SUPPORTING RADIO LIBERATION

SUPPORTING THE INSTITUTE FOR
THE STUDY OF THE U.S.S.R.

AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR LIBERATION

Freedom for the Peoples of the U.S.S.R.

1657 BROADWAY
NEW YORK 19, N. Y.

October 28, 1957

HOWLAND H. SARGEANT
PRESIDENT

REGINALD T. TOWNSEND
VICE PRESIDENT
DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

ANDRE D. YEDIGAROFF
ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT

Mr. Langston Hughes
20 East 127th Street
New York 35, N.Y.

DIVISION DIRECTORS

DONALD C. DUNHAM
PLANNING

CECIL HOPKINS
ADMINISTRATION

EUGENE H. KING
RADIO PROGRAMMING SUPPORT

B. ERIC KUNIHOLM
POLITICAL AFFAIRS

S. Y. MCGIFFERT
RL NETWORK

SPENCER WILLIAMS
PRESS AND PUBLICATIONS

TRUSTEES

MRS. OSCAR AHLGREN
JOHN R. BURTON

WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN

HON. CHARLES EDISON

J. PETER GRACE, JR.

ALLEN GROVER

H. J. HEINZ II

ISAAC DON LEVINE

EUGENE LYONS

HOWLAND H. SARGEANT

DR. JOHN W. STUDEBAKER

REGINALD T. TOWNSEND

WILLIAM L. WHITE

PHILIP H. WILLKIE

HENRY V. POOR
GENERAL COUNSEL

EUROPEAN HEADQUARTERS
LILIENTHALSTRASSE 2
MUNICH 19, GERMANY

ROBERT F. KELLEY
DEPUTY TO THE PRESIDENT, EUROPE

Dear Mr. Hughes:

In accordance with our telephone conversation of October the 2nd, I shall be expecting you for an interview on Monday, November 4th, at 4:00 pm. at our studios - United Recording Company, 681 Fifth Avenue, 3rd floor.

I am at present planning to ask you about your life as a writer and poet, your concept of the writer's place in modern society - his rights and obligations to humanity. Since your poems have been published in the Soviet Union (The Ways of White Folks, One Way Ticket, Song for a dark girl, Fine Clothes to the Jew, A New Song, etc.), I am sure our audience would be interested in learning whether or not you have ever received any letters or other form of communication from either Soviet public or publishers. I also would like to ask you about your trip to Russia in 1932-33 and your impressions about the people you met.

You have, no doubt, been following the recent ferment among the Soviet writers and their protests against the lack of creative freedom and the suppression of individual self-expression in the Soviet Union. I am sure your comments on this would be very interesting.

I will also ask you about your favorite pre and post-revolutionary (1917) writers and what impresses you most about their outlook on life. Since the Soviet writers are unable to join the International PEN Club and thus, cannot communicate with you - the writers of the West - we hope you will take this opportunity to address them over RADIO LIBERATION with any message you may desire to express.

I am enclosing herewith some pamphlets to better acquaint you with the purpose of RADIO LIBERATION - I hope you find them of interest.

I am looking forward to our meeting on Monday with great interest. If you are able to arrive a few minutes before the studio time (4:00 -

CABLE: AMCOMLIB
PHONE: JUDSON 2-5620

Howard Fast
Teaneck, New Jersey

November 15, 1957

To the writers of the Soviet Union:

For many years, we called each other friend and comrade, and during those years, I won a measure of your affection and trust. I think that this was less due to the quality of my writing than to your conviction that I was unafraid to follow the dictates of my conscience

Those were difficult years for left-wing writers in America. We were harried and persecuted because we would not silence our voices in the face of what we considered to be injustice. And when my own government put me in prison for refusing to name those who supported Spanish Republican relief work, I called upon writers the world over to raise their voices against the unjust imprisonment of myself and my brave friends.

How eloquent the response was, I need not remind you; for no voices were more articulate than those of my Soviet colleagues. And rightly so, for the cause of a man imprisoned unjustly, the cause of a writer whose brave voice is silenced is one of the best causes that mankind knows. You saw clearly then that a state which silences and imprisons writers cannot support a claim for humanism and democracy.

Yesterday, we learned here in America that a group of the bravest and most talented Hungarian writers were sentenced to prison by a Hungarian court on November 13, 1957. Tibor Dery, 63 years old, so long a loyal member of the Communist Party, received a nine year sentence, a天amount to life imprisonment. Gyula Hay, 56 years old, was sentenced to six years imprisonment. Zoltan Zelk received a three year sentence, and Tibor Tardos a year and a half.

All of these sentences were imposed because the Hungarian writers concerned had taken part in a struggle for national liberation that the whole world sympathized with and admired. Even the New York Daily Worker, the Communist newspaper in the United States, supported this struggle and declared that the cause of the Hungarian Revolution was a just cause.

What sort of a writer holds himself aloof from a national liberation struggle of his own people? Could one have anything but contempt for such a writer? You yourselves, my Russian colleagues, would have despised a writer in Russia who held himself apart when the Nazi invader crossed the Soviet border. When a writer's people are in travail, when his land is violated by an invader, is there any place for him but with his own people, fighting at their side?

This was the "crime" of these Hungarian writers, Tibor Dery and his comrades--and for this they must spend years of their lives in prison. And this is done in the name of Hungarian "socialism." And from your land, from every communist land, there is not even a whisper of the anger and indignation of writers!

SUPPORTING RADIO LIBERATION

AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR LIBERATION
*Freedom for the Peoples of the U.S.S.R.*

HOWLAND H. SARGEANT
PRESIDENT

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

DIVISION DIRECTORS

DONALD C. DUNHAM
PLANNING

CECIL HOPKINS
ADMINISTRATION

S. Y. MCGIFFERT
RL NETWORK

TRUSTEES

MRS. OSCAR AHLGREN

JOHN R. BURTON

WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN

HON. CHARLES EDISON

J. PETER GRACE, JR.

ALLEN GROVER

H. J. HEINZ II

ISAAC DON LEVINE

EUGENE LYONS

HOWLAND H. SARGEANT

DR. JOHN W. STUDEBAKER

REGINALD T. TOWNSEND

WILLIAM L. WHITE

PHILIP H. WILLKIE

HENRY V. POOR
GENERAL COUNSEL

November 19, 1957

Mr. Langston Hughes
20 East 127th Street
New York, New York

Dear Mr. Hughes:

Once again I would like to thank you for your wonderful cooperation in giving me a chance to interview you on November 4th. I just finished working on it and it turned out to be a very interesting script. I am not enclosing here a copy of it because it is in Russian, however, in a month or so, we will have an English translation of it and I would make it a point of mailing you a copy.

I have received "I Wonder as I Wander" from Rinehart Publishers, and thank you so much for your thoughtfulness in writing to them and asking them to mail me a copy. I am very grateful indeed and will start reading it tomorrow. Also thank you for the other three autographed books -- "One Way Ticket", "The Sweet Flypaper of Life" and "Simple Takes A Wife"...

Enclosed you will find a copy of a Guide to Soviet Russian Translations of American Literature, which you asked me to get for you. And good luck with those royalties of yours... I hope you will succeed! Also, I am enclosing our check with gratitude -- I am sorry it is so small.

In a few days I will start working on the list of Negro personalities you were so kind to send me. I will keep in touch with you and if I may, occasionally ask you for advice.

Under separate cover I am sending you two reels of tape - a copy of our interview... You sound wonderful and your voice carries very well.

Thank you very much again for everything and my best wishes for your forthcoming book.

encl.

November 25, 1957

Miss Irene Urban
American Committee for Liberation
1657 Broadway
New York 19, N. Y.

Dear Miss Urban:

Thank you for both of your letters; for the check and for so kindly sending me all of the things which you promised. I am delighted to have the listing of my works in Russian and the tape of our interview which I found awaiting me on my return from the country. I have been working out of town trying to meet one of my overdue deadlines on a book.

Certainly I enjoyed meeting you and being interviewed and I shall accept your kind invitation to sometime drop by the office and have photographs made.

With cordial regards, I am