Just before he passed, I had a conversation with Pete. He did a 180 on the Soviet Union. I asked him what he thought of Gorbachev. He said, "He's just another apparatchik". Pete, like Robeson were disillusioned. If many members of the Communist Party of the USA were interviewed today, I bet they would come to the same conclusion. The USSR was not a legitimate Socialist society. Under Stalin, it was a dictatorship. The CPUSA did a lot of good for this country, supporting labor unions, women's rights, racial equality, fighting the class struggle and most of them, (I knew many of them) had no clue as to what Stalin was up to. The idea that they were taking orders from Moscow is absurd. They had rose colored glasses because they wanted to believe in a more just, tolerant, loving world.