In 1952, the Prominent Individuals section of the Security Index was discontinued, and Bernstein entered a state of limbo, with a political cloud still hanging over him. Barry Seldes, in his book on Bernstein’s politics, says that the conductor was blacklisted at the CBS network and that his performing career probably suffered as a result. (The New York Philharmonic’s archives show that he made no regular-season appearances with the orchestra between February, 1951 and December, 1956.) Also, in the summer of 1953, the State Department declined to renew his passport. In order to get the passport back, Bernstein had to submit an eleven-page affidavit stating that he had never been a Communist Party member and that he had never knowingly engaged in Communist activities. Below is the final page of the letter, which ends, “I wish to conclude this affidavit by repeating in the most solemn way the affirmation of loyalty to the United States and opposition to Soviet Communism which I expressed [in 1949].” In 1954, Seldes writes, the Ford Foundation invited Bernstein to appear on the “Omnibus” program, and the apparent blacklist ended.
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