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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project Labor Series The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project Labor Series MILTON ZATINSKY Interviewed by: Morris Weisz Initial interview date: March 10, 1993 Copyright 1998 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Bac ground National Chairman, Young People%s Socialist League Internat%l Rep., NY )oint Board, Text. Wor ers ,nion Educ. Dept., Retail and Wholesale ,nion .9012.903 Public Relations Rep., 4uild Associates Education Dept., American Newspaper 4uild New School, B.A. 4uild Activities 7arshall Plan H%8trs, Washington 2.913 Wor 2study training program for European labor Labor Affairs Labor Affairs Stassen and the :ten percent authorization: Letter to Barney Taylor Qualification of ,.S. labor reps. in Europe Views on the validity of the 7arshall Plan Views on the radical movements of .930%s Popular front American Student ,nion Communist political movement Trots yite Lovestone group :American Exceptionalism: American Communism and the Soviet ,nion The Divided Left 1 Bureaucratic Collectivism Schachtman group Comments on communist history 7arx vs. Ba unin Lenin vs. Stalin American socialist movement :Social Democrats, ,.S.A.: Democratic Socialists of America The 4od that Failed INTERVIEW $: This is Morris Weisz and the date is Wednesday, March 10, 1993. I am interviewing my old friend Milton Zatins)y on his wor) in the Marshall Plan. We are recording at his home in Miami, Florida, and I would li)e to as) Milton first to give a general description of his political and social bac)ground and his family, and then how he got into trade union wor). ZATINSKYA Yes. 7y family was a middle2class New Yor )ewish family. 7y father was a small businessman. I was shoc ed one day to find out that my father%s business was on stri e. I had already had leanings in the other Bmore leftistC direction. By the time I was .3 or .0, I was active in the student movement. There the Communists were very active. I decided that they were on the wrong side, and the bad side, of the future of the world and went with the Socialists and the other dissidents. $: What school was this- ZATINSKYA This was DeWitt Clinton High School. $: In the western Bron/ 0in New 2or) City3. ZATINSKYA From there I became more active in the Yipsels BYoung People%s Socialist League, the youth group of the Socialist PartyC. I became New Yor City Chairman and finally became National Chairman. I went to wor after two years of college. 7y first full time job. $: Which college- ZATINSKYA I was at the ,niversity of Wisconsin interestingly enough with )oe and 7illie 4lazer and my first wife, Clair Brandler. )oe left a little bit before I did. 2 $: Milt, how did you get out to 0the 4niversity of3 Wisconsin- ZATINSKYA It had a good labor studies program under Selig Perlman, whom I got to now pretty well. I got impatient. )oe, who is older, had graduated. He went to wor with Larry Rogan in the Education Department in the CIO Textile Wor ers ,nion DTW,E, now part of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Wor ers ,nion, and he let me now that there was an opening as an organizer with the New Yor )oint Board, TW,, which used a fancy title. I was an international representative or something li e that. $: By the way, were those jobs elected or appointed- ZATINSKYA Representatives, organizers, educational people were all appointed in most unions. There may have been one or two exceptions, but they were basically appointed jobs. $: I was an elected 0official3. ZATINSKYA By and large Bthey were appointed.C 7y wife at that time went to wor for the Retail Cler s International ,nion. She was appointed too. I was never a textile wor er, and I didn%t feel that I had too much of a future as an organizer. $: 2ou mean you 6uit school after two years- ZATINSKYA That%s right. And at that point in time, a friend of mine, 7orris 7ilgram, who headed a group called, :The Wor ers Defense League,: as ed me if I would be interested in going to St. Louis. They wanted to set up an education department under a very interesting guy named Harold 4ibbons for the Retail and Wholesale ,nion DRWDS,2CIOE. $: Could you put an appro/imate date on that- ZATINSKYA That was in .901 and .903. I set the department up and stayed with Harold for a year or two. $: That was before Harold 8ibbons joined the Teamsters- ZATINSKYA This was when he was a Vice President of the Retail Wor ers ,nion, CIO. This was basically a warehouse joint board in St. Louis. Years later he went independent. He tried to Baffiliate withC the ,AW D,nited Automobile Wor ers ,nionE, but they felt it was too far afield in jurisdiction. He finally went with )immy Hoffa into the Teamsters ,nion, where he became a very important figure and Hoffa%s sort of second in command. That%s another story. Anyway, getting bac Bto the storyC, I came bac to New Yor and did some union public relations wor with a friend of mine named Herman Singer. :4uild Associates,: it was 3 called. We represented several unions and the Histadrut DIsraeli Federation of LaborE and others. We did some wor for the )ewish Labor Committee. Then the job of setting up an education department at the American Newspaper 4uild came up. I was not a newspaper man. A fellow named Sam Euban s was head of the 4uild at that time and had been head of the anti2Communist slate that too over the 4uild from the left wing. He was something of a Social Democrat himself, and he was delighted Bto have meC. I thin Danny Bell recommended me strongly. $: Danny Bell, Professor of . ZATINSKYA Danny Bell, Professor at Columbia ,niversity and author of the boo , The End of Ideology, and one of the leading sociologists in the world today. So there we were Bat the 4uildC. The program was a good program. We got out a lot of material. We had training programs. It was a little difficult Bto doC education Bprograms forC the 4uild. I would wal into a 4uild group and they would say, :Educate usF Who educated youF: Here were people, many of whom have advanced degrees themselves. I had gone bac at night and finished my Bachelor%s BdegreeC at the New School, but I didn%t have any advanced degrees at that time. So I had to explain that this was training and it wasn%t education in the broader sense. It was training in labor relations and collective bargaining. DPauseE $: O)ay, will you continue now- ZATINSKYA Yes. The 4uild had then its first national education program. We put out our publication, 8uild Activities. We had conferences throughout the country, usually held in university settingsA Wisconsin, Penn State. Those I remember. We occasionally brought in experts. There was some resentment, I have to tell you, about a non2newspaper man in this situation. Some felt that they would be more comfortable with somebody who had a newspaper bac ground. Of course the 4uild covered the newspaper editorial BstaffC, the bac office, the commercial BstaffC, and what have you. After a while Bthe education program wasC accepted and started showing some results and loo ed pretty good. But we had one happenstance that was just timing. Executive Vice President Sam Euban s, who appointed me and was the one who pushed mostly for this program, resigned or decided not to run again, 22 It was an elected office. 22 and the group that too over, or was ready to ta e over, was not exactly too sympathetic with certain aspects of the program. $: With the education program- ZATINSKYA Yes. So I started loo ing around. $: Now all during this period, you were also developing political interests. Before you actually 0discuss3 your Marshall Plan employment, 0please describe3 those interests. 4 ZATINSKYA Yes. As a very young man, I was in the American Student ,nion DAS,E. The first day at DeWitt Clinton High School, I said, :Where does the AS, meetF: I was .3. I went to the AS, and there was a meeting, which, it seemed to me, was run by a group that I didn%t feel very comfortable with. They turned out to be Communists. There were other groups in opposition to them including the Young Socialists, the young Trots yites, a few anarchists and what have you. I was young and not that sophisticated, but I realized that I couldn%t BjoinC people who were tal ing about all the bad things that were happening in the ,nited States, and they were supporting and apologizing for one of the worst dictatorships in the world. It seemed obvious to me then. I don%t now why it didn%t occur to too many other people. So I wound up wor ing with a group of dissident left2socialists called :the Shermanites.: They were loosely affiliated with the Shachtman group. The Shermanites were a group of people who had bro en with Trots yism and were finding their way to democratic socialism. Although they admired Trots y as a great thin er and a courageous person, they realized that it was the system of Communism or Bolshevism that led to some of the worst things including the Stalinist dictatorship. So they were one of the early groups that moved away on this issue. $: Around a person named Sherman- ZATINSKYA Philip Selznic is the name I most remember. He and a fellow named Irving Ferry, who I thin writes today under the name Irving Kristol, .
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