Cleaver in Exile

Eldridge Cleaver, author of Soul on Ice and "information minister" of the Black Panthers, was once one of the most articulate and intellectually acute of the young black militants. Last November, facing revocation of his parole from jail and new charges as the result of a shoot-out with Oakland police, Cleaver fled the country. Now he is in restless exile, dreaming violent dreams of rebellion, chafing against Communist regimes that he thinks have gone soft. Stopping off in Moscow after a visit to North Korea, Cleaver talked with TIME Correspondent Stanley Cloud, who had covered Panther activities in California. Cloud's report:

One remembered the face from a different time, a different place. It had been last year in a steamy Oakland courtroom. He was a tall man of military bearing, who wore a black leather jacket, a Vandyke beard and a little gold button in one earlobe. Now, standing with a friend in the lobby of the mammoth Rossiya Hotel near Red Square, Cleaver seemed unchanged. The face was still hard and menacing, the bearing still rigid. With his jacket and earring, he was as conspicuous as a tourist from Kansas City.

At first he insisted that he was not Cleaver; then he demanded to know who had told of his being in Moscow. The interview could not begin until Cleaver, who worries as much about the Russian secret police as the CIA, spent 20 minutes searching for a safe place to talk. He finally selected a deserted lounge on the Rossiya's eleventh floor. There was yet another preliminary: the handing over of a pamphlet on the proper role of the press as seen by North Korean Premier Kim II Sung. "If you read this and follow the precepts laid down by Premier Kim II Sung, I won't have to worry about any distortions." *

Kind of Coup. Why the sudden affection for Kim? "There has been a kind of coup in the international Communist movement, conducted by Comrade Kim II Sung. He has stepped into the vacuum created by the squabble between the Soviet Union and China. They seem to be more interested in their own narrow interests than they are in the international proletarian movement. I feel this is a crime, really. Many people around the world suffer and sacrifice. These sacrifices are investments in the future, investments which the big Communist countries should honor by putting their arsenals at the disposal of the liberation movement. We feel the Soviet Union's arsenal is not the private property of the Soviet Union."

Cleaver complained that the Soviet Union has backed down from confrontation with the U.S. in many places. Eastern European Communists are guilty of a "relaxation of the revolutionary stance." The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia was not reprehensible because of its use of force against a weak nation; rather the Soviets were at fault for having encouraged Czech liberalization with their own doctrine of coexistence. "The countries that I like best don't have diplomatic relations with the U.S."

Cuba is one of those, but he did not find life there congenial. Cleaver, however, refused to discuss his reasons for leaving Cuba and moving to Algeria, where he now lives with his wife and infant son. He said they are "very happy" in Algeria, where they are presumably still collecting royalties from Soul on Ice and his other writings. Cleaver says he is able to move virtually at will in Communist countries, using nothing but his California driver's license and an FBI wanted poster in lieu of a passport. He maintains that he is neither lonely in exile nor out of touch with the U.S., which he still considers home. "I am as involved as ever in the United States, and I fully intend to continue functioning in the struggle against the oppressive system there. I intend to participate. It's important for people to fight in the terrain they know best. Being in exile is not my bag at all."

Choice of Weapons. When will his revolution come to America? "If everyone who is oppressed were involved, the Government would fall in a couple of days. It's only a question of arousing people to a point of wrath. Many complacent regimes thought they would be in power eternally--and awoke one morning to find themselves up against the wall. I expect that to happen in the United States in our lifetimes." The Panthers, he said, would be in the revolutionary vanguard.

Many black radicals have attacked the Panthers for allying themselves with white radical groups. One such critic is Stokely Carmichael, now in Guinea working for the restoration of Ghana's deposed dictator, Kwame Nkrumah. Cleaver dismissed Carmichael's argument, saying: "A revolutionary movement calls for unity. Capitalism thrives on the kind of divisions some people want to keep."

For Cleaver, there seems to be no way back to rational dissent. "Protests and demonstrations have exhausted themselves," he said. "The only response can be an escalation of violence itself. People who don't like that kind of talk go through long periods of reevaluation. But there's nothing to re-evaluate --except the choice of weapons."

* Kim, a hard-line Stalinist, urges "progressive journalists" to enhance "the revolutionary consciousness of the popular masses" so that "they will fight more tenaciously to crush U.S. imperialism."

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