Dupes

by Paul Kengor

  12. CPUSA in the Comintern Archives, Fond 515, Opis 1, Delo 4076.

  13. CPUSA in the Comintern Archives, Fond 495, Opis 20, Delo 536.

  14. Shlaes, The Forgotten Man, 326.

  15. Brickman, ed., John Dewey's Impressions, 20–21.

  16. Ibid., 21–22.

  Chapter 7: Smearing Another Liberal Icon: CPUSA's Assault on “Fascist” FDR and the New Deal

  1. It would seem especially obvious that Communists would prefer the liberal FDR to Herbert Hoover if we believe the standard historical narrative about Hoover. Many historians have painted Herbert Hoover as a president who recklessly pursued laissez-faire economic policies. In fact, this is wrong: Herbert Hoover was not a laissez-faire conservative; he intervened extensively in the economy. See, for example, the work of economist and economic historian Lawrence Reed of the Mackinac Center and Foundation for Economic Education, specifically: Lawrence W. Reed, “Great Myths of the Great Depression,” The Freeman, August 1998.

  2. This is evident particularly in reels 230 to 236.

  3. CPUSA in the Comintern Archives, Fond 515, Opis 1, Reel 230, Delos 2967–2979.

  4. Ibid.

  5. CPUSA in the Comintern Archives, Fond 515, Opis 1, Reel 260, Delo 3371.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Ibid.

  8. This flier is not dated by year. My best estimate is that it referred to January 21, 1934, which is the timeframe where it was located in the Comintern Archives on CPUSA. (Other documents in that particular reel featured dates from December 1933 to January 1934.) It could not have been prior to 1934, and was almost certainly part of the tenth-anniversary celebrations (for Lenin) that year. CPUSA in the Comintern Archives, Fond 515, Opis 1, Reel 259, Delo 3364.

  9. This is filed in the Comintern Archives on CPUSA under Fond 515, Opis 1, Reel 273, Delo 3484.

  10. There were many accusations that Perkins, who was very liberal, was a Communist. To my knowledge, no such proof ever materialized. Indeed, Perkins's FBI file, now available for examination, says she was not a Communist. The file is posted and available for viewing at http://foia.fbi.gov/alpha.htm.

  11. This was the assessment in the article by Grace Hutchins, “You're Telling Me,” The Working Woman, May 31, 1934, 3. Hutchins was a well-known party member. See “Investigation of Communist Activities in the New York City Area—Part 5,” Committee on Un-American Activities, U.S. House of Representatives, 83rd Congress, 1st Session, July 6, 1953 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1953), 2097, 2106.

  12. Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers, 91–94.

  13. On Ware, see also “The Shameful Years: Thirty Years of Soviet Espionage in the United States,” prepared and released by the Committee on Un-American Activities, U.S. House of Representatives, 82nd Congress, 2nd Session, (Washington, DC: GPO, December 30, 1957) 55–58; and Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers, 91–94.

  14. On Abt, see “The Shameful Years,” 55–58; Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers, 91–94.

  15. Editorial, The New Republic, February 6, 1935.

  16. Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers, 91–94.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Ibid.

  19. On Pressman, see “The Shameful Years,” 58. On Hopkins, see Romerstein and Breindel, The Venona Secrets, 215–16. The authors write, “One of the members of the group was Harry Hopkins.”

  20. Romerstein and Breindel, The Venona Secrets, 215.

  21. Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, K.G.B.: The Inside Story (New York: HarperCollins, 1992). For a contemporaneous counter to Gordievsky, see Verne W. Newton, “A Soviet Agent? Harry Hopkins?” New York Times, October 28, 1990. This counterpoint is not well done, but Newton does raise (but not resolve) Gordievsky's confusing phrase “unconscious agent.”

  22. Romerstein and Breindel, The Venona Secrets, 212.

  23. Military historian Eduard Mark has broken this down in careful detail. See Eduard Mark, “Venona's Source 19 and the ‘Trident’ Conference of May 1943: Diplomacy or Espionage?” Intelligence and National Security, Summer 1998, 1–31. See also Romerstein and Breindel, The Venona Secrets, 214, 473. A photocopy of the transcript is published on page 473 of The Venona Secrets.

  24. Interview with Herb Romerstein, via e-mail, February 13, 2009.

  25. FDR said this in a January 19, 1941, meeting with Wendell Wilkie. See, among others, Conrad Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), 610.

  26. Earl Browder, Report to the 8th Convention, Communist Party (New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1934), 104.

  27. “Conditions of Admission to the Communist International,” Party Organizer, February 1931, 31.

  28. Quoted in “Structure and Function of Party Units,” Party Organizer, February 1931, 2. As further evidence of such thinking, M. J. Olgin, Communist and Browder colleague, said during FDR's first year in power: “The Communist Party of the U.S.A. is thus part of a worldwide organization which gives it guidance and enhances its fighting power. Under the leadership of the Communist Party the workers of the U.S.A. will proceed from struggle to struggle, from victory to victory, until, rising in a revolution, they will crush the capitalist State, establish a Soviet State, abolish the cruel and bloody system of capitalism and proceed to the upbuilding of Socialism.” M. J. Olgin, Why Communism? (New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1933), 95.

  29. On Browder's work, see, among others, Jerrold L. Schecter and Leona Schecter, Sacred Secrets: How Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History (Dulles, VA: Brassey's, 2002), 35, 50; Allen Weinsten and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America (New York: Random House, 1999), 302–3; and Haynes and Klehr, Venona, 211.

  30. Sources differ on the exact date of the pardon, with a lot of very sloppy scholarship all over the Internet. My best estimate is that the pardon took place in May 1942. One would think that this would be an easy thing to confirm. Yet even the most reliable historians use different dates.

  31. Dimitroff had been head of the Comintern from 1934 until well after Stalin claimed to have dissolved the organization. Some sources claim that Dimitroff took over the Comintern in 1933 or 1935. He remained in office until the organization's alleged dissolution by Stalin in 1943. After the war, he would leave the Comintern to go back to his native Bulgaria, where he became the beleaguered nation's Communist despot after its “liberation” by the Red Army. It was largely in 1946 that Dimitroff took the reins of power in Bulgaria. He died in 1949. Like Lenin, his body was embalmed and put on display. When the Cold War ended, his body was buried (in 1990).

  32. On Dimitroff to Browder, radio message, received June 12, 1943, see Comintern Archives, Fond 495, Opis 184, Delo 19, 28. For letters, see Roosevelt Library, Franklin Roosevelt correspondence, Earl Browder to President Roosevelt, June 14, 1943; President Roosevelt to Browder, June 23, 1943; President Roosevelt to Browder, June 26, 1943; and Browder to President Roosevelt, July 12, 1943. On the domestic politics dealings, see the early work by John T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth (New York: Devin-Adair, 1948), 371–74.

  33. See Sheldon B. Liss, Marxist Thought in Latin America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), 56–57.

  34. This is all clear from the letters. See also Romerstein and Breindel, The Venona Secrets, 179.

  35. James G. Ryan, Earl Browder: The Failure of American Communism (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 1997), 108.

  36. Romerstein and Breindel, The Venona Secrets, 178–79; and Ryan, Earl Browder: The Failure of American Communism, 129.

  37. Haynes and Klehr, Venona, 212–13.

  38. The Comintern was eventually morphed into the “International Department,” which existed until the Soviet implosion in the 1980s.

  39. Ibid., 213–15.

  40. Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper, 1948), 313.

  41. George N. Crocker, Roosevelt's Road to Russia (Chicago: Regnery, 1959), 18, 211.

  42. Crocker here cites Cordell Hull, The Memoirs o
f Cordell Hull (New York: Macmillan, 1948), 974.

  43. Crocker, Roosevelt's Road to Russia, 18, 211.

  44. In addition to viewing these letters in or by other sources, some published, others not, I've corresponded (via e-mail) with Robert Clark, supervisory archivist at the FDR Presidential Library at Hyde Park, New York, July 3 and 8, 2008.

  45. In addition to the material cited hereafter, see also Harvey Klehr, “The Strange Case of Roosevelt's ȈSecret Agent’: Frauds, Fools, and Fantasies,” Encounter [Great Britain] 59, no. 6 (1982), 84–91; and Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship, Based on Eleanor Roosevelt's Private Papers (New York: Norton, 1971), 702–4.

  46. Ryan, Earl Browder: The Failure of American Communism, 212–13. Ryan's sources include the Philadelphia Inquirer, May 23, 1941, as well as interviews and private papers of Theodore Draper, housed at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.

  47. Ibid.

  48. Ryan, Earl Browder: The Failure of American Communism, 212–14. Ryan cites correspondence (four letters from December 1941 to April 1942) between Eleanor and Adams, as well as a Theodore Draper interview with Eleanor.

  49. Romerstein and Breindel, The Venona Secrets, 178–79, 181. The authors cite Comintern Archives, Fond 495, Opis 74, Delo 485, 21 (in Russian), and July 4 and 12, 1944, letters between Josephine Adams and Eleanor Roosevelt, July 4, 1944, and Secretary Earl G. Harrison.

  50. Ryan, Earl Browder: The Failure of American Communism, 212–15.

  51. Ibid., 214–15.

  52. These letters were from Adams to Eleanor Roosevelt, January 1944, and from Eleanor Roosevelt to Adams, July 13, 1944, which are housed in the Eleanor Roosevelt papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, NY. Haynes and Klehr write about this and even produce the letters in their works, including their Venona (213–17) and The Secret World of American Communism (249–58), which are the go-to sources for detailed examination of this matter.

  53. Haynes and Klehr, Venona, 213–17

  54. Ryan, Earl Browder: The Failure of American Communism, 214.

  55. Haynes and Klehr, Venona, 213–17.

  Chapter 8: War Communism: Hating FDR, Loving FDR

  1. Comintern Archives on CPUSA, Library of Congress, Reel 302, Delo 3973.

  2. “Guide to Subversive Organizations and Publications (and Appendices), revised and published December 1, 1961, to supersede Guide published on January 2, 1957 (including Index),” No. 398, 22–23.

  3. Comintern Archives on CPUSA, Library of Congress, Fond 515, Opis 1, Delo 4082.

  4. “Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States,” Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, 78th Congress, Second Session, on H. Res. 282, App. part IX, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1944), 431; and “Guide to Subversive Organizations and Publications (and Appendices), revised and published December 1, 1961, to supersede Guide published on January 2, 1957 (including Index),” 26–28.

  5. Comintern Archives on CPUSA, Library of Congress, Fond 515, Opis 1, Delo 4091.

  6. See the biography of Eugene Dennis by his wife, Peggy Dennis, The Autobiography of an American Communist: A Personal View of a Political Life, 1925–1975 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977).

  7. Judy Kaplan and Linn Shapiro, eds., Red Diapers: Growing Up in the Communist Left (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 317–18.

  8. The House Committee on Un-American Activities said that the American Peace Mobilization began in the summer of 1940 under the auspices of CPUSA and the Young Communist League. Ryan/Dennis's date of September 1940 simply refers to the launch of the national meeting.

  9. “Peace Group Assails Roosevelt,” Washington Post, October 11, 1940.

  10. A flier on this event was provided by Herb Romerstein.

  11. See David H. Anthony, “Max Yergan,” Encyclopedia of the American Left, 2nd ed., eds. Mary Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, and Dan Georgakas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 912.

  12. Wallace D. Best, Passionately Human, No Less Divine: Religion and Culture in Black Chicago, 1915–1952 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); and R. Marie Griffith and Barbara Dianne Savage, eds., Women and Religion in the African Diaspora: Knowledge, Power, and Performance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).

  13. Archibald Roosevelt et al., “A Compilation of Public Records, 20.5%, 1411 Protestant Episcopal Rectors,” March 1958 (Cincinnati, OH: Publishing Committee). This document was self-published, and received a lot of attention in its day.

  14. “Clergymen Group Charges War Aim,” New York Times, January 10, 1941.

  15. Edward T. Folliard, “A.P.M. Head ‘Welcomes’ Aid of Communists,” Washington Post, January 26, 1941.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Toledano, Spies, Dupes, and Diplomats, 182–85; and Evans, Blacklisted by History, 375.

  18. Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate Report 2050, on the Institute of Pacific Relations (July 2, 1952), 223, 225; and “Guide to Subversive Organizations and Publications (and Appendices), revised and published December 1, 1961, to supersede Guide published on January 2, 1957 (including Index),” 87.

  19. Toledano, Spies, Dupes, and Diplomats, 189–90.

  20. Evans, Blacklisted by History, 406–7.

  21. Edward T. Folliard, “Peace Mobilizers Deny Communism,” Washington Post, May 17, 1941.

  22. Of the six New York Times articles that I consulted on this period, only one (published May 13, 1941) noted that the American Peace Mobilization “has been charged with being a Communist Front group.” See “’Peace’ Pickets Routed at White House Gates,” New York Times, May 13, 1941.

  23. “Call, American People's Meeting,” New York City, April 5–6, 1941.

  24. Romerstein and Breindel, The Venona Secrets, 114.

  25. Among the Columbia professors frequently found at American Peace Mobilization gatherings, sometimes as officers, sponsors, or endorsers, were Franz Boaz and Walter Rautenstrauch. See “Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States,” Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, 432, 446.

  26. Seventeen of the eighteen listed as “Rev.” were Protestants. The lone Catholic was the Reverend F. Hastings Smyth.

  27. Interview with Herb Romerstein, June 27, 2007.

  28. As noted, Olgin had vowed in his 1933 book that “the workers of the U.S.A. will proceed from struggle to struggle, from victory to victory, until, rising in a revolution, they will crush the capitalist State, establish a Soviet State, abolish the cruel and bloody system of capitalism and proceed to the upbuilding of Socialism.” See M. J. Olgin, Why Communism?, 95.

  29. Some of these individuals were more open about their party membership, even if only later in life. Pete Seeger, interviewed for a 2008 episode of the PBS series American Masters, and by then an old man, conceded that he had been a Communist. He first joined the Young Communist League as a student at Harvard in the mid-1930s and then in the early 1940s joined CPUSA as a card-carrying member. Ronald and Allis Radosh refer to the Almanacs as “the Communist folk-singing group.” See Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh, Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony's Long Romance with the Left (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2005), 78. See also Paul C. Mishler, Raising Reds (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 7, 101, 105–6.

  30. Comintern Archives on CPUSA, Library of Congress, Fond 495, Opis 184, Delo 3.

  31. A number of sources confirm this. Aside from the documents themselves, located in the Comintern archives on CPUSA, there is also the published account in Georgi Dimitroff's diary, published in German, specifically on page 364. (The title of the book is Georgi Dimitroff Tagebucher 1933–1943, published by Aufbau-Verlag.) I also confirmed this in various conversations with Herb Romerstein, including several emails in June 2007.

  32. Many documents like this now exist. There are transcripts of secret radio messages from Moscow to CPUSA in 1939 ordering American Communists to toe the
Soviet line and shape their propaganda accordingly. Likewise, transcripts from 1941 order a complete reversal in the party line after Hitler betrayed Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union.

  33. “Protest Against War Staged by Women,” New York Times, May 11, 1941.

  34. “’Peace’ Pickets Routed at White House Gates”; “2,000 Attend Peace Rally,” New York Times, May 17, 1941; and “Pickets Picketed,” Time, June 2, 1941.

  35. “White House Pickets Quit,” New York Times, June 22, 1941.

  36. Ibid.

  37. The Germans invaded Russia in the very early morning hours of June 22, local time; in Washington it was still June 21, which was the dateline for the Times piece that ran in the June 22 edition.