“Now You Are Alone:” Anticommunism, Gender, and the Cold War Myths of Hede Massing andWhittaker Chambers

Abstract

When Hede Massing died in 1981, she left behind political writings and personal correspondence to shape others' opinions about her. Made infamous in the 1940s by her former marriage to Communist Gerhart Eisler and her role in Alger Hiss's second perjury trial, Massing observed the notoriety gained by ex-Communist government witnesses such as Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers, and tasted some of it firsthand. Her twenty-year marriage to Paul Massing, her greatest love, failed partly due to the stresses of public scrutiny once the Cold War began and federal officials discovered her role in the Hiss case. Massing published a memoir, This Deception, in 1951, and then left her papers to posterity in 1981 to help continue the anticommunist crusade after her death.1 She surely hoped that her version of her life would not fade into obscurity or be replaced by others' representations. She knew the frustration of being portrayed as a seductress-spy, a Mata Hari, rather than as the complex woman she was at the time of the Hiss case. Friends had abandoned her when she testified against Hiss in 1949. Hede afterward dreaded liberal slurs on her character and interpreted unflattering press coverage in that light. She could not know that some conservatives would join in the myth making after her death, casting her as a femme fatale or minor adjunct to the heroic Whittaker Chambers—as a woman whose subversion had been directed by men, her radicalism dictated by naive love or problematic sexual desire.2 In analyzing Massing's story, this article examines how Hede Massing's life can be interpreted in ways other than those employed by male commentators and how representations of Massing served various interests and perpetuated certain ideologies and assumptions about communism, espionage, and women. Finally, I hope to restore some of Massing's voice that has been silenced by male commentary or inattention.