The Soviet World of American Communism (Annals of Communism)

by Harvey Klehr, Kyrill M. Anderson, Rossiiskii Tsentr Khraneniia I Izucheniia Dokumentov Noveishei Istorii, etc.

Release Date: April, 1998

Edition: Hardcover

Price:

More Info

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.