Mike Davidow (1913-1996) was a working-class journalist and lifelong Communist who served for many years as the Moscow correspondent for People’s World and its predecessor, the Daily World. He authored the weekly column, “Moscow Diary.” In the 1930s, he was an organizer with the Unemployed Councils and New York leader of the Workers’ Alliance. During World War II, he fought fascism and Japanese imperialism as part of the 165th Infantry. After the war, he was a Communist Party organizer in Ohio and later worked as a garment presser. He was a prize-winning playwright, whose works highlighted working class experience. He began work as a journalist in the 1960s, covering the burgeoning Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. He lived in the Soviet Union from 1969 to ’74, from 1982 to ’86, and then in post-Soviet Russia from 1991 until his death. In 1993, when Russian President Boris Yeltsin used tanks to blast away the last remnants of Soviet democracy, Davidow was holed up inside the parliament building with members of the Russian Communist Party. He survived the experience, but died three years later. He wrote many books, the last of which was titled Perestroika: Its Rise and Fall.
