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John Gates, the son of Polish Jews, was born in New York in 1913. His name was originally Solomon Regenstriet but he later changed it to John Gates. His parents owned a shop in the Bronx.
In 1930 Gates enrolled in the City College of New York. While a student he discovered the writings of Karl Marx and soon afterwards joined the Young Communist League. He also became involved in the campaign to free the Scotsboro Boys.
As a student he became close friends with Joe Dallet and Gus Hall. According to Cecil D. Eby, the author of Comrades and Commissars: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War (2007): "Gates, the twenty-four-year-old son of a candy-store proprietor on Fordham Road, the Bronx, had surrendered his Regents Scholarship at City College to join the YCL as a Party organizer in the steel industry."
In 1932 Gates left college and the YCL sent him to represent unemployed workers in Ohio. On the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Gates joined the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, a unit that volunteered to defend the Popular Front government against the Nationalist Army.
The American forces suffered heavy casualties in the war. In March 1938 the Lincoln-Washington Battalion lost two of its most senior officers, Robert Merriman and David Doran, when they were killed at Gandesa on the Aragón front. Milton Wolff now assumed command of the battalion and Gates became battalion commissar.
Gates soon developed a reputation as a strict disciplinarian. He later admitted that he became "intolerant of criticism. I increasingly used vile language against subordinates, and disciplined people for minor questioning of my authority."
In March 1938 Paul White was sent to get further supplies of ammunition. Instead, he deserted and drove to the French border. However, on hearing that his wife had given birth to a son, he began to feel remorse for what he had done. White wanted his son to be proud of his father and he returned to the front where he made a full confession of his actions.
White was unlucky that John Gates was now the battalion commissar. Gates recently had ordered that all deserters should be court-martialed and some of them should be executed as an example to the rest of the soldiers. Milton Wolff agreed with Gates and White was charged with desertion.
At his court-martial White confessed: "After Belchite I knew I was afraid to go into action again. I tried all this time to overcome my feeling of fear. I felt we were doomed and fighting futilely. I dropped out of line and made up my mind to desert and try and reach France." Paul White was found guilty of desertion and the following day he was executed by a six-man firing squad. Joe Bianca complained bitterly about the way White was treated, but as Cecil D. Eby pointed out: "Having just been publicized as the best soldier in the Battalion, Bianca had passed beyond the range of commissariat retaliation."
Soon afterwards Gates and Milton Wolff conducted the trial of Bernard Abramofsky, accused of multiple desertions and black marketeering. Abramofsky was executed by a firing squad. The news of these executions caused a great deal of dissent in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion and it was quickly announced that no further executions would take place.
On his return to the United States Gates was appointed head of the Young Communist League. In the Young Communist Review Gates upset some members when he argued that as the Soviet Union was "a socialist island in a sea of hostile capitalism" it would be understandable if Joseph Stalin signed a military alliance with Adolf Hitler.
During the Second World War Gates, like many members of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, joined the US Army. As Hank Rubin pointed out in Spain's Cause Was Mine (1997): "We were pariahs to our government. When Brigaders volunteered for the armed forces in World War II, the official army line, at first, was that we were not to be sent outside of the continental limits, so that we would not have contact with European communists. This ruling was later successfully challenged. Even so, most of us were sent to the Pacific combat zone. But despite all of the government's fears about our politics, some of the Brigaders, because of their experience and skills, were needed for the war effort. Some, therefore, were sent across the Atlantic to assignments behind the German and Italian lines to work with the various resistance forces, which, ironically, were often communist or communist-led. More than six hundred American vets served in World War II, in addition to another three hundred more in the merchant marine. In all, about twenty-five Spanish vets gave their lives for their country in World War. Many were decorated for bravery. Between sixty and seventy, including myself, were commissioned as officers."
On 20th July, 1948, twelve party leaders, included Eugene Dennis, William Z. Foster, Robert G. Thompson, Gus Hall, Benjamin Davis, Henry M. Winston, and Gil Green, were arrested and charged under the Alien Registration Act. This law, passed by Congress in 1940, made it illegal for anyone in the United States "to advocate, abet, or teach the desirability of overthrowing the government".
The case began in March, 1948. The men were defended by George W. Crockett. It was difficult for the prosecution to prove that the twelve men had broken the Alien Registration Act, as none of the defendants had ever openly called for violence or had been involved in accumulating weapons for a proposed revolution. The prosecution therefore relied on passages from the work of Karl Marx and other revolution figures from the past.
The prosecution also used the testimony of former members of the American Communist Party to help show that they had privately advocated the overthrow of the government. The most important witness against the leaders of the party was Louis Budenz, the former managing editor of the party's newspaper, The Daily Worker.
Another strategy of the prosecution was to ask the defendants questions about other party members. Unwilling to provide information on fellow comrades, they were put in prison and charged with contempt of court. The trial dragged on for eleven months and eventually, the judge, Harold Medina, who made no attempt to disguise his own feelings about the defendants, sent the party's lawyers to prison for contempt of court. After a nine month trial John Gates and other leaders of the American Communist Party were found guilty of violating the Alien Registration Act and sentenced to five years imprisonment.
On his release from prison in 1955, Gates became editor of the Daily Worker. During the 20th Party Congress in February, 1956, Nikita Khrushchev launched an attack on the rule of Joseph Stalin. He condemned the Great Purge and accused Joseph Stalin of abusing his power. He announced a change in policy and gave orders for the Soviet Union's political prisoners to be released. Gates became a supporter of Khrushchev and at his direction the newspaper printed the full text of Khrushchev's speech. This brought him into conflict with leaders of the American Communist Party.
Khrushchev's de-Stalinzation policy encouraged people living in Eastern Europe to believe that he was willing to give them more independence from the Soviet Union. In Hungary the prime minister Imre Nagy removed state control of the mass media and encouraged public discussion on political and economic reform. Nagy also released anti-communists from prison and talked about holding free elections and withdrawing Hungary from the Warsaw Pact. Khrushchev became increasingly concerned about these developments and on 4th November 1956 he sent the Red Army into Hungary. During the Hungarian Uprising an estimated 20,000 people were killed. Nagy was arrested and replaced by the Soviet loyalist, Janos Kadar.
John Gates was highly critical of Khrushchev's actions and stated that "for the first time in all my years in the Party I felt ashamed of the name Communist". He then went on to add that "there was more liberty under Franco's fascism than there is in any communist country."
Gates resigned from the American Communist Party in January 1958, claiming that it had "ceased to be an effective force for democracy, peace, and socialism in the United States." Gates published his memoirs, The Story of an American Communist, in 1959. Over the next few years Gates worked as a senior research assistant for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU).
Johnny Gates died in Miami Beach, Florida, on 23rd May, 1992.
(1) Cecil D. Eby, Comrades and Commissars: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War (2007)
Just after the stragglers of the Lincoln Battalion set up their camp at Marsa in April 1938, an order came down to Commissar John Gates from Division: court-martial all deserters and execute some as examples. Massive desertion must never be allowed again. Accordingly, Gates improvised a tribunal consisting only of brigade commissars and Party cadres. Three deserters received death sentences: an Algerian, a Spaniard, and an American named Paul White. White, a seaman with a splendid record in the Party, had deserted at least once before. (Merriman had complimented him for "doing a good job" in rounding up and provisioning the men scattered all over Madrid at the time of the Aragon offensive.) Executions followed that night. According to the later testimony of Major Umberto Galleani, the firing squad was commanded by a "very excitable" New Yorker known as "Ivan."
Some Lincolns bivouacked at Marsa heard isolated shots fired that night. Then four men were shaken out of their blanket rolls by one of Tony DeMaio's henchmen, who handed them shovels and said, "Follow me, and don't ask questions." They dug a trench in the hillside and dumped in a body. By morning everyone in the battalion knew that someone had been shot without being told the details. Later in the day they were told that Paul White had been executed as a deserter "by the unanimous [sic] decision of the battalion." They, the men of the battalion, had decided nothing - certainly not unanimously. Joe Bianca, a friend from the New York waterfront, who knew that White's wife had just had a baby, vented his anger by shouting over and over, for all to hear, "Those sons of bitches!" Having just been publicized as "the best soldier in the Battalion," Bianca had passed beyond the range of commissariat retaliation." (According to John Gates, many years later, on the next day an order come down from Division countermanding the executions. It arrived too late for Paul White.) At this time Gates and Wolff conducted the trial of Bernard Abramofsky, accused of multiple desertions and black marketeering. This was held in a darkened room with a single light shining on his face. Like White, he was executed by a nocturnal firing squad.
(2) Jessica Mitford, A Fine Old Conflict (1977)
Early in 1958 John Gates resigned from the Party, saying it had "ceased to be an effective force for democracy, peace and socialism in the United States", and that he did "not believe it is possible any longer to serve those ideals within the Communist Party'. Gates's Party career had been an illustrious one. He had fought in Spain where he became the highest-ranking officer of the Lincoln Brigade. As one of the first group of Smith Act defendants, he had done time in the Atlanta Penitentiary. Under his editorship the Daily Worker had been transformed from a house organ for transmission of policy directives by the leadership into a lively forum for debate. His resignation was a heavy blow indeed.
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