The Soviet World of American Communism

by Kyrill M. Anderson, Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300071507
• ISBN13: 9780300071504
• Release Date: February 1998
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Thorough History

The book exposes the sordid details of the intimate, subservient relationship between the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), particularly focusing on the CPUSA's height around the 1930s. It does so largely by analyzing (in proper historical context) documents stored in the Russian archives which were briefly made available to scholars after the fall of the Soviet Union. Most of those documents consist of communications between the USSR-controlled Comintern and the CPUSA. The authors state their thesis early in the introduction: "As we shall see, these documents demonstrate that at every possible period of the CPUSA's history, the American Communists looked to their Soviet counterparts for advice on how to conduct their own party business. But there was more to it than that: these documents show that the CPUSA was never an independent political organization. There were moments when it was less strictly controlled by Moscow than at others, but there was never a time when the CPUSA made its decisions autonomously, without being obliged to answer to or--more precisely--without wishing to answer to Soviet authority" (4). The book is tightly integrated around this thesis: every section illuminates some further aspect of it. Since the evidence for this thesis is so clear and overwhelming that a mere article could prove it easily, the basic purpose is to reveal the details of the control that Moscow exerted over the CPUSA. And it does that very well. (The discussion of the CPUSA response to the Nazi-Soviet Pact and Stalin's Terror were particularly revealing.) Bewared: This book is a very detailed, painstaking history focusing on documents from the Soviet archives. It's suberbly done, but it's not a general history of communism in America.

Documentation of Comintern support for the CPUSA

This is another volume in the terrific "Annals of Communism" series. This volume documents Soviet activities in the US from the Soviet side of the events. It contains 95 documents that demonstrate conclusively the USSR involvement in American communism and the CPUSA. This includes documents 43, 44, 45, 46 which are a letter from Gus Hall (longtime leader of the CPUSA and their perennial presidential candidate) pleading for financial support, and drafts (with photographic reproductions of the notes and Mr. Hall's signature) of his receipt of $2 million and $3 million in the 1980s. The evidence indicates that there was much more Moscow Gold spread around to finance American communism and that there was little of it not affected in some way by financial support from the USSR.The book is not a comprehensive discussion of American communism, but a presentation of certain documentary evidence. However, it is very revealing. This isn't to take away from the sincerity of those who believe, for whatever reasons, in communism. But it does prove the lies that were told for decades about the independence of the CPUSA were indeed lies. A very valuable volume. It also has a glossary of names and organizations with brief bio info, an appendix of American and Soviet Cominternists, and an index.

This book finally exposes the depth of American Communism

This book brings some closure to the McCarthy era witch-hunt, and to accusations that many in the west, sympathetic to Communism, turned their backs on the Great Terror where millions of people died. When Communism fell ten years ago, archives were finally opened and the connection between Soviet controls of American Communism was finally documented. Not only did American Communists turn their backs on the politicide taking place in the Soviet union under the pseudoscience of cultural determinism, but in some cases they were implicated in handing over to the Soviets, American citizens of the Communist Party, who would be put to death.But the real story is yet to be told. As I read this book it opened up more questions than it explained. Who were these traitors? Why were they so accepting of terror and totalitarianism and why did they cling so tenaciously to such a horrific doctrine, one that as it turns out was far more devastating in human life and misery than the Nazi Holocaust? And why were they so unwilling to question official doctrines, especially when they changed so capriciously from time to time?But the big question, never mentioned in this book but glaringly apparent to any one who has looked into the Communist phenomena, is why were so many Jews at the vanguard of American Communism (and Communism in most Western countries)? This book never makes mention of their role. Was it because they felt persecuted under imperialist forms of government and Communism looked like a way to end the hatred of Jews? Were they more inclined than other ethnic groups to follow leadership blindly, as they once followed their rabbis when they were assigned to the Jewish ghettoes? Is it because Jews are more political and radical, whether on the left or the right? It would have added a lot if at least this book would have touched on these issues, as they are important for understanding why some people and not others are so easily led by different types of political systems and doctrines that strain the credulity of rationality. But perhaps we are asking the wrong people to analyze why American Communism was such a pawn under Soviet control. More and more, those who understand human behavior via group evolutionary strategies can only answer these questions. That is, history and cultural analyses both fail to consider humans as artifacts that evolved thousands of years ago under different ecological conditions. Only recently have we been able to look at fascism, communism, democracy, and religious movements as attempts to meet our evolutionary goals.

More goodies from the secret Archives

As with THE SECRET WORLD OF AMERICAN COMMUNISM, this book answers long standing questions about the history of the Communist Party, U.S.A.SECRET WORLD showed that espionage and subversion was an integral part of the Communist movement, a core activity. SOVIET WORLD shows just how tightly the CPUSA was governed from Moscow -- the only time there was a shred of independant thinking was during WWII, when the Comintern was out of touch.There aren't a lot of big surprises here (though it was amazing to learn that Earl Browder once tried to think for himself). What there is is an end to arguments -- yes, the infamous "Duclos article" was written in Moscow, and intended to prepare the Party for the coming Cold War; No, Stalin was not interested in friendship with the U.S.A; Yes, the Soviet Union supported the CPUSA with extensive cash subsidies; yes, the Party was a wholely owned subsidiary of Moscow.I look forward to more volumes in the Annals of Communism series.

A model of historical documentation and interpretation

Interpretation of US domestic politics during the Cold War has been bedevilled by ad hominem accusation and counter-accusation. The undoubted injustices perpetrated by McCarthyism have also long obscured the subject. The work of these authors - and also, in other books, of Ronald Radosh - must be counted not only impressive, but definitive. We now know, thanks to their efforts, that the Communist Party of the United States really was a tool of Soviet clandestine operations, and that those "revisionist" interpreters who portrayed it as merely a persecuted and progressive group of idealists were egregiously mistaken. In short, what was wrong with McCarthyism was its wild and irresponsible exaggeration, not its premise; there really was an organised attempt on the part of the CPUSA and its front organisations to infiltrate Soviet influence into the liberal democratic American polity. The authors demonstrate this with meticulous scholarship; their book is one of the most important works of contemporary history to have been published since the collapse of the Soviet Union.