Joseph Freeman

Joseph Freeman (1897–1965) was an American writer and magazine editor. He is best remembered as an editor of New Masses, a literary and artistic magazine closely associated with the Communist Party USA, and as a founding editor of the magazine Partisan Review.

Background Joseph Freeman was born October 7, 1897, in the village of Piratin, part of the Poltava Governorate in Ukraine, which was then part of the Russian Empire. Freeman's parents, Stella and Isaac Freeman, were of ethnic Jewish extraction, forced to live in the Pale of Settlement by the anti-semitic laws of the Tsarist regime. At the behest of his grandfather, Freeman spoke Yiddish as a small boy. His parents worked as shopkeepers.

In his memoirs, Freeman recalled a traumatic boyhood incident which had followed shortly after a pogrom of the Jewish population of a neighboring town:

Along with hundreds of thousands of others fleeing ethnic violence in Russia, the Freemans emigrated to the United States in 1904. Joseph was naturalized as a US citizen in 1920. In the new world, the Freemans managed to achieve a middle class existence in Brooklyn, New York, with Isaac Freeman earning a living in America as a real estate dealer.

Freeman joined the Socialist Party of America in 1914, when he was 17 years old. He was subsequently active in various mass organizations of the party, including the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born and the All-America Anti-Imperialist League.

Freeman's brother, Harry Freeman, introduced Whittaker Chambers to the Daily Worker newspaper. Chambers socialized with the Freeman brothers and their circle, which Chambers said included representatives of TASS. Freeman worked for TASS in the late 1920s, followed by his brother Harry in 1929. From 1931 to 1933, Joseph became editor again at New Masses, during the period when Chambers joined the Soviet Underground (1932). The Freeman's social circle included Harry's wife Vera Schaap (wife of Al Schaap, a Young Communist League founder), Sender Garlin, Abe Magill, James S. Allen, Joseph North (of The Daily Worker and New Masses), Anna Rochester, Grace Hutchins, Nadya Pavlov, and Kenneth Durant.

Freeman was a founding editor of Partisan Review in 1934, a publication which touted itself as "A Bi-Monthly of Revolutionary Literature Published by the John Reed Club of New York." The magazine was launched with the understanding that it would concentrate primarily on literary and cultural themes, thereby leaving New Masses to pursue a heavier portion of political themes.

In 1936–1937, Freeman served again as editor of New Masses. They divorced in 1931. or 1934, in New York.

Joseph Freeman died on August 8, 1965. He was 67 years old. Master negative microfilm of New Masses, the magazine with which Freeman was most closely associated, is held by the New York Public Library.

Works In 1936, Freeman published his memoirs, An American Testament: A Narrative of Rebels and Romantics.

Dollar Diplomacy: A Study in American Imperialism. Co-author with Scott Nearing. New York: Vanguard Press, 1925. Voices of October: Art and Literature in Soviet Russia. Co-editor, with Joshua Kunitz and Louis Lozowick. New York: Vanguard Press, 1930. The Soviet Worker: An Account of the Economic, Social and Cultural Status of Labor in the USSR. New York: International Publishers, 1932. The Background of German Fascism. New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1933. Proletarian Literature in the United States: An Anthology. Co-editor with Granville Hicks. New York: International Publishers, 1936. An American Testament: A Narrative of Rebels and Romantics. New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1936. Never Call Retreat. New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1943. The Long Pursuit. New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1947.

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