Arthur Miller's Other Legacy: Stalin's Little Helper

Human Events, Mar 21, 2005 by Ryskind, Allan H

In 1965, he was elected president of International PEN, a leading literary organization and, in his new role, went to bat for dissident writers in Communist countries. The Soviet Union was annoyed enough with Miller that his works were banned there in 1970. (But not in Communist Hanoi, as Jane Fonda's broadcasts remind us.)

Miller, however, always remained soft on Communists, and even communism, generally, and harsh on anti-Communists in particular. In Timebends, he proudly recalls that at one performance of The Crucible, the audience, upon the execution of the innocent leading character, John Proctor, "stood up and remained silent for a couple of minutes, with heads bowed." The reason? Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, two very guilty Soviet atomic spies, were at that moment being executed in Sing Sing.

Arthur Miller was a much-heralded playwright, whose works frequently had power beyond their political tilt. But in the great battle that was waged against Soviet communism in the 20th Century, Miller, when it really counted, wound up on the side of Joe Stalin-and not in a peripheral way.