Far East Reporter

The Far East Reporter was a magazine or newsletter published in New York City on an irregular schedule from 1953 to 1989 by Maud Russell. It took the form of pamphlets that mainly talked sympathetically about China under Mao Zedong.

History

Maud Russell was the executive director of the Far East Spotlight magazine, which was published from 1946 to 1952 by the Committee for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy (CDFEP).^[1][2] She founded the Far East Reporter in New York City in 1953, and published it until her death in 1989.^[3] The newsletter was published on an irregular schedule.^[4] Russell had lived in China for 26 years when it was dominated by other countries, and had seen the development of revolutionary nationalism. She used her magazine and speaking tours to explain why the US should recognize the Communist government of China and disengage from Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam.^[5] Russell published the views of "experts" on other East and Southeast Asia countries including Vietnam and India, but her main focus was on publishing positive articles about social, political and economic development in China for American readers.^[6]

Russell wrote some of the issues herself. Some of the other issues, which were essentially pamphlets on specific topics, were written by well-known people.^[1] Russell drew on newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, Far Eastern Economic Review and China Reconstructs, and used material sent by CDFEP supporters in the US and China.^[2] Russell had been one of a very small group of "progressive" Westerners in 1930s China, and had returned to the US in 1942. Her regular correspondents from the People's Republic of China included Nan Green, David Crook, Elsie Fairfax-Cholmeley, Israel Epstein, Talitha Gerlach, Rewi Alley and (after 1958) Anna Louise Strong. Often their long letters to Russell were not much more than verbatim copies of Xinhua articles.^[7]

In March 1963 the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUC) called on Russell to testify in a closed session.^[8] She had been named as a Chinese Communist Party "publicity agent." Russell defended herself vigorously before the committee and in a letter to her subscribers in which she denounced the attempted intimidation by the HUAC.^[9] A 1967 description said, "While some readers may be inclined to classify the journal as "Marxist" in content, the publisher, Miss Maud Russell, does not wish to have her views classified as "Marxist".^[4] In the 1960s the magazine was praised by the Radical Education Project of the Students for a Democratic Society, which helped publicize her speaking engagements.^[10]

During the Cultural Revolution the Epsteins were accused of spying for the West, and from 1968 to 1973 were held in solitary confinement.^[11] In May 1971 Russell's old friend Talitha Gerlach wrote from Shanghai to Russell asking her not to defend the imprisoned foreigners against charges of spying, but to remove works by Israel Epstein, his wife Elsie Fairfax-Cholmeley and David Crook from lists of past publications in the Far East Reporter.^[12] The last issue of the Far East Reporter appeared in September 1989. In it Russell criticized Deng Xiaoping's Four Modernization policies, which she blamed for the May–June protests.^[13]

Selected issues

Issues included:^{[1][lower-alpha 1]}

Notes

Sources