Green, Gil

GREEN, GIL (1906–1997). An early member of the Communist Party and a lifelong activist, Gil Green was one of the architects and executors of the policy evolved at the Seventh World Congress (1935) of the Communist International that reversed the “narrow ‘class against class’ political line into one that sought unity of Communists, Socialists, and all democratic forces into an all-inclusive people’s struggle against fascism and war.” He wrote in his book Cold War Fugitive that this reversal of policy derived in large measure from experiences of the Communist youth movement in the United States (especially with groups such as the American Youth Congress) and the Popular Front movement in France.
Green was born in Chicago in 1906 to working-class Jewish parents. After his father died when Gil was nine, his mother supported herself and three children by doing housework and receiving home relief (welfare).

In 1924 Green joined the Young Communist League and rapidly rose to become its national leader in 1931. The Comintern elected him as one of three youth leaders to the executive committee in 1935. Shortly thereafter, at the Sixth World Congress of the Young Communist International (YCI), he was elected to the executive and secretariat of that body. In 1936 he was part of the U.S. delegation to the World Youth Congress in Geneva. In 1937 Green was one of three YCI delegates to a meeting of representatives from the YCI and the Socialist Youth International that drew up a unity pact to aid the Spanish Republic. In 1938 he was a U.S. delegate to the World Youth Congress, held at Vassar College.

After he graduated from the youth movement, Green became a member of the National Board of the Communist Party, USA, and served as district organizer in New York and in Illinois. He was indicted by the federal government in July 1948 under the Smith Act for being both a leader and a member. The trial started on 17 January 1949 in New York and he was found guilty on 14 October. Selected by the Communist Party to remain outside of prison and work as a leader in the underground movement, Green became a fugitive until he surrendered voluntarily on 27 February 1956. Afterwards he remained active as a writer and national leader until his departure from the Communist Party in 1989. Although in failing health, he became an important senior figure of the Committees of Correspondence until his death in 1997.

A prolific writer, he wrote many pamphlets and seven books: The Enemy Forgotten (1956), Revolution Cuban Style (1970), The New Radicalism (1971), Portugal’s Revolution (1976), What’s Happening to Labor (1976), Cuba at 25: The Continuing Revolution (1984), and Cold War Fugitive (1984).

Green, Gil. Cold War Fugitive. New York: International Publishers, 1984.

Gill Green Papers 1949-1991, Tamiment Library, Robert F. Wagner Archives, New York University: Guide http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_095/