Brodine, Russell V.

BRODINE, RUSSELL V. (1912-2003). A lesser known but highly influential figure in the cultural and labor worlds of American Communism, Bodine organized philharmonic musicians and chronicled his adventures in an autobiography titled Fiddle and Fight

Born into a family of eight, Brodine was the son of Swedish parents who had immigrated to a rural area of Washington State. They gave their son his middle name of “Victor” after Eugene Victor Debs, who ran for president the year Brodine was born. When he was twelve, his family relocated to Seattle to take advantage of the proximity to the University of Washington. His youth was filled with the common stories of the city’s widely shared socialist past, and he took part in events to defend the Scottsboro Boys and to end Jim Crow. In 1932, accepted to the Curtis School of Music in Philadelphia, Brodine began to focus on playing symphony bass. Very quickly, he built a coalition of students dedicated to improving the orchestra and challenging the efforts by the school administration to limit free expression in the classroom.

In 1936, Brodine helped organize a concert to protest the victory of Francisco Franco over King Alfonso in Spain. The Music Center, created by a group of progressive musicians and Communist Party activists to give low-cost instruction to students, sponsored the event. Brodine joined the Party’s Communist Musicians Club between symphony seasons in 1937. He also became a member of the Philadelphia chapter of the Youth Communist League, but kept his affiliations private so as not to jeopardize his music career.

Shortly before the US entry into World War II, Brodine married Virginia Warner, who became a writer for the Daily People’s World after the two moved to Los Angeles. There, he accepted a series of positions in the Janssen Orchestra. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, he dropped his orchestra duties to work full-time in the Los Angeles shipyards, learning to weld and build Liberty Ships. Brodine would regularly bring his fellow shipyard workers with him to Party events and gathered club musicians from the city to play at gatherings.

Near the end of the war, Brodine began to work in the musicians unions, organized by the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU). When numerous carpenters from the CSU-affiliated Carpenter’s Union went on strike in March, 1945, he decided at first that the strike violated the Party commitment to the wartime no-strike pledge. With the war approaching an end, he and his fellow Communist unionists joined in the strike, notwithstanding Central Committee judgments. When the CSU made calls for a picket line outside the Warner Brothers lot in October, Brodine was among the first to respond and brought a cohort of activists to the picket line, minus any permit. In the end, the strike was successful, Warner Brothers conceded, but not before Brodine and numerous participants in the strike were arrested.

Brodine worked with progressive musicians of the city during the 1945-1946 season to create the Union Activities Committee and encourage greater participation by musicians and build the Musicians Union. They urged municipal support of musical activities, a fine arts bill, and an increase in public employment of musicians. For the rest of his stay in Los Angeles, Brodine worked to help rid the symphonies and their union of racist and discriminatory policies that targeted Black and Jewish musicians.

After the 1940s, Brodine eventually resettled in St. Louis. During the 1964-1965 season, he took part in a major strike against the Symphony Society employer’s association of St. Louis over a demand for a pay increase aligned with those of major orchestras in New York and elsewhere. The wives of striking musicians, including Virginia Brodine, helped form the Save our Symphony Committee (S.o.S.), appealing to the public, the press, and the Mayor. Under intense pressure and the need to prepare for the upcoming season, the Symphony Society accepted a substantial pay increase.

Brodine remained active in progressive causes for musicians and the Communist Party until he retired in the 1980s, given honors on his ninetieth birthday as one of the oldest living Party members. His last political act was to participate in the Roslyn/Cle Elum Peace March on 18 January 2003, against increasing military involvement in the Middle East subsequent to 9/11. At his father’s death, Russell Brodine’s son chaired the Washington State Communist Party district.

Alarcon, Evelina. “Russell Brodine, Musician and Organizer, 1912-2003.” People’s World, 7 Mar. 2003, www.peoplesworld.org/article/russell-brodine-musician-and-organizer-1912-2003/. Accessed 13 May 2026.