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Eleanor Roosevelt had many responsibilities during the Cold
War: delegate to the United
Nations, syndicated columnist, human rights activist,
and Democratic party leader. Regardless of the arena in which
she operated, ER worked to keep the focus on what democracy
represented rather than on how communism threatened it. She
thought the nation gained little from spending most of its
energy hating the Soviet Union and urged Americans to recognize
that making democracy work at home and encouraging democratic
movements abroad was often more effective than intemperate
foreign policy. "While her opposition to the spread of communism
never wavered," ER refused to play political one-upmanship.
As diplomatic historian Anna Kasten Nelson concludes, "In
her unique position, she tried to persuade her fellow Americans
that the Cold War was the result of both the expansionist
ideology of the Soviets and the wrong-headed American response
to them." (1)
ER could easily be inserted into classroom discussions of the Cold War as both a domestic and
international contest in ways that encourage students to see the reciprocal relationship between
American domestic and foreign policy.
The Cold War at Home: ER can be held up as a counterpoint
to Churchill's Iron Curtain speech (she opposed both this
rhetoric and his interpretation), Truman's
loyalty oaths (she editorialized against them, calling the
policy un-American), HUAC
(she recommended that the FBI rather than Congress investigate
subversion to de-politicize the inquiry), Alger Hiss (she
thought Hiss a perjurer and not a traitor) and McCarthy (she
told readers of My Day that she "despised" his methods). When
the NAACP, the Americans
for Democratic Action (ADA), and other organizations to
which she belonged were accused of being "soft on communism,"
ER often served as their honorary chair to signal her strong
faith in them and her deep disdain for what she called "the
politics of fear." While she opposed the outlawing of the
Communist Party and thought Dennis v. the United States
a dangerous decision, she preferred to work with organizations
that did not have communist members. As she wrote journalist
Max Lerner, "The American Communists seemed to have succeeded
very well in jeopardizing whatever the liberals work for.
Therefore, to keep them out of policy-making and staff positions
seems to very essential even at the price of being called
red-baiters, which I hope no member of this organization [Americans
for Democratic Action] will be." (2)
Yet she would work with any group she thought valuable and
ethical, telling the ADA it must not succumb to anti-communist
red-baiting.
The day I'm afraid to sit down with people I do not know
because five years from now someone will say that five of
those people were Communists and therefore, you are a Communist
– that will be a bad day.
I want to be able to sit down with anyone who may have
a new idea and not be afraid of contamination by association.
In a democracy you must be able to meet with people and
argue your point of view - [with] people you have not screened
before hand. That must be part of the freedom of people
in the United States. (3)
Linking civil rights at home with democracy abroad, ER insisted
the more the nation deferred recognizing the civil rights
of all Americans, the more ammunition the Communists had to
label democracy hypocritical and ineffective. She urged the
nation to recognize the severe test it faced, to understand
that it was "on trial today to show what democracy means."
(4)
The Cold War Abroad: The international arena presented ER with
different challenges. As a member of the U.S. delegation to the
United Nations, she represented the state department; therefore, she
could not speak as freely about U.S. foreign policy as she could on
domestic matters. Nevertheless, ER can be incorporated into
classroom discussions in ways that reflect Cold War tensions
between America and Russia and within the Truman foreign policy
team.
She very much supported Truman's position on the "repatriation"
of refugees and, in a deft rebuttal to the Soviet delegation
during a debate in the General Assembly, played a key role
in securing UN support for resettlement and not "repatriation."
Yet, unlike Truman, Churchill and DeGaulle, she opposed the
propping up of former British and French colonies in India,
Africa, and Indochina. She worried that Churchill had too
much influence over Truman, and opposed the former prime minister's
"Iron Curtain" call to create a British-American alliance
against the Soviet Union. Rather than exacerbating wedges
among the Big Three powers, by flaunting "tough policy"
talk in a futile attempt to stem Soviet aggression, ER argued
the administration should focus on strengthening the UN. The
"go-it-alone implications of the Truman Doctrine" were both
counterproductive to spreading democracy and detrimental to
the UN's development.
Like George Kennan, ER believed Russia presented an economic and political, rather than
military challenge to the West and thought George Marshall's efforts to develop "an over-all
economic agreement in which we would try to aid" Europe "very constructive." As she told
readers of "My Day," "The Marshall Plan is a bona fide offer to help Europe get back on its feet.
Mr. Molotov [the Soviet ambassador to the United States], in refusing to join the rest of Europe,
is creating the very thing he says he fears, which is division instead of cooperation." (5)
By 1948, as Joseph
Lash has argued, ER had become a "reluctant cold warrior."
(6) She mourned her friend Jan Masaryk, Czechoslovakia's
foreign minister, who died mysteriously when during the Soviets
invaded his country. Concerned that the Soviets had won the
propaganda war in the developing world, she struggled to make
Americans and American policy makers emphasize what they were
for rather than accentuate what they were against. ER organized
her own diplomacy around this principle. In mid-1948, ER saw
Truman waver over the partition of Palestine, she threatened
to resign from the UN unless he recognized the need for a
Jewish state. In 1953, as part of her world-wide tour, she
had extended visits with Tito and Nehru, spending weeks with
them discussing politics, religion, micro-credit, and publishing
their conversations as part of her campaign for world understanding.
In 1957, she traveled to Russia to interview premier Nikita
Krushchev, only to have the interview turn into a spirited
debate. She would return their hospitality by inviting all
three leaders to Val-Kill. President Kennedy recognized ER's
influence and, after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, asked her to
work with Walter Reuther to help get pro-American personnel
released from Cuban jails.
Despite ER's efforts and others with whom she worked, she
still thought America was loosing the Cold War because it
had lost its vision; in its place she saw a new world defined
more by fear of communism than commitment to democracy. As
she asked the nation in 1961, "what has happened to the American
dream?" (7)
Notes:
- Anna Kasten Nelson and Sara E. Wilson, "Cold War," in The Eleanor Roosevelt
Encyclopedia edited by Maurine Beasley et al (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000), 102.
- Eleanor Roosevelt to Max Lerner, January 19, 1947, General Correspondence, Anna
Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York.
- Eleanor Roosevelt, "Address to the Americans for Democratic Action 1950
Convention," Speech and Article file, AER Papers, FDRL.
- For more information on ER and the
Cold War at home, see Allida M. Black, Casting Her Own
Shadow: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Shaping of Post War Liberalism
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), chapters 3-5.
- Eleanor Roosevelt, My Day, June
- See Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor: The Years Alone (New York: New American Library,
1972), Chapter 4 for a thorough discussion of ER, the UN, and Cold War politics.
- Eleanor Roosevelt, "What Has Happened
to the American Dream?" reprinted in Courage In A Dangerous
World: The Political Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt
edited by Allida M. Black (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2000) 223.
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