Download or read book The First Ten Years of American Communism written by James P. Cannon and published by Pathfinder. This book was released on 1962 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Stalinism has worked mightily to obliterate the honorable record of American communism in its pioneer days. Yet the Communist Party wrote such a chapter too, and the young militants of the new generation ought to know about it and claim it for their own. It belongs to them." -- James P. Cannon, 1962.
Download or read book The Communist International and US Communism 1919 1929 written by Jacob Zumoff and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-08-21 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the Cold War, most historians have set up an opposition between the “American” and “international” aspects of early American Communism. This book examines the development of the Communist Party in its first decade, from 1919 to 1929. Using the archives of the Communist International, this book, in contrast to previous studies, argues that the International played an important role in the early part of this decade in forcing the party to “Americanise”. Special attention is given to the attempts by the Comintern to orient American Communists on the role of black oppression, and to see the struggle for black liberation and the fight for socialism as inextricably linked. The later sections of the book provide the most detailed account now available of how the Comintern, reflecting the Stalinisation of the Soviet Union, intervened in the American party to ensure the Stalinisation of American Communism.
Download or read book American Communism in Crisis 1943 1957 written by Joseph Robert Starobin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1975-01-01 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Communism and Soviet Russia written by Theodore Draper and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This companion volume to The Roots of American Communism brings to completion what the author describes as the essence of the relationship of American Communism to Soviet Russia in the fi rst decade after the Bolsheviks seized power. The outpouring of new archive materials makes it plain that Draper's premise is direct and to the point: The communist movement "was transformed from a new expression of American radicalism to the American appendage of a Russian revolutionary power." Each generation must fi nd this out for itself, and no better guide exists than the work of master historian Theodore Draper. American Communism and Soviet Russia is acknowledged to be the classic, authoritative history of the critical formative period of the American Communist Party. Based on confi dential minutes of the top party committees, interviews with party leaders, and public records, this book carefully documents the infl uence of the Soviet Union on the fundamental nature of American Communism. Draper's refl ections on that period in this edition are a fi tting capstone to this pioneering effort. Daniel Bell, in Saturday Review, remarked about this work that "there are surprisingly few scholarly histories of individual Communist parties and even fewer which treat of this crucial decade in intimate detail. Draper's account is therefore of great importance." Arthur M. Schlesinger, in The New York Times Book Review, says that "in reading Draper's closely packed pages, one hardly knows whether to marvel more at the detachment with which he examines the Communist movement, the patience with which he unravels the dreary and intricate struggles for power among the top leaders, or the intelligence with which he analyzes the interplay of factors determining the development of American Communism." And Michael Harrington, in Commonweal, asserted that Draper's book "will long be a defi nitive source volume and analysis of the Stalinization of American Communism."
Download or read book The Romance of American Communism written by Vivian Gornick and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class.” So begins Vivian Gornick’s exploration of how the world of socialists, communists, and progressives in the 1940s and 1950s created a rich, diverse world where ordinary men and women felt their lives connected to a larger human project. Now back in print after its initial publication in 1977 and with a new introduction by the author, The Romance of American Communism is a landmark work of new journalism, profiling American Communist Party members and fellow travelers as they joined the Party, lived within its orbit, and left in disillusionment and disappointment as Stalin’s crimes became public. From the immigrant Jewish enclaves of the Bronx and Brooklyn and the docks of Puget Sound to the mining towns of Kentucky and the suburbs of Cleveland, over a million Americans found a sense of belonging and an expanded sense of self through collective struggle. They also found social isolation, blacklisting, imprisonment, and shattered hopes. This is their story--an indisputably American story.
Download or read book The American Communist Movement written by Harvey Klehr and published by Macmillan Reference USA. This book was released on 1992 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The American Communist Movement: Storming Heaven Itself, Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes trace the turbulent history of American communism as both political party and social movement. Drawing on a wealth of research, they follow the party's fortunes from its origin in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, through its heyday during the Depression years, to the gradual decline in the post-World War II era. The authors examine the effect of the party's ideas on groups more in the mainstream of American politics, as well as the influence of communist "popular front" culture on American culture in general. While duly acknowledging the idealism of many American communists, the authors also take a clear-eyed look at the disturbing aspects of the American communist movement: its subservience to Moscow, its penchant for conspiratorial machinations, its bitter internal disputes and purges, its always latent and sometimes virulent totalitarianism.
Download or read book Engineering Communism written by Steven T. Usdin and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engineering Communism is the fascinating story of Joel Barr and Alfred Sarant, dedicated Communists and members of the Rosenberg spy ring, who stole information from the United States during World War II that proved crucial to building the first advanced weapons systems in the USSR. On the brink of arrest, they escaped with KGB’s help and eluded American intelligence for decades. Drawing on extensive interviews with Barr and new archival evidence, Steve Usdin explains why Barr and Sarant became spies, how they obtained military secrets, and how FBI blunders led to their escape. He chronicles their pioneering role in the Soviet computer industry, including their success in convincing Nikita Khrushchev to build a secret Silicon Valley. The book is rich with details of Barr’s and Sarant’s intriguing andexciting personal lives, their families, as well as their integration into Russian society. Engineering Communism follows the two spies through Sarant’s death and Barr’s unbelievable return to the United States.
Download or read book A Short History of Communism written by Robert Harvey and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-12-23 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today global communism seems just a terrible memory, an expressionist nightmare as horrific as Nazism and the Holocaust, or the slaughter in the First World War. Was it only just over a decade ago that stone-faced old men were still presiding over "workers" paradises in the name of "the people" while hundreds of millions endured grinding poverty under a system of mind-controlling servitude which did not hesitate to murder and imprison whole populations in the cause of "progress"? Or that the world seemed under threat from revolutionary hordes engulfing one country after another, backed by a vast military machine and the threat of nuclear annihilation? In the 1970s, with the fall of South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the march of Marxism-Leninism across the world seemed irresistible. Less than two decades later the experiment had collapsed, leaving perhaps 100 million dead, as well as economic devastation spanning continents. Even China now increasingly embraces free market economics. Only in a few backwaters does communism endure, as obsolete as rust-belt industry. This book is the first global narrative history of that defining human experience. It weighs up the balance sheet: why did communism occur largely in countries wrenched from feudalism or colonialism to twentieth-century modernism, rather than--as Marx had predicted--in developed countries groaning under the weight of a parasitic middle class? Were coercion and state planning in fact the only way forward for backward countries? What was the explanation for its appeal -- not least among many highly intelligent observers in the West? Why did it grow so fast, and collapse with such startling suddenness? A Short History of Communism sets out the whole epic story for the first time, a panorama of human idealism, cruelty, suffering and courage, and provides an intriguing new analysis.
Download or read book Artists on the Left written by Andrew Hemingway and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examination of the relation between visual artists and the American communist movement in the first half of the twentieth century, from the rise in prestige of the party during the Great Depression to its decline in the 1950s. Account of how left-wing artists responded to the party's various policy shifts: the communist party exerted a powerful force in American culture.
Download or read book Red Chicago written by Randi Storch and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Realities of the street-level American Communist experience during the worst years of the Depression "Red Chicago" is a social history of American Communism set within the context of Chicago's neighborhoods, industries, and radical traditions. Using local party records, oral histories, union records, party newspapers, and government documents, Randi Storch fills the gap between Leninist principles and the day-to-day activities of Chicago's rank-and-file Communists. Uncovering rich new evidence from Moscow's former party archive, Storch argues that although the American Communist Party was an international organization strongly influenced by the Soviet Union, at the city level it was a more vibrant and flexible organization responsible to local needs and concerns. Thus, while working for a better welfare system, fairer unions, and racial equality, Chicago's Communists created a movement that at times departed from international party leaders' intentions. By focusing on the experience of Chicago's Communists, who included a large working-class, African American, and ethnic population, this study reexamines party members' actions as an integral part of the communities in which they lived and the industries where they worked. "A volume in the series The Working Class in American History, edited by David Brody, Alice Kessler-Harris, David Montgomery, and Sean Wilentz"
Download or read book The History of the North Carolina Communist Party written by Gregory S. Taylor and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a re-evaluation of the objectives and actions of the 'Tar Heel Reds' from the 1920s to the 1960s. The author argues that, contrary to widely held belief, they were not a threat to national security, nor were they beholden to the Soviet Union and that their aims are now accepted parts of the national consensus.
Download or read book The Soviet World of American Communism written by Harvey Klehr and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Secret World of American Communism (1995), filled with revelations about Communist party covert operations in the United States, created an international sensation. Now the American authors of that book, along with Soviet archivist Kyrill M. Anderson, offer a second volume of profound social, political, and historical importance. Based on documents newly available from Russian archives, The Soviet World of American Communism conclusively demonstrates the continuous and intimate ties between the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) and Moscow. In a meticulous investigation of the personal, organizational, and financial links between the CPUSA and Soviet Communists, the authors find that Moscow maintained extensive control of the CPUSA, even of the American rank and file. The widely accepted view that the CPUSA was essentially an idealistic organization devoted to the pursuit of social justice must be radically revised, say the authors. Although individuals within the organization may not have been aware of Moscow’s influence, the leaders of the organization most definitely were. The authors explain and annotate ninety-five documents, reproduced here in their entirety or in large part, and they quote from hundreds of others to reveal the actual workings of the American Communist party. They show that: • the USSR covertly provided a large part of the CPUSA budget from the early 1920s to the end of the 1980s; • Moscow issued orders, which the CPUSA obeyed, on issues ranging from what political decisions the American party should make to who should serve in the party leadership; • the CPUSA endorsed Stalin’s purges and the persecution of Americans living in Russia.
Download or read book Commonsense Anticommunism written by Jennifer Luff and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2012-05-21 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the Great War and Pearl Harbor, conservative labor leaders declared themselves America's "first line of defense" against Communism. In this surprising account, Jennifer Luff shows how the American Federation of Labor fanned popular anticommunism but defended Communists' civil liberties in the aftermath of the 1919 Red Scare. The AFL's "commonsense anticommunism," she argues, steered a middle course between the American Legion and the ACLU, helping to check campaigns for federal sedition laws. But in the 1930s, frustration with the New Deal order led labor conservatives to redbait the Roosevelt administration and liberal unionists and abandon their reluctant civil libertarianism for red scare politics. That frustration contributed to the legal architecture of federal anticommunism that culminated with the McCarthyist fervor of the 1950s. Relying on untapped archival sources, Luff reveals how labor conservatives and the emerging civil liberties movement debated the proper role of the state in policing radicals and grappled with the challenges to the existing political order posed by Communist organizers. Surprising conclusions about familiar figures, like J. Edgar Hoover, and unfamiliar episodes, like a German plot to disrupt American munitions manufacture, make Luff's story a fresh retelling of the interwar years.
Download or read book Hollywood Party written by Lloyd Billingsley and published by Prima Lifestyles. This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This engrossing tale of intrigue, passion, betrayal, and violence uncovers the true face of communism in Southern California, and names writers and actresses who were seduced by the party's philosophy.
Download or read book Communism written by Richard Pipes and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2003-08-05 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With astonishing authority and clarity, Richard Pipes has fused a lifetime’s scholarship into a single focused history of Communism, from its hopeful birth as a theory to its miserable death as a practice. At its heart, the book is a history of the Soviet Union, the most comprehensive reorganization of human society ever attempted by a nation-state. This is the story of how the agitation of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, two mid-nineteenth-century European thinkers and writers, led to a great and terrible world religion that brought down a mighty empire, consumed the world in conflict, and left in its wake a devastation whose full costs can only now be tabulated.
Download or read book Which Side Were You On written by Maurice Isserman and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1982 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Earl Browder written by James Gilbert Ryan and published by University Alabama Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the political history of a 20th-century Communist part leader in the US Earl Browder, the preeminent 20th-century Communist party leader in the United States, steered the CPUSA through the critical years of the Great Depression and World War II. A Kansas native and veteran of numerous radical movements, he was peculiarly fitted by circumstance and temperament to head the cause during its heyday. Serving as a bridge between American Communism's secret and public worlds, Browder did more than anyone to attempt to explain the Soviet Union's shifting policies to the American people in a way that would serve the interests of the CPUSA. A proud and loyal follower of Joseph Stalin, Browder nevertheless sought to move the party into the U.S. political mainstream. He used his knowledge of domestic politics to persuade the Communist International to modify Popular Front (1935-1939) tactics for the United States. Despite his rise in the hierarchy, he possessed an independent streak that ultimately proved his undoing. Imprisonment as he neared age 50 left permanent psychological damage. After being released with the approval of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Browder lost his perspective and began entertaining delusions of grandeur about his status in American politics and in the world Communist movement. Still, he could never quite bring legitimacy to the CPUSA because he lacked the vision and moral courage to separate himself totally from the Soviet Union. Ryan concludes that Browder was not so much insincere as deluded. His failure contributed to the demise of the popularity of the Communist party in the United States. In preparation for this book, the author consulted the Browder Papers at Syracuse University and U.S. Government documents, particularly the F.B.I. files. In addition, he traveled to Russia for research in the Soviet Archives when recently opened to Western scholars, including the records of the former Communist International and a collection of American Communist party files, 1919-1944, shipped secretly to Moscow long ago. Indeed, until 1992, the existence of the CPUSA collection was only rumored.
