George Sokolsky

George Ephraim Sokolsky (1893–1962) was a weekly radio broadcaster for the National Association of Manufacturers and a columnist for The New York Herald Tribune, who later switched to The New York Sun and other Hearst newspapers.

Son of a Russian émigré rabbi, Sokolsky was born in Utica, N.Y. He graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism. In February 1917, Sokolsky was attracted by the February Revolution and went to Russia to write for Russian Daily News, an English-language newspaper. After the overthrow of the Kerensky government by the Bolsheviks, he became disillusioned with the revolution. His Columbia classmate Bennett Cerf was to observe many decades later: “Suddenly the flaming radical, Sokolsky, became the flaming reactionary, George Sokolsky, and one of the most important columnists in the United States of America.” [1] He fled to China, landing with one Yankee dollar in his pocket, to continue his work as a special correspondent for English-language newspapers such as St. Louis Post-Dispatch and London Daily Express. and acted as an informant and propagandist for sundry conflicting Asian and Western clients, including Cen Chunxuan. He broke a social taboo by marrying a woman of mixed Caribbean-Chinese blood. Sokolsky became political adviser and friend to Sun Yat-sen, and wrote for his English-language Shanghai Gazette. He also befriended colorful characters that ranged from “Two-Gun” Cohen to Soong Mei-ling, and identified Chiang Kai-shek as “the only revolutionist in China who could make the revolution stick.” (See Daniel S. Levy, Two-Gun Cohen: A Biography, St. Martin’s Press, 2002, pp. 117ff.)

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