Joel Shubin Explained

Joel Shubin (died March 24, 1942) was a Russian agronomist, journalist, and an alleged Communist International representative to the American Communist Party. At one time, he served as the Soviet Deputy Minister of Agriculture.

Biography

Born Jewish,^[1] Shubin edited the Moscow-based Peasant Gazette in the 1930s. A widower with a teenage daughter, he married the American journalist Anna Louise Strong without ceremony in 1931,^[2] and they remained married for the rest of his life. At the time, Strong edited the English-language version of another Soviet newspaper, Moscow News. While Shubin often accompanied Strong during her trips back to the United States, the two were often separated due to work commitments. According to Rewi Alley's account, Strong later said: "perhaps we married because we were both so doggone lonely...but we were very happy."

Shubin died of a lung disease under mysterious circumstances on March 24, 1942.^[3] Strong, who was working in California at the time, didn't learn of her husband's death until that August.^[4] It was reported in 1949 that an unnamed Soviet official suspected that Shubin was "liquidated."^[5]

References

Notes

• See Judith Nies. Nine Women: Portraits from the American Radical Tradition, University of California Press, 2002, p. 166
• Claimed in the following non-peer reviewed publication: Herbert Romerstein, Eric Breindel. The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors, Washington, DC, Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2000, p. 71

Further reading

• "Anna Louise Strong, American writer in China", in Notable Women of China: Shang Dynasty to the Early Twentieth Century. New York, M.E. Sharp, Inc, 2000 p379.
• David Caute. The Fellow Travellers: Intellectual Friends of Communism, Yale University Press, pp. 79–80

Notes and References

1. Robert L Cohn, Early postwar travelers on the future of Jewish life in Poland, Polish Review, 53(3), 2008
2. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19840226&id=HXEaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ACoEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6932,2920050
3. 40489406. Anna Louise Strong and the Search for a Good Cause. David C.. Duke. 1 January 1975. The Pacific Northwest Quarterly. 66. 3. 123–137R.
4. Web site: Anna Louise Strong papers - Special Collections, UW Libraries.
5. Web site: Morning Avalanche, February 18, 1949, Page 23. 18 February 1949.