American Communism Research Articles

Secret Cables of the Comintern, 1933–1943

Secret Cables of the Comintern, 1933–1943

Warm Distance: Grappling with Vivian Gornick’s The Romance of American Communism

ABSTRACT This narrative essay uses Vivian Gornick’s 1977 book The Romance of American Communism to consider the ethical implications of using oral interviews as inspiration rather than evidence. Gornick chronicles the lives of American Communists, exploring why people joined, remained in, and finally left the Party. Although the book has generated considerable buzz in literary circles since being reprinted by Verso Books in 2020, little consideration has been given to the unorthodox research that undergirds this self-described work of oral history. Gornick’s unique focus on the power of strong emotion in political struggle has captivated progressive scholars, including this author. At the same time, the book lacks the critical distance that good oral history requires. Incorporating original archival research from Gornick’s personal collection and an oral history conducted by the author, this essay considers what oral historians can learn from literary journalists: mistakes to avoid and challenges we would be wise to embrace.

The Comintern after the end of the Comintern. Some episodes of search of new forms of unity by Latin American Communists

The article analyzes the evolution of various forms of international cooperation between Latin American Communist Parties and the ways of their interaction with Moscow after the dissolution of the Comintern. The search for an optimal model of interaction was often carried out on the initiative of the Communist Parties themselves and led to the formation of the CP of Guatemala as also to the restoration of the unity of the Venezuelan CP (in the latter case, due to the efforts of the Cuban Popular Socialist Party). The international communist movement and the CPSU, which claimed the role of its leader, initiated a serie of conferences with a purpose to discuss complex problems of relations between Left-Wing parties. At the same time, the CPSU took over the function of training personnel in its own educational institutions (the Institute of Social Sciences and the Higher Party School under the Central Committee of the CPSU). The international journal “World Marxist Review” has also become an important center for coordinating the activities of parties and developing new approaches to strategy and tactics.

Осмысление дороги в аспекте диспозиции «свой» и «чужой» (на материале калмыцкой политической баллады ХХ в.)

The article discusses the concept of “road” in the aspect of the disposition of “your” and “alien” on the material of Kalmyk political ballad of the XX century —”Julian Grimau” (Rus. transl. “The Ballad about Communist”) by Yegor Budzhalov and “Ooshk torhn — Rosa kyukn” (Rus. transl. “Ballad about the girl Rosa”) by Moradzhi Narmaev. The political perspective of these ballads is determined by historical events (civil war, imprisonment of political figures, execution, loss of eyesight), historical characters (Julian Grimau, Henry Winston), the members of the Communist Party of their countries, the main place names (Spain, the United States of America, the Soviet Union). The dichotomy of “one’s own” and “another’s” in Budzhalov’s ballad demonstrates political (fascism and democracy), ideological (imperialism and the communist Party), social (protest of different countries against the verdict of Grimau) and personal (Franco and Grimau) vectors. This is the boundary between the life and death of the hero, his path to the grave, to non-existence, physical and spiritual immortality, it is the conclusion of his human fate. In the Narmaev’s ballad the “one’s own” and “another’s” disposition is represented in theintercrossing of different people’s lives — the American communist G. Winston, his opponents, his friends, Soviet people, including the author himself, Soviet Youth and Rosa girl in particular — when the “stranger” communist from the USA becomes “one’s own” like-minded person, when a stranger literally becomes a blood relative, when long distances do not become an obstacle to good deeds and thoughts, when someone else’s life is saved at the cost of self-sacrifice. These works of Kalmyk poets bear the imprint of their time in a pronounced socio-political and ideological perspective, without reducing the humanistic and moral-ethical vector of the author’s intention.

트리컨티넨탈리즘의 단편— 마리아떼기와 라틴 아메리카의 인종 문제 —

Since the emergence of Marxist theoretical practise, it has had a mediated relationship with the workers’ movement. After the Russian Revolution, dogmatic Stalinism controlled the realm of the left, and fascist forces obscured the prospects of Marxist politics and theories. In the non-West, however, under the rule of imperialism as a stage of capitalism, there was an emergent development of Marxism along with a national liberation movement. The idea of Mariategui in Peru is an example of Tricontinental Marxism developed in the non-West. He first performed a Marxist analysis of economic and racial issues there, based on his specific understanding of Latin American history. In keeping with the materialist position of Marxism, he argued that racial problems in Latin America were fundamentally related to the economy. This point of view was far from economism and was intended to explore the practical relations between the economy and other historical elements. His Marxist outlook conflicted with the Comintern’s dogmatic official lines and was dismissed at the 1st Latin American Communist Congress in 1929. His legacy, however, has not been lost but again spotlighted in the movement for social equality in Latin America in the late 20th century.

Organizar la lucha de masas en tiempos del ’tercer período’: la Revista Comunista del Secretariado Sudamericano de la Comintern (1930-1932)

Creado en 1925, el Secretariado Sudamericano fue una de las escasas estructuras regionales que integraron la maquinaria organizativa impulsada por la Internacional Comunista para coordinar acciones del comunismo internacional. En septiembre de 1930 el Secretariado comenzó a editar su órgano teórico: Revista Comunista. En sus páginas se plasmaron diagnósticos referidos a cada uno de los partidos comunistas de Sudamérica y a las diversas situaciones nacionales en las que debían operar. En este sentido, una reposición de aquellas líneas interpretativas de la realidad coyuntural resulta relevante para profundizar y problematizar la comprensión del desarrollo del comunismo sudamericano durante el llamado “tercer período”.

Bad Romance

The afterlife of Vivian Gornick's Romance of American Communism speaks perfectly to her actual point: no political movement ever really ends, but rather becomes part of a set of reference points; no political moment ever begins anew, but always bears the weight of dead generations—and sometimes living ones, too.

The Last Days of William Bunge:

The Last Days of William Bunge: Clark Akatiff (bio) When I first presented this account of the last years and death of the famous American communist geographer William Bunge, I asked an audience of students and their professors, "How many have heard of 'Wild' Bill Bunge?" A minority of students and all the professors raised their hands, but most, by far, had not. No surprise; who has heard of any geographer in these days? This is despite the growing importance of geography in science, in government, in business. All depend on Geographical Information Systems (GIS), and on digital maps. This formal revision of a paper given some years past is at this time being written under C-19 shutdown. The advance of the virus and the steps taken to suppress it give daily evidence of the relevance of geographical science. Yet as a pillar of learning, we stumble. The great American universities dropped geography as a Department of Learning. They kept maps and they kept geographers, often called something else, because you cannot do without geography. Geography grew in the state universities and abroad in Europe and Asia, but even there we see erosion. These days I see the term geosciences coming into use, and that is perhaps the future of the old girl. Time will tell, but let this memoir provide a brief but true insight into a man who led the field into its future state: Great Brilliance and/or Complete Obscurity. Legends and Realities You never know how well you are known or unknown. Certainly that is the case for me, more a rumor than a reality. The legendary status that some have attributed to me is all the more true of Bunge himself. As geographers we are both exceptions to the rule, on the margins, outlandish and without academic shelter, part of a larger people's movement, unknown, or forgotten. That's Bill, and even more so that's me, Clark Akatiff, his ally and friend since 1968 (Akatiff 2016). What brought Bill and me together? A love of geography, that old whore of the sciences, as well as the dreams for a world of peace, justice, and equality, [End Page 133] a world of socialism leading to perfect communism. Ours was a forty-year alliance, held at a great distance, but alive all the more so. The world of the mind takes place at a very high level. The word goes back and forth by the decades, not the moments. This bears explanation and repetition: this is a very slow-motion conversation we are having, already nearly a decade since Bill passed. And in my relationship to the man, there is also the true sense of the words mentor, guru, disciple, and aide. It speaks to the real relationship of the mind; it traces back to Socrates and Plato. I heard the man speak, and I bring his words as remembered and recorded. I love Wild Bill, though he drove me nearly to distraction with his endless rants and professorial advisories, as well as the details of his family history. One could not help but note his spoiled behavior. He was, after all, from a rich family. And he understood that. He saw it as a fault, but could not overcome it. I recall his behavior at his last AAG meeting, in Boston 2008. Driven from Montreal in a limousine, imperious, expecting people to come to him, using me as a messenger boy (which I was happy to do). He once told me, "Clark, people don't like me," then laughed about it. There was nothing not to like about this big galoot of a man. He had a good heart and a great mind. He could sit at a piano and play the blues. He was the loudest voice in the room. Yet he rubbed many people the wrong way. He had a reputation for violence. He would claim it was unearned, but it was a real reputation. There was an incident while he was at Wayne State in which it was asserted that he "roughed up a conservative student." Some said he threatened to throw a racist out the window, but the...

Never A Lovely So Real: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren

Never A Lovely So Real: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren

The Leadership of American Communism, 1924–1929: Sketches for a Prosopographical Portrait

Prosopography, we argued in an earlier paper, is a useful, ancillary instrument in the historian’s toolbox. Focusing on historical actors, significant and less significant, central or marginal in t...

An Enemy of the People

An Enemy of the People

Towards a Prosopography of the American Communist Elite: The Foundation Years, 1919–1923

A prosopographical study of the early central committee members of the Workers Party of America.

Building a Movement: American Communist Activism in the Communities, 1929-1945

In the mid-1930s, as communist community activism reached a peak, Birmingham organizer Hosea Hudson was less concerned with organizing communist-led unions as an alternative to AFL and SPA-led unem...

Late Spanish Fascists in a Changing World: Latin American Communists and East European Reformism, 1956–1975

AbstractThe main aim of this article is to show how the political evolution of Western and Eastern Europe during the Cold War cannot be fully understood without analysing the political experiences of countries like Spain, which were not at the centre of the period's political decisions but whose evolution was inspired and suggested by strategies outside the political mainstream. In this respect, the internal evolution of Francoist Spain from the mid-1950s through the 1960s portrays a peculiar political situation demonstrating the capillarity of political and social experiences across the Iron Curtain in Europe and Latin America. A minority of influential sectors linked to the Single Spanish Party, the Falange, pursued its own third way, ignoring the Cold War models. They instead looked to what was happening in Eastern Bloc countries, especially after the events in Hungary in 1956, as well as to the political experiments in Latin America, especially the Cuban revolution.

Framing Black Communist Labour Union Activism in the Atlantic World: James W. Ford and the Establishment of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers, 1928–1931

AbstractThe International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW) was a radical trans-Atlantic network for the propagation of black proletarian internationalism, established by the Red International of Labour Unions in 1928. Its key mastermind was James W. Ford, an African American communist labour union activist who was in charge of the organization and its operations until the autumn of 1931. This article critically highlights Ford's ambitions as well as the early phase of the organization. Both in terms of its agenda and objective as well as in its outreach among black workers in the Black Atlantic, the ITUCNW and its main propagators stressed the “class-before-race” argument of the Comintern rather than the pan-Africanist “race-before-class” approach. This is not surprising as the ITUCNW was one of the organizations that had been established when the Comintern and the RILU had started to apply the “class-against-class” doctrine, which left no room for cooperation between communists and radical pan-Africanists.

Conference talks from “One Hundred Years of Communism in the USA”

Editor’s note: The following two essays, by Harvey Klehr and Maurice Isserman, were presented at the “One Hundred years of Communism in the USA” conference, which was held on November 9–10, 2018 at Williams College in Williamstown, MA. The conference was sponsored by the Historians of American Communism. They are lightly edited transcripts of the presentations. Both authors are well-known historians of American communism and have written extensively on that topic. Klehr’s most known work is “The Heyday of American Communism; The Depression Decade” and Maurice Isserman’s is “Which Side Were You On: The American Communist Party during the Second World War.”

“Run Quick and Find the Reds”: Historians’ Search for American Communists

“Run Quick and Find the Reds”: Historians’ Search for American Communists

Book “Masters of Deceit” by J. Edgar Hoover as an Ideological Basis of the Concept of “Red Scare” and Anti-Communism in the USA

The article is devoted to the formation of the image of such a phenomenon as the “Red Threat” in the literary work of FBI Director John Edgar Hoover. It is affirmed that a special position in the US executive power system, along with a certain popularity in the 30-50s of the 20th century, made Edgar Hoover and his ideas significant both for the internal political life of the United States and, to some extent, for the foreign policy of this country. It is emphasized that the publication “Masters of Deceit: the history of communism in America and how to deal with it” has become for its time an important ideological and political-philosophical basis in the formation of a powerful anti-communist movement in the United States against the backdrop of the Cold War. It is noted that this book is of interest from the point of view of analyzing how America’s major anti-communists understood the term communism , the history and essence of classical Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, the revolution in Russia and the changes that occurred in Soviet Russia after it, Stalinism and its consequences. It is indicated that the author of the book not only analyzes the most important moments in the history of world and Russian communism, but also tries to understand how the communist ideology has developed in the USA, who the American communists are, what their goals are, etc.

A People's History of the German Revolution by William Pelz

Reviewed by: A People's History of the German Revolution by William Pelz Andrew Donson A People's History of the German Revolution. By William Pelz. London: Pluto, 2018. Pp. 180. Paper $24.00. ISBN 978-0745337104. Like E.P. Thompson and Howard Zinn, William Pelz, who died shortly before this book appeared in print, was a scholar whose left-wing politics shaped his research. Pelz spent most of his career at a community college while being an activist in the socialist movement in Chicago. He was especially committed to issues faced by working-class students; for most of his career, fighting for the rights of the disadvantaged was more important to him than output of scholarship. Only in the last four years before his death did he begin to publish books. His productivity in those years was remarkable: a biography on the revolutionary socialist Wilhelm Liebknecht; an edited collection of writings by American communist Eugene Debs; a survey titled A People's History of Modern Europe; and finally the book under review here. The titles of his last two books were references to Zinn's A People's History of the United States. In the first third of the book, which covers the social history of German industrialization and World War I, Pelz liberally quotes autobiographies of workers describing their hard labor, bad housing, and mean bosses. In this narrative, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) was the savior who fought for the workers despite government repression. Pelz emphasizes that, already in 1914, working-class soldiers saw that the war was a swindle, and they had no confidence in their officers. Meanwhile, on the [End Page 383] home front, women protested for bread and peace. The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the mass strike in the armaments industries in January 1918 were inspirations to German workers everywhere. This narrative sets the stage for portraying the German workers as tragic heroes. When the Kaiser abdicated, they tried to introduce social justice through mass protests and council democracy but were smothered by cowardly Social Democrats terrified of revolution. Pelz claims "there is overwhelming evidence that the SPD leadership did betray their members, the common people and socialism" (68). To support this point of view, he marshals evidence from many memoirs by people who believed the same. This literature details the brutality of the SPD in crushing the Spartacist uprising in January 1919, the general strike in March, the Bavarian Soviet in April, and the rebellions following the Kapp Putsch in March 1920. In the historiography of the revolution, this book stands out for recognizing the agency of women and putting war and revolution into their material, everyday context of hunger. It does not contribute substantial original research on either topic, but no other book on the revolution argues as emphatically that working-class women helped bring down the regime by their protests demanding peace. Few other historians have speculated that the revolution failed in part because women were "pushed to the sidelines" (128). Written in a plain style, with a clear point of view and a narrative made readable through the extensive use of memoirs, the book is a breath of fresh air. However, the sixty-six pages the book devotes to the revolution itself are one-sided. Few historians today would call the Social Democrats traitors, as the Communist Party and later the SED in the German Democratic Republic always held. In the end, this book identifies the "people" with the left-socialist working class. Farmers, artisans, white-collared workers, middle-class professionals, and laborers who supported parliamentary democracy but were skeptical of socialism—in other words, the majority of Germans—have no place. Pelz did not consult the foundational German-language monographs on the revolution by Eberhard Kolb, Peter von Oertzen, Wolfgang Elben, Susanne Miller, and many others. These historians drew upon deep empirical research to argue that, as Pelz indeed suggests, the SPD made missteps, such as rushing to elections for a national assembly before purging the army and bureaucracy, as the soldier and worker councils wanted. But these historians contextualized the decisions of the SPD: The party lacked experts to staff the government offices that were overseeing the...

This War Ain’t Over: Fighting the Civil War in New Deal America by Nina Silber

Reviewed by: This War Ain’t Over: Fighting the Civil War in New Deal America by Nina Silber Thomas Aiello This War Ain’t Over: Fighting the Civil War in New Deal America. By Nina Silber. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Pp. xvi, 232. $32.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-4654-1.) An hour from my university sits the Jefferson Davis Memorial State Historic Site, made a state park during the Depression-era administration of Georgia governor Eugene Talmadge. The monument on the grounds tells less about the Confederacy’s demise and more about the Talmadge administration’s use of the Civil War. According to the historical marker there, Confederate president Jefferson Davis was “the revered leader of the Lost Cause,” and when he was captured at this spot, “his hopes for a new nation, in which each state would exercise without interference its cherished ‘Constitutional rights,’ [were] forever dead.” Nina Silber’s new book, This War Ain’t Over: Fighting the Civil War in New Deal America, does a masterful job of describing the political and cultural uses of the Civil War in the 1930s and 1940s by southern white bigots like Talmadge and by a variety of national interest groups. Georgia, for example, was the home of Margaret Mitchell and the setting of the film Gone With the Wind (1939), which became a theater for the negotiation of “the present-day politics of white supremacy” (p. 5). Such politics were evident across the South and across the [End Page 952] country, but were rivaled by several other agendas with an interest in the Civil War’s legacy in the early twentieth century. Advocates of the New Deal and the officials who helped craft its policies, for example, emphasized the memory of Abraham Lincoln to justify the program’s heavy federal hand, but they denuded Lincoln of the racial consequences of emancipation, realizing that they would only stoke demands for African American civil rights and alienate much of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Democratic base—those same white southerners who flocked to see Gone With the Wind and the Jefferson Davis capture site. But Silber’s analysis goes further. Because of the economic devastation that affected so many white people, politicians and cultural critics began appropriating antebellum slavery to equate it with the suffering of interwar whites. Among those making the case were white American communists and labor activists, who “spoke the language of bondage during the Depression years”—wage slavery or “white” slavery—to indict a broken economic system (p. 72). Precisely because of the real historical resonance of the racial consequences of the Civil War, however, and in response to the rhetorical appropriation of slavery, emphasis on Lincoln and the Civil War during the time of both Jim Crow and rampant economic devastation was also a stakes game for the black leaders of the burgeoning civil rights effort. For them, Lincoln and radical figures like John Brown created a legacy that civil rights advocates of the 1930s inherited and continued. And that inheritance was undeniably racial. The NAACP was beginning its long fight for desegregated schools and stumping for a federal antilynching law, and both the Civil War and Reconstruction served as useful analogues for the group’s actions. Silber moves seamlessly from political memory to cultural memory, and the cultural memory she discusses spans a wide gamut of film and literature: from D. W. Griffith’s Abraham Lincoln (1930) to John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln (1939); and from Mervyn LeRoy’s I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) to Shirley Temple’s The Littlest Rebel (1935). Silber covers the poetry of Carl Sandburg and the photography of Dorothea Lange, all in an effort to track a history of memory that was itself an overtly contested space. The nuanced portrait moves deftly between race and class issues, political screeds and bestselling novels, pinpointing the lived memory of the Civil War for a variety of interwar and World War II–era groups while simultaneously tracking the evolution of those images over the course of the 1930s and 1940s. This War Ain’t Over is a necessary addition to the historiographies of both the...