NEW YORK, Oct. 16 -- Gus Hall, an old-time, hard-line American Communist Party leader who carried his fight against capitalism into the U.S. presidential elections several times, died in New York City. He was 90.
Hall died Friday at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan from complications relating to diabetes. His death was announced Monday by the Communist Party.
He remained faithful to the party to the end and said socialism would eventually prevail, despite the dissolution of the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Block, which he described as a "setback." He unsuccessfully opposed Jimmy Carter in 1976 and, with black activist Angela Davis as his running mate, ran again in 1980 and 1984. The only contest he won was for the leadership of Communist Party U.S.A., a post he held for more than 30 years.
Hall generally echoed the Community Party line, especially during the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 and the ouster of Alexander Dubcek following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. But he lashed out against the communist regime in Warsaw during the workers' insurrection in 1980, blaming the uprising on the "weak bureaucratic government in Warsaw."
Relations between the American and Chinese communist parties, severed in 1966 at the beginning of China's 10-year Cultural Revolution, were restored under Hall more than 20 years later. The gray-haired American traveled to Beijing himself in June 1988 to mark a reconciliation between the two parties, and described his visit as "one of great significance."
Hall was born Arvo Mike Halberg on Oct. 8, 1910, in a log cabin in Iron, Minn. His Finnish immigrant parents were charter members of the American Communist Party. He attended school in Hibbing, Minn., but dropped out at the age of 16. At 21, he went to Russia and remained there for two years.
When he returned to the United States, Hall became an organizer for the Young Communist League, according to the FBI. He then became Ohio state party chairman and eventually one of the 12 "first string" American Communist Party leaders.
Hall served in the U.S. Navy during World War II as a machinist mate and was honorably discharged in 1946. After American Communist Party leaders, including Hall, were convicted in 1949 of plotting the overthrow of the U.S. government, Hall and three others jumped bail. He was captured in Mexico City in 1951 and served five years in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kan. Hall was elected general secretary of the party in 1959 and continued to hold that post in 1988. He used various aliases, such as Arvo Gust Halberg, Arvie Hallberg, John Howell, John Hollberg and Gus Arvie Hall.
An internationally renowned Marxist theoretician, Hall authored many books, articles and speeches. Two of his best know books are "Working Class USA" and "Racism, the Nation's Most Dangerous Pollutant." "Gus Hall will be greatly missed by the progressive movements and our Party," said Sam Webb, the National Chair of the Communist Party.
"Through all the turmoil of McCarthyism, the Reagan/Bush years of attacks on labor, and the setbacks to socialism, Hall helped our party maintained a clear, stable focus in the working class, and the people's movements for peace, social justice and socialism."
Hall is survived by his wife Elizabeth, a daughter, Barbara, a son, Arvo, two sisters and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
