The American journalist who chronicled the Russian and Chinese revolutions from the inside, founder of Moscow News
"We are undertaking the most tremendous move ever made by labor in this country, a move which will lead — NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!" — editorial on the eve of the Seattle General Strike, 1919
American left-wing journalist and communist. After earning a Chicago PhD, she covered the Seattle General Strike (1919), moved to the USSR in 1921, and co-founded Moscow News (1930). In 1946 she interviewed Mao Zedong in Yan'an, drawing the famous 'paper tigers' declaration. Expelled from the USSR as a spy in 1949, she was rehabilitated in 1955 and settled in China as an honoured 'foreign friend,' chronicling Mao's China through the Cultural Revolution. With over 30 books, she was an unmatched eyewitness to the century's great communist revolutions.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1885Born in Friend, Nebraska, daughter of a progressive Congregationalist minister
- 1908PhD in philosophy from the University of Chicago — dissertation: The Social Psychology of Prayer
- 1916–1918Elected to Seattle School Board; recalled for supporting the IWW and opposing WWI
- 1919Editor, Seattle Union Record; covered the Seattle General Strike from the inside
- 1921Travelled to USSR with AFSC famine relief; settled as Moscow correspondent for International News Service
- 1930Co-founded and edited Moscow News, the USSR's first English-language newspaper
- 1931Married Soviet agronomist Joel Shubin (d. 1942)
- 1937–1938War reporting from the Spanish Civil War and China's anti-Japanese base areas
- 1946Interviewed Mao Zedong in Yan'an; recorded the famous 'paper tigers' remark
- 1949Arrested by Soviet authorities, expelled as an 'American spy'; rehabilitated in 1955
- 1958–1970Settled permanently in China; honoured as a 'foreign friend' of Mao and Zhou Enlai
- 1970Died of a heart attack in Beijing; memorial attended by Zhou Enlai and Guo Moruo
Related historical events
- 1914–1918First World WarJournalist opposing the warAs a Seattle school board member, she opposed the First World War.
- 1921–1922The Russian Famine of 1921–1922Famine relief workerShe went to the USSR with AFSC relief in 1921 and took part in Volga famine relief.
- 1936–1939The Spanish Civil WarAmerican war correspondentReported the war from the Republican side for American readers
- 1937–1945The war with Japan and the second united frontWar correspondent at Chinese anti-Japanese basesShe reported from China's anti-Japanese base areas during the war.
- 1946–1948Social reform in northern Korea and founding of the DPRKCorrespondent reporting on North Korea's foundingHer pamphlet covered the 1948 election and the Pyongyang assembly.
Reporting from North Korea: The Division Debate, 1947-1949
In 1949 Strong published the pamphlet In North Korea: First Eye-Witness Report through Soviet Russia Today in New York. Her record of a talk with Kim Il-sung is dated August 8, 1947, and the pamphlet carried a foreword written in November 1948 before appearing in 1949. This reporting made her the first correspondent to report from North Korea and the only American correspondent to travel extensively through the country, interviewing people in all walks of life.
The pamphlet's frame is the origin of the division and the question of responsibility. Strong recounts that when the USSR agreed at Yalta in February 1945 to join the war on Japan, Korea was divided into two zones for purposes of military action, and that at Potsdam the following July the 38th parallel was chosen as the 'great divide.' The original plan was to end the military occupation within a year of victory, followed by about five years of four-power civilian trusteeship; instead, she writes, the growing cold war hardened the two zones into areas of military occupation.
She describes the May 1948 election in the south, boycotted by most Korean parties, as held under police terror with voters dragooned to the polls, and casts the Rhee government installed by the United States as a reactionary regime. She then contrasts it with the August election held across both zones, which American authorities declared illegal in the south; according to Rhee's own statement, she reports, many thousands were arrested for taking part. Strong sets the constitution and troop-withdrawal demand of the resulting Pyongyang assembly, the Soviet withdrawal and the continued American presence against one another, calling South Korea a 'police state.'
The pamphlet stands as one document from one side of the early Cold War debate over the division. She presented it as an attempt to bring Americans facts about North Korea that censorship kept from them, but the account indicts repression in the south while adopting an essentially uncritical stance toward the northern system and the unification elections. Its author was expelled from the USSR as an 'American spy' the same year, and the foreword's argument that the American military presence discredited the United States in Asia shows how contested this reporting was on both sides.