Abstract
Communist theoretician Herbert Aptheker (1915-2003) was the rare American writer whose history books were approved for mass consumption in the Communist bloc. A Columbia University Ph.D., he wrote or edited more than fifty books and lectured widely, but never held a professorship, due solely to his Communist politics. This paper explores the convergence of his academic interests and revolutionary commitment and argues that it justified the decades-long exclusion of Aptheker from the profession. His idiosyncratic view of truth as a function of „partisanship with the oppressed“ ironically condemns defenders of Stalinist regimes such as he was. Its methodological implications should inform the evaluation of his historical writings, no matter how much some of them may have inspired generations of African Americans.
Highlights
In the 1950s, when Eastern Europeans under Communism were taught American history, especially about race relations, their sources included the writings of the Communist Herbert Aptheker (1915–2003)
Whether this denial of academic recognition was a politically motivated injustice or justified by the very nature of his political discipline, the reader will better be able to judge after considering the material presented below. Adept both at writing American history and defending Soviet policy, put his considerable learning at the service of distorting as well as pursuing truth. He tethered his historical interests to his revolutionary commitment in the 1930s, the heyday of the Communist Party of the United States of America
While assimilating Dutt’s political analyses, Aptheker sought out African American historians, among them Carter G
Summary
In the 1950s, when Eastern Europeans under Communism were taught American history, especially about race relations, their sources included the writings of the Communist Herbert Aptheker (1915–2003). Adept both at writing American history and defending Soviet policy, put his considerable learning at the service of distorting as well as pursuing truth He tethered his historical interests to his revolutionary commitment in the 1930s, the heyday of the Communist Party of the United States of America (hereafter, „CPUSA“ or „the Party“). 276–97, reprinted in Anthony Flood, Herbert Aptheker: Studies in Willful as Aptheker’s history writings began to be published, James’s book was released and widely reviewed.[24] James, fourteen years Aptheker’s Black elder, was beneath his notice, if not contempt: hatred of all things Trotskyist flowed from one’s support for Stalin’s policies.[25] The minutest details of slave rebel trials in the 19th century absorbed Aptheker’s attention; the widely covered trials of the „traitors“ on trial in Moscow did not. We wonder whether Aptheker, as his daughter Bettina claims, went to Mexico to „find the comrade in the Mexican Communist Party who had betrayed Gus Hall.“ The suggestion that a battle-hardened war veteran, suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, was content to „find“ the informant strains credulity.[29]
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