In their previous book, The Secret World of American Communism,
Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, along with Fridrikh Igorevich
Firsov, showed how closely involved the Amrican communist party was
with Moscow. Here they provide the evidence, a wealth of documents
trawled from Comintern records in Moscow which are published,
annotated and analysed in this book. Ranging from the formulation
of the Communist Party of the USA in the 1920s to the dissolution
of the Comintern in the late 1940s, they demonstrate how the CPUSA
was financed by Moscow and how closely its policies and
pronouncements reflected the wishes of Moscow. There are few real
surprises here - although some analysts have spent many years
arguing that the CPUSA was an autonomous organisation - but there
is a wealth of detail. As Klehr, Haynes and Anderson show, although
many rank-and-file members might have considered the organisation
independent, and indeed were probably ignorant of any close
involvement with Moscow, the party leadership was undoubtedly
following Soviet wishes at every stage of their history. As the
authors are careful to point out, even the revelations here do
nothing to excuse the extremes of American anitcommunism, such as
the claims of Senator McCarthy which were simply maliciously false;
and the CPUSA has never been particularly strong in terms of
members or influence. Nevertheless, these documents do shed an
interesting light on the history of the left in America this
century. (Kirkus UK)
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.
General
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