Salisbury wrote of Russia, Vietnam, China

Harrison Salisbury

It is the birthday of journalist Harrison Salisbury (1908), who won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1955 for a series of stories he wrote after serving as the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times. Salisbury was one of the Times' top editors. He also reported from Vietnam and China. He was a prolific writer, the author of 29 books.

Salisbury began working for United Press after being suspended from the University of Minnesota in 1930. He never graduated. He served as UP's foreign editor during the last two years of World War II, and traveled with the Red Army as it pursued the retreating Germans. In 1945, he wrote a series for Collier's Weekly about Russia that became a book Russia on the Way (1946). He served as the Times' Moscow bureau chief for five years beginning in 1949. In Russia, he constantly sparred with Soviet officials over censorship, though he was criticized by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and by writer Gay Talese (The Kingdom and the Power) for being too sympathetic to the Soviets.

Salisbury served as the Times' chief of domestic correspondents during the 1960s and covered the Civil Rights struggle in the South. He directed the coverage of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He visited North Vietnam in 1966 and became convinced that the United States policy of pursuing the air war was a bad policy as it was killing thousands of civilians. He was the first American journalist to report on the war from North Vietnam and among the first to oppose the war.

Salisbury also traveled extensively in China. He witnessed the student uprising in Tiananmen Square in 1989 that led to a bloody massacre at the hands of the Chinese military.

Salisbury's books include American in Russia (1955), The Shook-Up Generation (1968), Behind the Lines: Hanoi (1967), Orbit of China (1967), War Between Russia and China (1969), The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad (1969), The Gates of Hell (1975), Black Night, White Snow: Russia's Revolutions 1905-1917 (1978), Without Fear or Favor: The New York Times and Its Times (1980), Journey For Our Times (autobiography) (1983), China: 100 Years of Revolution (1983), The Long March: The Untold Story (1985), Tiananmen Diary: Thirteen Days in June (1989), The New Emperors: China in the Era of Mao and Deng (1992), Heroes of My Time (1993).

Salisbury died from a sudden heart attack in Connecticut in 1993 at the age of 84.

Happy birthday, Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell

It is the birthday of British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (1872), whose work won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950. His career spanned 73 years and his substantial body of work includes books on mathematics, philosophy, politics, civilization, education, socialism and more. For much of his life he was an outspoken antiwar activist, serving time in prison twice for his opposition to Britain's involvement in World War I. He held a dim view of the Russian Revolution and Bolshevism. He initially opposed Britain's rearming to fight Nazi Germany but concluded that Hitler's rise to power wasn't conducive to peace in Europe and that fighting him was the lesser of two evils. He disagreed with the conclusions of the Warren Commission in the the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and believed that Lee Harvey Oswald was railroaded. He believed many questions remained unanswered. He was a severe critic of the Vietnam War and accused the United States of committing war crimes. He was a self-avowed atheist who questioned whether religion actually harmed people. He was an anti-imperialist and supported free trade. He advocated nuclear disarmament and pacifism. On the home front, there was less tranquility. He was involved with numerous affairs, sometimes simultaneously. He was married four times, and had three bitter divorces.