Gus Hall (1910 - 2000 R.I.P) April 1985 Air date You Tube Compression

Gus Hall (October 8, 1910 October 13, 2000) was a leader of the Communist Party USA and its four-time U.S. presidential candidate.[1] As a labor leader, Hall was closely associated with the so-called "Little Steel" Strike of 1937, an effort to unionize the nation's smaller, regional steel manufacturers.[2] Hall was born Arvo Gustav Halberg to Finnish parents in Cherry, a rural community on Northern Minnesota's Iron Range. Hall's parents had been involved in the Industrial Workers of the World and were founding members of the Communist Party.[1] At 15, Hall left school and went to work in the North Woods lumber camps, where he spent much time studying Marxism. At 17, he joined the Communist Party and became an organizer for the Young Communist League. In 1931, Hall travelled to the Soviet Union spending two years at the Lenin Institute in Moscow.[1] Hall volunteered for the U.S. Navy when World War II broke out, serving as a machinist in Guam. He was honorably discharged March 6, 1946.[1] After his return, he was elected to the National Executive board of the American Communist Party.Indictment during the 'Red Scare' On July 22, 1948 Hall and 11 other Communist Party leaders were indicted under the Smith Act on charges of "conspiracy to teach and advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government by force and violence." Hall spent eight years in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary.[1] The U.S. Supreme Court later struck down the Smith Act as unconstitutional. After his release, Hall continued his activities.[1] In 1959, he was elected CPUSA general secretary, and afterward, received the Order of Lenin.[1] But the McCarthy, Cold War era had taken a heavy toll on the Communist Party. Hall, along with other Party leaders who remained, sought to rebuild it.[1] He led the struggle to reclaim the legality of the Communist Party and addressed tens of thousands in Oregon, Washington and California.Later years Hall became a speaker on campuses and talk shows as an advocate for socialism in the United States. Hall argued that socialism in the United States would be built on the traditions of U.S.-style democracy rooted in the United States Bill of Rights. He would often say Americans didn't accept the constitution without a Bill of Rights and they won't accept socialism without a Bill of Rights. He professed deep confidence in the democratic traditions of the American people. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Hall worked to build the Communist Party among the young baby boomer generation of activists involved in the peace, civil rights and the new rank-and-file trade union movements. During this time, Hall also made frequent appearances on Soviet television always supporting the position of the Soviet Communist Party and the Brezhnev regime. He ran for president four times, in 1972, 1976, 1980, and 1984, the last two times with Angela Davis.[1] Due to the great expense of running, the difficulty in meeting the strenuous and different election-law provisions in each state, and the difficulty in getting media coverage, it was decided that the CPUSA would suspend running national campaigns, while continuing to run candidates at the local level. In late 1980s, when liberalisation and democratisation were under way in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Hall stood by his "anti-revisionist" Marxist-Leninist stance. Concerning Stalin, he admitted that even leaders of a socialist country might err sometimes, but suggested that the Soviet historians were exaggerating Stalins crimes. Hall declared that he had not become a member of CP because of Stalin and would not leave because of him. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the party faced a crisis. (According to formerly secret documents quoted by the Washington Post in early 1992, Hall received over $2 million from the Soviet government for the party's expenses in publishing the Daily Worker and for rental fees for the party headquarters.[citation needed]) Former KGB General Oleg Kalugin declared in his memoir that the KGB had Hall and the American Communist Party "under total control" and that he was known to be siphoning off "Moscow money" to set up his own horse-breeding farm." [3]Hall led a faction of the party that stood against Gorbachev and for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In later years Hall worked to preserve the party as many members left and he served as leader until his death. He died on October 13, 2000 at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan.[4]