Former Communists Say U.S. Defector Was a California Party Leader

Arnold Lockshin, the Houston cancer researcher who defected to the Soviet Union, was a leader of the Southern California district of the U.S. Communist Party in the early 1970s, former party members said Saturday.

The former members described Lockshin and his wife as extremely dogmatic on party issues. They said Lockshin wielded considerable power within the West Coast party, which in the early 1970s enjoyed an increase in membership and much publicity. At that time, Angela Davis, the noted black activist and former UCLA philosophy professor, was a frequent spokeswoman for party causes.

Lockshin, 47, turned up in Moscow last Wednesday with his wife, Lauren, and their three children. At a news conference and in interviews, he has denied being a Communist although acknowledging that he was once a Communist Party organizer.

Opposed Vietnam War

He said he left the United States because he and his family were being harassed over their activism in political causes such as opposition to the Vietnam War. He said he was fired as a researcher at a cancer research facility associated with St. Joseph Hospital in Houston because of his political views. However, the hospital said he was fired for his poor job performance.

Three prominent former members of the party said Lockshin was district organizer and executive secretary of the Southern California district of the U.S. Communist Party from about 1971 until at least 1973.

The three asked that their names not be used because they said they do not want to be connected with Lockshin.

Lockshin’s political views were “rigid, totally without any human feelings--he and his wife as well,” said one longtime member who left the party in 1973, partly because of the leadership’s strict beliefs and partly because of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Current members of the party could not be reached for comment.

Lived Near Pasadena

A woman answering the phone at the law offices of Lockshin’s brother, Larry, in the San Francisco Bay area, confirmed that Lockshin lived in or near Pasadena for three or four years in the 1970s.

The woman, who would identify herself only as Barbara, said Larry Lockshin would not comment on his brother’s political past or current situation.

“He hasn’t seen his brother in five years. This whole thing has been a total shock to him, and he does not want to talk about it,” she said.

Arnold Lockshin, a researcher at Harvard in the 1960s, worked at Los Angles County/USC Cancer Research Center in the late 1970s, according to University of Southern California officials. USC records show that he interrupted his research from 1969 to 1977, when he worked as a bookstore clerk, writer and editor.

Bitter Dispute

The former Communist Party members said that during the early 1970s, when William C. Taylor was chairman of the party district and Lockshin was second in command, party members were involved in a bitter dispute over a book entitled “A Long View From the Left,” by Al Richmond.

The book, detailing Richmond’s early years as a Communist organizer, contained numerous criticisms of the Communist Party, but Richmond insisted that it was meant as a positive affirmation of his life as a Communist.

However, the book was officially condemned by national and local party leaders as “a weapon in the hands of the class enemy.” As a result, some moderate members, including Richmond, quit the party.

‘Dogmatic . . . Incredible’

One former party member said that Lockshin wrote his own position paper against the book “that was so dogmatic as to be incredible” and also wrote a paper in which he ordered Los Angeles party members to attend a mass meeting at which Angela Davis was to speak. A few party members who were discovered not attending the meeting were expelled from the party, the former member said.

Another former party member said Lockshin came to Los Angeles from Boston and that he had been a member of the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation.

In the 1960s, that committee had dedicated itself to working for the abolition of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which investigated Communists, suspected Communists and numerous other left-leaning political activists. The committee was disbanded in 1975.