The Soviet World of American Communism is the sixth volume of the Yale University Press's "Annals of Communism" series and the second dealing with the Communist Party of the United States of America. Like The Secret World of American Communism , the new volume promises startling revelations about the 20th-century American left. And like its predecessor, it offers fascinating anecdotes, but mostly disappoints.
The Soviet World of American Communism is composed of four major sections, a polemical afterword, and an appendix. Topical rather than chronological in organisation, the book consists largely of communications between Comintern leaders and American Communist leaders, ending chronologically in 1943 when the Comintern was dissolved. "Orders from the Comintern", "Moscow gold" (ie, party funding), "Communists abroad" and "Imported hatred" (the orchestrated attack upon dissidents) each offer evidence of Russian intervention.
The Soviet World of American Communism is overwhelmingly strongest on the 1920s, when an infant Communist movement, rising out of massive government repression of labour and the left, depended overwhelmingly on Russian prestige and almost daily Comintern directives.
The authors confirm the classic observations of Theodore Draper, acknowledged by leading participants themselves, that in the discussions and negotiations over Communist activities in American politics, the Russians always had the final say and often sought to micromanage the Americans' day-to-day work, nearly always with catastrophic results. The newest claim made by this volume is that the Russians supplied half or more of the American party's budget.
The author-editors thereby immediately face their most daunting scholarly obstacle - and duck. More than 20 years of social history have gone into the study of the lives and milieux of ordinary American Communists, including that large portion beyond the party proper. At most times, party-led fraternal and cultural societies, from choral groups to summer camps, had a following of perhaps ten times the party's actual size, itself fluctuating wildly with the political moment. This extended circle conducted most of the day-to-day left activity in working-class life, supplied the bulk of funds for all manner of activities - and raised huge sums for relief of the Soviet Union during the 1920s and again in the 1940s. Leaders of the CPUSA, regarding the party as the "head" of this lumbering body of European immigrants, took it for granted except when squeezing affiliates for funds.
Fixed upon Draper's narrative of leadership behaviour, The Soviet World of American Communism manages to eradicate the fraternal-cultural world almost entirely. The sums ferried by American Communist international couriers naturally seem overwhelming (although never approaching the amounts spent on federal and local officials to track Communist activities) when the considerably larger flow in the other direction is disregarded. The perpetual difficulty that American Communist leaders experienced in compelling the ranks to carry out unwanted policies likewise goes unrecorded, except when rank-and-filers joined the tiny "right" and "left" opposition groups.
Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes and Kyrill Anderson return at last to the familiar observation that, weaker than their European sister parties, American Communists could only have achieved their success through deception. They avoid the more logical conclusion that something less conspiratorial yet considerably more important must account for the enormous influence of Communists within American theatre, films, folk and choral music, fine arts, labour, student and civil rights circles until assorted legal assaults drove them underground. Of more than 1,000 films written or directed by Communists and near-Communists in Hollywood - to take a prime example from the premier left influence in American culture - not even one was guided from Moscow. Time to look somewhere else.
Paul Buhle is a visiting associate professor of American civilisation, Brown University, Rhode Island, United States.
The Soviet World of American Communism
Author - Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes and Kyrill M. Anderson
ISBN - 0 300 7150 7
Publisher - Yale University Press
Price - ?25.00
Pages - 378
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