News'' eulogizing him as "Gulliver among the Lilliputians" and saying his life would "always be a challenge and a reproach to white and Black America."

On January 27, 1976, 2,500 people attended Paul Robeson's funeral at Mother AME Zion Church in Harlem, where Robeson's brother Ben had been pastor for 27 years. Thousands more, mostly African Americans, stood outside in the rain throughout the service, listening on the public address system as speakers, including Harry Belafonte, paid tribute. Robeson was cremated and his ashes were interred in the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York with a grave marker that states, "The Artist Must Fight For Freedom Or Slavery. I Made My Choice. I Had No Alternative."

Legacy

Along with Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and Josephine Baker, Robeson was one of the first African American artist/activists. He is also one of the forerunners of the civil rights movement and the first black artist to refuse segregated audiences. During the 1960s radical black activists such as Malcolm X and members of SNCC referenced and praised Robeson's controversial stances. On the international political scene, Robeson's legacy included influences on the African Independence movements and his work was cited by Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela, Kenyan president Jomo Kenyatta and Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah and other post-colonialist leaders. American Jews continue to celebrate his memory as an ally, as do the people of Wales. In the arts, his popularizing of Negro Spirituals has been cited and paid tribute to by singers including Sir Willard White. While film industry figures and historians have written of his groundbreaking work in cinema as the first major black actor unwilling to play stereotypes.

Paul Robeson Archives

The Paul Robeson Archive was established in East Berlin in 1965. Robeson was a popular figure in East Germany, where he received an honorary doctorate from Humboldt University in 1960 among other awards. The archives were founded by Victor Grossman, a journalist for GDR radio and are now located at the John F. Kennedy School in Berlin. Due to meticulous collecting by Eslanda Robeson, over 55,000 pieces of Robeson related memorabilia, film, books, photos and ephemera were archived and cataloged into "The Paul and Eslanda Robeson Archives". The collection is held at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

Omission from and restoration to historical records

Due to Robeson's lengthy and extensive blacklisting during the 1950s, his long career and achievements are difficult to find in most American mainstream interpretations of history, including in-depth books on sports history, entertainment, civil rights and black history. In the United States very little media footage of Robeson now exists, even in the Library of Congress, as the majority of U.S. newsreel footage has been either destroyed or had the sound erased.

Despite Robeson's lengthy theater career, Brooks Atkinson, ''The New York Times'' theater critic from 1925 to 1960, included just a one-sentence reference to Robeson in his 1970 book ''Broadway'', advertised as "an in-depth history of American theater". Atkinson chronicles African-American performers, ''Show Boat'' and Eugene O'Neill, but only mentions Robeson briefly in context with ''Othello''. In the early 1970s, ''The New York Times'' and ''The New York Daily News'' both ran extensive pieces on black actors who played Othello with no mention of Robeson.

In 1967, ''The New York Times'' also incorrectly said that during the 1950s (when he was without his passport), Robeson had chosen a "long exile in the Soviet Union...." Robeson's name was also not listed in the American edition of Marquis Who's Who, appearing in only the international editions. In the early 1970s, Rutgers professor Eugene H. Robinson found that Robeson was not mentioned in nine different American encyclopedias. Professor Harold Weaver estimated that 75% of black students at Rutgers did not know who Robeson was.

In 1949, Robeson's name had been retroactively struck from the roster of the 1917 and 1918 college All-America football teams. In 1995, 45 years after its erasure, Robeson's name was fully restored to the Rutgers University sports records and he was named to the College Football Hall of Fame.

Posthumous honors

1970s

The first memorial following Robeson's 1976 funeral was a tribute held in US House of Representatives January 28, 1976. Throughout 1976 memorials were held at Rutgers; The World Peace Council in Athens, Greece; Columbia University, New York City; Toronto; Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.; and by Actor's Equity in Los Angeles. On October 8, 1976, Artist's Tribute to the Life of Paul Robeson, was held at Carnegie Hall, as a benefit for the Paul Robeson Archive. Sidney Poitier proclaimed, "When Paul Robeson died, it marked the passing of a magnificent giant whose presence among us conferred nobility upon us all..." In 1979 Poitier narrated a short, winning film, ''Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist''. Directed by Saul J. Turell, it won an Academy Award for best short documentary.

In 1976 NBC approached Paul Robeson, Jr. asking permission to create a three hour documentary on his father. Robeson, Jr. turned down the request, regarding it as offensive given their treatment of his father during his lifetime.

On September 6, 1977 the Paul Robeson High School opened at 6835 South Normal Boulevard in Chicago, Illinois.

Beginning in 1978, Paul Robeson's films were finally shown again on American television, with ''Show Boat'' making its cable television debut in 1983. In recent years, all of Robeson's films have appeared on Turner Classic Movies and American Movie Classics channels.

Also in 1978, the former "Stolpestrasse" in East-Berlin, Germany, was renamed Paul-Robeson-Strasse in honor of the popular performer. To this day (2011), it is still named so.

1990s

On January 18, 1995 Paul Robeson was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame, a step taken by the National Football Foundation which many called "long-overdue". Rutgers-Newark also honored him posthumously by naming the student-life campus center, and art gallery after him. and Rutgers University New Brunswick Campus named one of their cultural centers, The Paul Robeson Cultural Center. and the Rutgers-Camden campus also named their library, the Paul Robeson Library.

During the centenary of Paul Robeson's birth in 1998, around the world, over four hundred celebrations took place with over twenty Robeson centennial events held in the San Francisco Bay area alone. These included film showings, musical and educational programs, art exhibitions, a two-hour PBS documentary, as well as the presentation of the Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award. President Bill Clinton sent a greeting to celebration of the Robeson Centennial in Westchester County, New York, stating: "A century after Paul Robeson's birth, we live in a nation that is stronger because of his vision and eloquent voice."

In 1998 the San Francisco Bay Area Post of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade presented "Paul Robeson: The Artist Must Take Sides" in tribute. The program consisted of a dramatic performance by the San Francisco Mime Troupe, with slides and commentary, and keynote speaker Professor Sterling Stuckey. Paul Robeson's image is also featured prominently in a historical monument dedicated to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade which was unveiled on The Embarcadero, San Francisco in 2008 by actor Peter Coyote.

2000s

Robeson has remained a celebrated cultural figure in Wales. The exhibition ''Let Paul Robeson Sing!'' was unveiled in Cardiff in 2001. A number of Welsh artists have celebrated Robeson's life: the Manic Street Preachers' song "Let Robeson Sing" appears on the album ''Know Your Enemy''. Martyn Joseph's song "Proud Valley Boy" on his 2005 album ''Deep Blue'' is also based on Robeson's Welsh connections. In 2010 Susan Robeson launched a project by Swansea University and the Welsh Assembly, to create an online learning resource in her grandfather's memory.

An English Heritage Blue Plaque was unveiled in 2002 at the house in Hampstead, London where Robeson resided during the 1920s and 1930s.

In 2004 Paul Robeson was featured on a US postage stamp, the 27th stamp in the Black Heritage Series. The Stamp Unveiling Ceremony was held at Princeton University, with Paul Robeson, Jr. participating.

In 2006 a Tribute to Paul Robeson was held at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

On September 26, 2009, Edgecombe Avenue and 160th Street in Washington Heights, Manhattan, were renamed as Paul Robeson Boulevard and Count Basie Place.

In August 2011, Tayo Aluko's one-man play "Call Mr. Robeson" was featured in the New York International Fringe Festival. It will be performed in New York's Carnegie Hall on February 12, 2012.

Published works

''Here I Stand''. Beacon Press (1958), 1971 edition with Preface by Lloyd L. Brown. 1988 edition with an Introduction by Sterling Stuckey. ISBN 0-8070-6445-9 ISBN 0-304-70351-6

''Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, Interviews, 1918–1974'', edited with an introduction by Philip S. Foner, Brunner, 1978.

''Paul Robeson: Tributes, Selected Writings'', compiled and edited by Roberta Yancy Dent with the assistance of Marilyn Robeson and Paul Robeson, Jr., The Archives, 1976.

"The Great Forerunner" in ''Freedomways'', 1971; Dodd, 1978; enlarged, 1985.

Filmography

''Body and Soul'' (1924)

''Camille'' (1926)

''Borderline'' (1930)

''The Emperor Jones'' (1933)

''Sanders of the River'' (1935)

''Show Boat'' (1936)

''Song of Freedom'' (1936)

''Big Fella'' (1937)

''My Song Goes Forth'' (1937)

''King Solomon's Mines'' (1937)

''Jericho/Dark Sands'' (1937)

''The Proud Valley'' (1940)

''Native Land'' (1942)

''Tales of Manhattan'' (1942)

''The Song of the Rivers'' (1954)

Notes

References

Bogle, Donald (2001). ''Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films'', Fourth Edition

Boyle, Sheila Tully, and Andrew Bunie (2001). ''Paul Robeson: The Years of Promise and Achievement''. University of Massachusetts Press ISBN 1-55849-149-X

Brown, Lloyd (1998) ''On My Journey Now: The Young Paul Robeson'' Basic Books ISBN 0-8133-3177-3

Duberman, Martin Bauml (1988). ''Paul Robeson'' Alfred A. Knopf, 1988. Also Reissue edition (1995) New Press. ISBN 1-56584-288-X.

Foner, Henry (2001). ''Paul Robeson: A Century of Greatness''

Foner, Philip S. (1978). ''Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, and Interviews, a Centennial Celebration''. Citadel Press; Reprint edition (September 1, 1982). 644 pages. ISBN 0-8065-0815-9.

Ford, Carin T (2001). ''Paul Robeson: "I Want to make Freedom Ring"''. Enslow Publishers

Goudsouzian, Aram. (2004). ''Sidney Poitier: man, actor, icon''. University of North Carolina Press

Naison, Mark (1998). "Paul Robeson and the American Labor Movement" in Stewart, Jeffrey C. (ed.) ''Paul Robeson: Artist and Citizen''. Rutgers University Press and The Paul Robeson Cultural Center. ISBN 0-8135-2510-1 ISBN 0-8135-2511-X

Nollen, Scott Allen (2010). ''Paul Robeson: Film Pioneer.''. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-3520-8

Robeson, Eslanda. ''Paul Robeson, Negro'', V. Gollancz; 1st edition (1930) ASIN: B0006E8ML4

Robeson, Paul, Jr. (1971) "Paul Robeson: Black Warrior", in Freedomways ''The Great Forerunner'', pages 3–16

Robeson Paul, Jr. (2001) ''The Undiscovered Paul Robeson, An Artist's Journey, 1898-1939''. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-24265-9

Robeson Paul, Jr. (2010) ''The Undiscovered Paul Robeson, Quest for Freedom, 1940-1976''. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-40973-1

Robeson, Susan (1981). ''The Whole World in His Hands: A Pictorial Biography of Paul Robeson'' Citadel Press; 1st edition ISBN 0-8065-0754-3

Robinson, Eugene H. (1971) "A Distant Image: Paul Robeson and Rutgers' Students", in Freedomways ''The Great Forerunner'', pages 178–188.

Seton, Marie (1958). ''Paul Robeson''. D. Dobson.

Smethurst, James Edward (2005). ''The Black Arts Movement: literary nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s''. University of North Carolina Press

Harris, Francis C. (1998) "Paul Robeson: An Athlete's Legacy" in Stewart, Jeffrey C. (ed.) ''Paul Robeson: Artist and Citizen''. Rutgers University Press and The Paul Robeson Cultural Center. ISBN 0-8135-2510-1 ISBN 0-8135-2511-X

Wright, Charles (1975) ''Paul Robeson: Labor's Forgotten Champion''. Balamp Pub Co. ISBN 0-913642-06-1

Turner, Charlotte (1986). ''Paul Robeson's Last Days in Philadelphia''

Further reading

Balaji, Murali. ''The Professor and the Pupil: The Politics and Friendship of W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson'' (Nation Books, 2007) ISBN 1-56858-355-9

Dorinson, Joseph and William Pencak with foreword by Henry Foner. ''Paul Robeson: Essays on His Life and Legacy'' (Oct 15, 2004) ISBN 0-7864-1153-8

Du Bois, Shirley Graham. ''Paul Robeson, Citizen of the World.'' (Julian Messner, June 1, 1971) ISBN 0-671-32464-0; (Greenwood Pub Group, January 1, 1972) ISBN 0-86543-468-9; (Africa World Pr, January 1, 1998), ISBN 0-86543-469-7; (Africa World Pr, April 1, 1998), ISBN 0-8371-6055-3

Dyer, Richard. ''Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society'' (London: British Film Institute, 1986; Routledge, 2003, 2nd ed.) ISBN 0-415-31026-1 Robeson is one of the three film stars profiled.

Holmes, Burnham. ''Paul Robeson: A Voice of Struggle (Heinemann Library, September 1, 1994) ISBN 0-8114-2381-6

Larsen, Rebecca. ''Paul Robeson: Hero Before His Time'' (Franklin Watts, September 1, 1989), ISBN 0-531-10779-5

McKissack, Pat, Fredrick McKissack and Michael David Biegel (illustrator). ''Paul Robeson: A Voice to Remember''. Library (Enslow Pub Inc, May 1, 2001), ISBN 0-89490-310-1

Nash, Elizabeth. "Autobiographical Reminiscences of African-American Classical Singers, 1853-Present".(Edwin Mellen Press, 2007). ISBN 0-7734-5250-8.(192-194, 438-445)

Rappaport, Louis. ''Stalin's War Against the Jews: The Doctors Plot & The Soviet Solution'', Free Press (October 1, 1990) ISBN 0-02-925821-9

Reiner, Carl. ''How Paul Robeson Saved My Life and Other Mostly Happy Stories'' (Cliff Street Books, October 1, 1999), Cassette/Spoken Word (Dove Entertainment Inc, October 1, 1999). ISBN 0-06-019451-0

Stuckey, Sterling. ''I Want to Be African: Paul Robeson and the Ends of Nationalist Theory and Practice, 1919–1945'' (Univ of California Center for Afro, June 1, 1976) ISBN 0-934934-15-0

Wright, David K. ''Paul Robeson: Actor, Singer, Political Activist'' (Univ of California Center for Afro, June 1, 1976) ISBN 0-934934-15-0

Film documentaries about Robeson

''The Tallest Tree in Our Forest'' (1977)

''Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist'' (1979)

''Paul Robeson: Speak of Me As I Am'' (1998)

''Paul Robeson: Here I Stand'' (1999) PBS ''American Masters'', directed by St. Clair Bourne

External links

Paul Robeson digital archive at Rutgers University

Testimony of Paul Robeson before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, June 12, 1956

Bay Area Paul Robeson Committee, non profit informational resource for Robeson

The FBI Files of Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson Biography, The Civil Rights Struggle, African American GIs, and Germany

Category:1898 births Category:1976 deaths Category:African American actors Category:African American male singers Category:African American basketball players Category:African Americans' rights activists Category:Akron Pros players Category:Alumni of the School of Oriental and African Studies Category:American basses Category:American film actors Category:American folk singers Category:American football tight ends Category:American lawyers Category:American people of Igbo descent Category:American socialists Category:Basketball players from New Jersey Category:Burials at Ferncliff Cemetery Category:Columbia Law School alumni Category:Deaths from stroke Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Milwaukee Badgers players Category:Operatic basses Category:People from Princeton, New Jersey Category:People from Somerville, New Jersey Category:People from Westfield, New Jersey Category:Progressive Party (United States, 1948) politicians Category:Rutgers Scarlet Knights football players Category:Rutgers Scarlet Knights men's basketball players Category:Rutgers University alumni Category:Spingarn Medal winners Category:Stalin Peace Prize recipients

ca:Paul Robeson cs:Paul Robeson cy:Paul Robeson da:Paul Robeson de:Paul Robeson es:Paul Robeson eo:Paul Robeson fr:Paul Robeson ig:Paul Robeson id:Paul Robeson it:Paul Robeson he:פול רובסון nl:Paul Robeson ja:ポール・ロブスン no:Paul Robeson pl:Paul Robeson pt:Paul Robeson ru:Робсон, Поль sk:Paul Robeson sh:Paul Robeson fi:Paul Robeson sv:Paul Robeson tl:Paul Robeson tr:Paul Robeson uk:Поль Робсон vi:Paul Robeson yo:Paul Robeson zh:保罗·罗伯逊