Karl Feller (August 6, 1914 – February 5, 1981) was an American

trade union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ( ...

ist. He was president of the

International Union of United Brewery, Flour, Cereal, Soft Drink and Distillery Workers The International Union of United Brewery, Flour, Cereal, Soft Drink and Distillery Workers was a labor union in the United States. The union merged with the Teamsters in 1973. Early history The union was founded in 1886 as the National Union o ...

. During his 1959 visit to the United States,

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...

had the following exchange with Feller:

:Feller: "Mr. Chairman, I cannot understand, since the Communist Party proclaims itself to be the liberator of the working class, yet we see a mass exodus of workers in other countries following the Communist seizure of power. You have the example of three million workers fleeing from East Germany to West Berlin, and about three million fleeing from North Korea to South Korea and, as mentioned a moment ago, three hundred or so thousands of Hungarians braved arrest and death in escaping to freedom. Mr. Khrushchev, can you tell us of a single instance where, following Communist seizure of power, there has been a mass influx of workers from surrounding non-Communist countries into the Communist country? If the Communist Party is the liberator of the working class, why don't we see this phenomenon?" :Khrushchev: "Is that all? Think it over. Drink your beer. Perhaps that will help you to find the answer to your question." :Feller: "That certainly is no answer, and apparently nothing will make you understand why millions want to escape from Communism-" :Khrushchev: "I've told you, I'm not even afraid of the devil."(1)

Despite his

anti-communism Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the ...

, Feller's work landed him on the

master list of Nixon political opponents Master or masters may refer to: Ranks or titles * Ascended master, a term used in the Theosophical religious tradition to refer to spiritually enlightened beings who in past incarnations were ordinary humans *Grandmaster (chess), National Master ...

References

*'' U.S. News & World Report'', October 5, 1949, p. 95. Excerpts from a discussion between Nikita Khrushchev and American labor leaders at a meeting in San Francisco, September 21, 1959. *''The Machinist'', October 1, 2001
Two faces of Kruschev denounced by U.S. labor.
(

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

) *Staff report (June 28, 1973). Lists of White House 'Enemies' and Memorandums Relating to Those Named. ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' *http://www.genealogy.com/ftm/o/v/e/Kathi-Overley/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0267.html Trade unionists from Ohio 1914 births 1981 deaths People from Cincinnati Vice presidents of the AFL–CIO {{worker-activist-stub