Latest / Political Junkie Podcast / Episode 68: Arise, Ye Workers From Your Slumbers

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Episode 68: Arise, Ye Workers From Your Slumbers · Political Junkie Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: For years now,
• 0:01
  those of us who are paying attention have heard a range of
• 0:04
  political positions from
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: those held by moderate Democrats to socialism,
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: described by MAGA Republicans as something called the left.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the left is simply invoked by the shorthand they,
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: as in they tried to assassinate Donald Trump,
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: or more commonly,
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: they want you to believe
• 0:24
  followed by some caricature of an idea about women,
• 0:27
  race,
• 0:28
  gender,
• 0:28
  or sexuality.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: But in the past few years, I've noticed something else.
• 0:33
  Warnings from Republican politicians and pundits about a
• 0:36
  growing cadre of Marxists
• 0:38
  and communists who are hostile to the United States and seek to
• 0:42
  destabilize the
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: nation with things like gender ideology and
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: critical race theory and DEI.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: To the MAGA partisan,
• 0:53
  the term Marxist can describe anyone from former Vice President
• 0:56
  Kamala Harris to an
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: anti-Israel activist,
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: to the local librarian who steers readers to Judy Blume,
• 1:04
  to a Girl Scout troop leader who doesn't discriminate against
• 1:06
  trans children.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: For example,
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: on Saturday,
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: June 28,
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: 2023,
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: candidate Donald J.
• 1:13
  Trump made a pledge to the Faith and Freedom Coalition's Road
• 1:16
  to Majority event in Washington,
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: D.C.,
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  that he would secure the nation's borders against communists
• 1:23
  and Marxists clamoring
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: to destabilize our society.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: Using federal law in Section...
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: 212F of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
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  I will order my government to deny entry to all communists and
• 1:39
  all Marxists.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: Those who come to and join our country must love our country.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: We want them to love our country.
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  SPEAKER_02: We don't want them when they want to destroy our country.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to America.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: We want to destroy your country.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you very much.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: So we're going to keep foreign,
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: Christian,
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: hating,
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  SPEAKER_02: communists,
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  SPEAKER_02: Marxists,
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: and socialists out of America.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: But in 1947,
• 2:07
  Screen Actors Guild President Ronald Reagan had described to
• 2:10
  the House Un-American
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  SPEAKER_00: Activities Committee
• 2:12
  his success in purging massive numbers of communists from the organization.
• 2:17
  We have done a pretty good job in our business of keeping those
• 2:20
  people's activities curtailed.
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  After all,
• 2:24
  we must legally recognize them at the present as a political party.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: On that basis, we have exposed their lies when we came across them.
• 2:32
  We have been eminently successful in preventing them from their
• 2:36
  usual tactic of
• 2:36
  trying to run a majority of an organization with a
• 2:39
  well-organized minority.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: However,
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: there had never been more than 100,000 CPUSA members,
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: and in 1947,
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: as Morris Iserman's Reds,
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: The Tragedy of American Communism,
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: explains,
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  SPEAKER_00: the party was already in trouble,
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: a fracturing that would intensify over the next decade,
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: aided by government harassment and industry blacklists.
• 3:01
  When news of Stalin's crimes erupted at the 20th Congress of
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  the Communist Party of
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  SPEAKER_00: the Soviet Union on February 25,
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  SPEAKER_00: 1956,
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  disillusioned Americans fled communism and the networks of
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  activists that had
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: sustained them for decades.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Today,
• 3:16
  Trump almost seems to be invoking communism and Marxism as part
• 3:20
  of that fictional
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Cold War world where America was supposedly great.
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  SPEAKER_00: So what better time to point out that communists,
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: although their movement failed,
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  SPEAKER_00: also did a lot of good.
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  SPEAKER_00: Despite their flaws,
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: blind spots,
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: and sometimes harsh internal discipline,
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  SPEAKER_00: the CPUSA fought for a just society in America.
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  SPEAKER_00: Members organized powerful industrial unions,
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  SPEAKER_00: protested racism,
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  SPEAKER_00: and moved the nation towards reforms and small revolutions.
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  The New Deal,
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  black civil rights,
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  the Great Society,
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  the movement to stop the war in Vietnam,
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  SPEAKER_00: and even feminism and gay liberation.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Join Morris and me for this episode of Why Now,
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: where history and politics meet the challenge of today.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm your host,
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Claire Potter,
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  SPEAKER_00: professor of history emeritus at the New School for Social Research,
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  SPEAKER_00: a contributing editor at Public Seminar,
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: and the author of The Political Junkie Substack.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is episode 68.
• 4:16
  In the words of the Internationale,
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  arise,
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  you workers,
• 4:20
  from your slumbers.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Morris,
• 4:47
  I was so happy to see that you were writing a comprehensive
• 4:52
  history of American communism.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I had a very selfish reason for that,
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: which is I'm writing a biography of radical feminist Susan Brown Miller,
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: who was up to her ears in communist front groups in the 1950s.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't know that.
• 5:06
  I'm not surprised in that Betty Friedan got her start in
• 5:10
  communist circles if she
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_03: was not a communist herself.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think your book makes an incredibly important point,
• 5:16
  which is that there were different ways of being a communist in
• 5:20
  the American 20th century.
• 5:22
  But I want to begin with your title,
• 5:25
  Reds,
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  The Tragedy of American Communism.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Why did you choose that subtitle?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_03: Well, a number of reasons.
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  SPEAKER_03: One is I wanted to make it clear I wasn't writing a usable past.
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  SPEAKER_03: This is not a blueprint for a contemporary American left,
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  SPEAKER_03: although it's very much addressed to the contemporary American left.
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  But also because it's a tragedy in the sense that people with
• 5:50
  good intentions and
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  acting in good faith often wound up serving a cause that was
• 5:57
  acting in bad faith
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  SPEAKER_03: and that had very bad results.
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  It had very bad results in the United States and it had very
• 6:03
  bad results in
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: certainly in the Soviet Union.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_03: They should have known better.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: They were trying to do their best.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: But in the end,
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  they wound up betraying the very egalitarian and small-D
• 6:15
  democratic goals that they
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_03: set out to realize.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things you say in the introduction,
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Morris,
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  SPEAKER_00: is that if the reader can't handle contradiction in American history,
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: they need to put the book down and buy something else,
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: maybe a nice murder mystery or something.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about some of those contradictions because
• 6:37
  I found them very moving and they certainly lead to this
• 6:40
  question of tragedy,
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  SPEAKER_00: but they also lead to what politics can often be,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is holding two realities in your head at the same time.
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  What's one of the most important contradictions that you saw in
• 6:55
  this history?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_03: Well,
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  I think the very first and most important and central
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  contradiction is that the
• 7:01
  communist movement in the United States attracted people who
• 7:05
  were egalitarian idealists,
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  SPEAKER_03: but it bred authoritarian zealots.
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  SPEAKER_03: It converted people to authoritarianism who in another movement
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  SPEAKER_03: You know,
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  if they'd been born 20 years earlier and joined the Debsian
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  Socialist Party,
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  SPEAKER_03: the Socialist Party that ran Eugene Debs as its presidential candidate,
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  SPEAKER_03: or joined the industrial workers of the world,
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  SPEAKER_03: we'd look back on them now as worthy ancestors,
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  maybe people who were defeated by the weight of official
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  repression during the
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  SPEAKER_03: First World War,
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  SPEAKER_03: but people who aspired for goals that we could share,
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  SPEAKER_03: that had values we could share.
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  SPEAKER_03: And it's because they came along when they did,
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  SPEAKER_03: sort of after the bad news arrived,
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  SPEAKER_03: after 1917,
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_03: 1919,
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  after the old socialist party and the industrial workers of the
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  world were smashed.
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  SPEAKER_03: And the Soviet Union,
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  SPEAKER_03: which was distant,
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  SPEAKER_03: I mean,
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  more distant than we can imagine today and viewed through sort
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  of a gauzy screen at
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  SPEAKER_03: a distance.
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  Soviet Union seemed to embody the real hope for socialism in
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  their lifetime.
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  SPEAKER_03: They referred to it as the workers' homeland.
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  SPEAKER_03: I mean, they were Americans.
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  They considered themselves good Americans,
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  whether they were born abroad or native-born.
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  SPEAKER_03: But their other homeland,
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  SPEAKER_03: their dual loyalty,
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  SPEAKER_03: was also to what was a dystopian totalitarian state.
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  SPEAKER_03: And they were blinded to that.
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  SPEAKER_03: So that's the initial contradiction.
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  SPEAKER_03: I name five all told.
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  SPEAKER_03: I'll just refer to the final contradiction,
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  which is that these people believe they were seeing the world scientifically.
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  SPEAKER_03: They talked about scientific socialism,
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  SPEAKER_03: scientific Marxist Leninism,
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  that they were stepping away from illusion and sham and really
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  engaging with
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  SPEAKER_03: the world.
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  SPEAKER_03: And in fact,
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  SPEAKER_03: for those who stuck with the movement through all kinds of hardships,
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  SPEAKER_03: through repression,
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  SPEAKER_03: through enormous self-sacrifice,
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  SPEAKER_03: were actually operating on the blindest of faiths.
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  SPEAKER_03: And so when they finally did see what was happening in the Soviet Union,
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  SPEAKER_03: for many of them,
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  SPEAKER_03: that was in 1956,
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  SPEAKER_03: when then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev made a so-called secret speech
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  SPEAKER_03: to the Soviet Party Congress in Moscow denouncing Stalin as what he was,
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  SPEAKER_03: a bloody tyrant and murderer.
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  And that was leaked probably through official sources in the
• 9:29
  Soviet Union.
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  SPEAKER_03: They wanted this to get out.
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  SPEAKER_03: Leaked to the Western press.
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  SPEAKER_03: It was a tremendous disillusionment.
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  It just destroyed this entire artificial world that communists
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  had constructed and
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  SPEAKER_03: believed in,
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_03: genuinely believed in.
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  And for many of them,
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  it was a crushing blow from which they never really recovered.
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  SPEAKER_00: Obviously,
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  Bettina Apthecker has written about this and Vivian Gornick has
• 9:51
  written about this,
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  SPEAKER_00: that communism wasn't just a set of beliefs and a political project.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was a way of life.
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  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
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  SPEAKER_03: And Bettina's father,
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_03: Herbert Abtecker,
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  who is a pioneering historian of African-American history and
• 10:07
  slavery and slave rebellions,
• 10:09
  who joined the party when he was a graduate student at Columbia
• 10:13
  in the late 1930s
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  and remained a loyal member down until 1991 when he finally
• 10:18
  left in disillusionment.
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  SPEAKER_03: Bettina continually battled with him from the 1960s on.
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  SPEAKER_03: Bettina,
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  SPEAKER_03: of course,
• 10:24
  emerged as a prominent figure in her own right as while still
• 10:28
  an undergraduate at
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_03: the University of California during the free speech movement in 1964,
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  when she was one of the leaders of that movement and an open
• 10:37
  communist and accepted
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_03: as such.
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  SPEAKER_03: But she was kind of an illustration of an alternative kind of communism.
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  SPEAKER_03: That is to say, she was never very orthodox.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_03: She stuck with the party for a number of years.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_03: She was very important.
• 10:51
  She was a close personal friend of Angela Davis and was very
• 10:54
  important in Angela's
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_03: defense in the trials in the early 1970s.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: But she found herself increasingly at odds with that orthodox movement.
• 11:04
  worldview that her father represented defending the Soviet
• 11:07
  Union at every stage,
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_03: and also the Communist Party's sexual politics,
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: which were terrible.
• 11:13
  I mean,
• 11:13
  they were not only not supportive of the women's movement,
• 11:17
  they saw it as a distraction.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_03: They were opposed to the gay rights movement.
• 11:22
  And Bettina,
• 11:23
  and she's written a book about this,
• 11:24
  so I'm not revealing anything,
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_03: Bettina was coming out in the 1970s and 1980s,
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  SPEAKER_03: and she left 15 or 20 years before her father did.
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  SPEAKER_03: So that the Communist Party in this moment of the late 60s,
• 11:37
  early 70s could not adapt itself to the new political and
• 11:42
  cultural insurgencies
• 11:44
  emerging in that era in itself is a kind of damning indictment
• 11:49
  of the movement.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to talk about some of the political organizing later,
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: because on a certain level,
• 11:56
  one of the things that the Communist Party was able to do is
• 11:59
  push a certain kind of
• 12:00
  organizing in the 1920s and 30s that revives unionization in
• 12:05
  the United States.
• 12:06
  And in fact,
• 12:07
  sort of infuses the Democratic Party with a kind of progressive spirit.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: But
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Culturally,
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  did the party try to control the many artists and writers and
• 12:19
  actors and producers
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: that were inspired by its message?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: Well,
• 12:24
  there were periods of relative liberalization and relative
• 12:29
  authoritarianism within
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_03: the party's cultural sphere.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_03: So in the late 1930s,
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_03: when the party was most open to building bridges to New Deal America,
• 12:40
  it welcomed all kinds of people who weren't in full agreement
• 12:43
  with its program,
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: who would never join the Communist Party,
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_03: but were welcomed as fellow anti-fascists,
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_03: fellow supporters of the labor movement.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_03: And it enjoyed a certain cachet
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: in the literary world,
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_03: in Hollywood,
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_03: on Broadway and the like,
• 12:59
  which is why it could attract people of the caliber of Arthur
• 13:01
  Miller in the late
• 13:03
  30s when he was a student at the University of Michigan and in
• 13:05
  the 40s when he was
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_03: emerging as America's preeminent playwright.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: But when the party felt itself under attack or when tacking to the
• 13:14
  orthodoxy to follow the current Soviet line,
• 13:17
  it cracked down on its own writers.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_03: It said that writers,
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_03: first and foremost,
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: were not independent artists,
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_03: writers and musicians and whatever kind of artists,
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_03: that artistic merit was not the first value that artists should honor,
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_03: but rather it was serving the revolution,
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: serving the movement or whatever.
• 13:36
  A lot of people got kicked out of the party because they
• 13:40
  couldn't accept its cultural dictates.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And of course,
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: one of the things that Americans heard from the government,
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: from the FBI,
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: from anti-communists in general,
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: was that all of these communists,
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: and really in the end,
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: there weren't that many people who were party members,
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: but that all of these communists were taking direction from Moscow.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think our listeners would be interested to what extent that was true,
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: and was it more true in some periods than others?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_03: I mean,
• 14:12
  there were some periods when you wouldn't go to the bathroom
• 14:15
  with asking permission
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_03: of the commissars.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_03: But again,
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_03: in the late 1930s,
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_03: during the period of what was called the Popular Front,
• 14:22
  that is when the Soviet Union was seeking anti-fascist allies
• 14:26
  abroad for collective
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_03: security against Nazi Germany.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_03: And in the United States,
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: the Communist Party,
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_03: accordingly,
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_03: was trying to build bridges to the Roosevelt administration,
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_03: to liberals in general,
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: to anyone who would sign on on this one issue of anti-fascist.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_03: fascism, there was a great deal more latitude, room for experiment.
• 14:45
  And one of the things that happens in the 1930s that's
• 14:47
  interesting is that a new
• 14:49
  generation moves into the Communist Party through the Young
• 14:53
  Communist League,
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_03: which in itself in the 30s becomes a fairly significant organization.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: And these are,
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_03: unlike those who joined the party in the 20s,
• 15:02
  who tended to be from immigrant backgrounds themselves or in
• 15:07
  very tight-knit
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_03: immigrant communities,
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_03: non-assimilated immigrant communities,
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_03: Finns,
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: for example.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_03: who lived in isolated communities in Minnesota and Wisconsin and Oregon,
• 15:19
  were a large portion of the Communist Party membership Finnish
• 15:23
  Americans in the
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_03: 1920s and 1930s.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_03: Well,
• 15:26
  what happens in the 30s is that second generation Americans in
• 15:32
  their teens and
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_03: their early 20s,
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_03: that is to say the first native born generation to immigrant parents,
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_03: began to pour into the party.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_03: And in a curious way,
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_03: a surprising way,
• 15:43
  the Communist Party is a tool for their Americanization because
• 15:48
  it lifts them out
• 15:49
  of their insular immigrant communities on the Lower East Side
• 15:52
  or Brooklyn or whatever,
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: sends them off a
• 15:55
  often as organizers to Birmingham,
• 15:58
  Alabama or Minneapolis or San Francisco.
• 16:01
  It embeds them in the labor movement where they're dealing
• 16:05
  primarily with people
• 16:06
  who are not communists and have no sympathy for the larger
• 16:08
  communist program,
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_03: but nonetheless are strong unionists.
• 16:12
  That generation coming in under the relatively relaxed
• 16:16
  standards of the 1930s
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: tended to be a force for liberalization.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: Now, they followed the party line.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_03: And in 1939,
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: when Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler,
• 16:27
  which really gave Hitler the green light to invade Poland and
• 16:30
  Stalin to invade
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_03: Poland from the other side and divide the country up,
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: they snapped back to attention.
• 16:35
  But they still had those seeds of a different worldview,
• 16:40
  of a more open kind of politics.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_03: And in World War II, after the Nazis invaded Poland,
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_03: Soviet Union in late June of 1941,
• 16:49
  and Britain and the Soviet Union and the United States became
• 16:52
  part of the grand
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_03: alliance against Hitler's Germany.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: Again,
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: they embraced the liberalization,
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_03: the possibilities for reforming the movement from within.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_03: They were prepared to live with the old line sluggishly,
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_03: as one communist of that generation said.
• 17:07
  But they were so much happier when they could find an outlet
• 17:11
  for their talents and
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_03: for their understanding of America.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_03: So that's another of those contradictions.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_03: These people were not automatons.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: They were not robots.
• 17:19
  They continually bumped up against constraints of the party
• 17:23
  line and the Soviet line.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: Many of them left the party.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: One of the things about the Communist Party is it's a revolving door.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_03: It peaks in membership at 75 or 80,000 in 1939.
• 17:35
  But that's after tens of thousands more had joined,
• 17:39
  remained members for a few years and left.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_03: I mean,
• 17:41
  if everybody who joined the Communist Party stayed in the
• 17:44
  Communist Party,
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_03: you'd probably have a
• 17:45
  party of a half million but people joined and then they they
• 17:48
  left and even those
• 17:50
  who stayed had doubts which they you know kept quiet if they
• 17:54
  wanted to stay in the
• 17:55
  party but they held out this hope to the very bitter end until
• 17:59
  i was talking about 1956.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: in 1956
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: after the Khrushchev speech denouncing Stalin,
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_03: the reformists,
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_03: those who wanted to liberalize the party and strike an independent route,
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_03: independent of the Soviet Union,
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_03: were briefly in control.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_03: They controlled the major newspapers,
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: the People's World on the West Coast,
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_03: the Daily Worker on the East Coast,
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: and they controlled the New York State and California organizations,
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: party organizations,
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: which was the largest party organizations.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_03: And the hardliners seemed to be reduced to a minority.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: What happens is,
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_03: however,
• 18:33
  that their base is unstable and their thousands of supporters
• 18:38
  pour out of the party.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_03: At the start of 1956,
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_03: the Communist Party had 20,000 members,
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: and that's after enduring the worst of McCarthyism.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_03: By 1959, the Communist Party had maybe 3,000 members.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: And of those, a good proportion, maybe one in five, were FBI informers.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_03: The reformers were a significant force within the Communist Party,
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_03: within the movement,
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: but they were never able to realize their potential.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 19:06
  one of the things I became interested in when I was researching
• 19:09
  this period of
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Susan Brownmiller's life,
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: which is between 1952 and 1961,
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: where she passes through a number of these groups,
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: including an institution called the Jefferson School of Social Science,
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: which is where Herbert Apthecker is teaching,
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: and she works with Apthecker,
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: and that's how she gets involved with the civil rights movement.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: But that there are a number of organizations that are...
• 19:35
  wooing people who either are communist or have been in these
• 19:39
  communist adjacent organizations.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's Fair Play for Cuba.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's a youth organization called Advance.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're all of these different organizations.
• 19:48
  And one of the things I thought about a lot is how resilient
• 19:54
  communism is as a philosophy,
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: if not perhaps a structure or a party.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's an interesting question.
• 20:02
  What I have come to think of is the Leninist temptation has a
• 20:06
  kind of eternal
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: recurrence on the American left.
• 20:09
  And I say that because I lived through the late 1960s as a
• 20:14
  student activist.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: I went off to college in the
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_03: Fall of 1968 promptly joined SDS,
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: saw SDS collapse a year later with a number of small sectarian groups who
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_03: nonetheless rose to the leadership of SDS,
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_03: Maoists of various descriptions and others.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_03: none of whom were followers of the Communist Party per se,
• 20:35
  but all of whom succumbed to this temptation to think that they
• 20:39
  could really be the
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: masters of history,
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_03: that they could master this science,
• 20:44
  that if you read Lenin and you read Stalin and you read Mao and
• 20:47
  you just followed
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_03: their dictates,
• 20:49
  that somehow you were going to break out of the isolation of
• 20:54
  the American left,
• 20:55
  that you were going to ally yourself with the world's
• 20:58
  proletariat and rising
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_03: colonial nations in their national liberation struggles.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_03: And that in the United States,
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_03: you would be seen in time as,
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 21:08
  representing the real working class interest and workers would
• 21:12
  flock to your banners.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_03: And it didn't happen.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_03: I mean,
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_03: there was a half dozen,
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_03: full half dozen new communist parties of various stripes,
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_03: the Revolutionary Communist Party,
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_03: the Communist Party,
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_03: Marxist-Leninist,
• 21:24
  all of which assembled 500 or 1,000 members and all of which
• 21:27
  tottered off into
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_03: historical irrelevance.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: I regret to say,
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: this is maybe going to be controversial,
• 21:35
  that the same thing is happening within Democratic Socialists
• 21:38
  of America at the moment,
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_03: an organization I helped found
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_03: 40-odd years ago.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: I was a founding member in 1982.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_03: And that 40-odd years,
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_03: or close to that,
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_03: was a fairly small but genuinely democratic socialist organization.
• 21:54
  And that in a more recent last couple of years has grown tremendously,
• 21:58
  which is great.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_03: But a lot of people looked at it who had been in part of small sectarian
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_03: organizations and said,
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_03: why do you rob banks?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_03: That's where the money is.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_03: Why don't we join DSA?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_03: That's where the members are.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_03: And at the present moment,
• 22:12
  a kind of coalition of Leninists of various descriptions in
• 22:17
  caucuses that call
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_03: themselves things like Red Star are the controlling faction within DSA,
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_03: which would have DSA's founding chairman,
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_03: Michael Harrington,
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: and his co-chair, Barbara Ehrenreich, rolling over in their graves.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_03: So there is this kind of eternal temptation.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_03: I mean,
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_03: I felt it back when I was 18 and,
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 22:38
  thought I could be a master of the universe or a master of the
• 22:41
  proletariat or whatever,
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: and fortunately pass through that stage.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_03: And,
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_03: most of the,
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_03: I think,
• 22:47
  DSA members who are tempted by that now will pass through that
• 22:51
  stage in a year or a
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_03: couple of years.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_03: Whether DSA survives that as, you know...
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_03: SDS did not is, to my mind, an open question.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_03: So,
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_03: yeah,
• 23:01
  it's very seductive to sit down and read these pamphlets
• 23:05
  written in 1902 by Lenin
• 23:07
  that argue with such stern certainty about if you only form
• 23:12
  this organization of
• 23:13
  professional revolutionaries who are willing to devote the
• 23:16
  whole of their lives to
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_03: the revolutionary cause,
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_03: that's the formula for success.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_03: Look what happened in 1917.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_03: Unfortunately,
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_03: It hasn't worked since,
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_03: and it didn't work to an outcome that anyone,
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 23:28
  looking objectively at the history of the Soviet Union would
• 23:31
  really want for the
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_03: United States.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: I taught a course on incarceration a few years back,
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: and one of the first essays in the course was one by Lenin saying,
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: after the revolution,
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: the first thing we're going to need is a lot of prisons.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: And my students were shocked because,
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: of course,
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: they were all,
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: as people should be,
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: anti-incarceration.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: But putting those two things together was sort of one of the kinds of
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: contradictions you're talking about.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: I also want to caution listeners.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: While history does not repeat itself,
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: and Morris and I probably have heard that from generations of students,
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: these comparisons are very useful.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the comparisons I'm thinking of at this point,
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Morris,
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: is that the Communist Party was very attractive to black intellectuals.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: And currently DSA is very attractive to intellectuals of color.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: What is it that an organization like this,
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: like the Communist Party,
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: like DSA,
• 24:32
  what is there about that vision that promises something that
• 24:36
  other kinds of
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: politics don't?
• 24:38
  sure I fully accept the premise about DSA being attractive to
• 24:43
  intellectuals of color.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure there are some.
• 24:46
  The Communist Party in its time had such figures as Richard
• 24:50
  Wright and Langston Hughes,
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_03: Paul Robeson,
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_03: W.E.B.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_03: Du Bois.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_03: At one point or another, not all at the same time, join or
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_03: being very supportive.
• 25:00
  The Communist Party deserves credit for being the first
• 25:04
  significant organization on
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_03: the left to identify racism as a major concern.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_03: I mean,
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_03: Eugene Debs would say,
• 25:13
  we're against Jim Crow and we want African Americans to be able
• 25:17
  to vote and join unions.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_03: But he would also say, we're appealing to them as a class.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_03: We're appealing to them as part of the working class.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_03: And the Communist Party,
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: and not all at once,
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_03: but through trial and error,
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_03: came to a different position by the early 1930s,
• 25:30
  which is the oppression of African-Americans in the United
• 25:33
  States is a struggle of
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_03: equal importance to the struggle for proletarian revolution.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_03: The two go hand in hand.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_03: So giving credit where it's due,
• 25:45
  I think that suggests why a generation of black intellectuals
• 25:50
  were so strongly
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: attracted to it.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_03: Later on,
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_03: Lorraine Hansberry,
• 25:55
  who was a student at the University of Wisconsin and went on to
• 25:58
  become another
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_03: famous playwright,
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_03: author of Raisin in the Sun,
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_03: was attracted to the Communist Party,
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: although she left also by the mid-50s,
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_03: which may have had something to do with her own sexual identity.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_03: So the party deserved credit.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_03: For that,
• 26:16
  Herbert Apteker and other historians associated with the party
• 26:20
  taught black history
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_03: at a time when,
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_03: you went to Columbia graduate school,
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_03: not something you'd encounter.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_03: So they helped bring it into the mainstream.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_03: Eugene Genovese,
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: who was my graduate school mentor,
• 26:34
  was a communist when he was at Brooklyn College in the late 40s
• 26:38
  and early 1950s,
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: a major figure.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_03: in the history of American slavery.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: Other historians,
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_03: David Montgomery,
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: Herbert Gutman,
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: who were labor historians,
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: but also wrote about black workers,
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_03: helped legitimize and popularize that history.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: So that's an important part of the story, too.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_03: But tellingly, all of those guys
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_03: I think everybody I mentioned was a guy, left the party.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_03: Some of them as teenagers,
• 27:04
  some of them not long after found it inadequate as a practical
• 27:09
  political proposition,
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: even if they agreed with it intellectually.
• 27:13
  And it's almost as if the party became a place for some people
• 27:17
  where they were able
• 27:18
  to develop an intellectual vocation or a political position and
• 27:24
  then had to take it
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: somewhere else to really make it happen.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: That is true.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the party had a broad cultural apparatus.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_03: It had Weekly Literary Magazine, The New Masses.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_03: It had the Jefferson School.
• 27:37
  It had schools actually across the country in Chicago and San
• 27:40
  Francisco and Los
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: Angeles and elsewhere.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_03: It really created a kind of alternative...
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: counter-establishment, counter-intellectual establishment, as it were.
• 27:50
  And you could live your own,
• 27:52
  your whole life within that world and have some impact.
• 27:56
  That was both a strength and a weakness because in a period
• 27:59
  when a lot of intellectuals,
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_03: especially intellectuals,
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_03: Jewish background could not be hired in
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: major universities.
• 28:06
  They found another way to carry out their intellectual ambitions,
• 28:11
  but it also cut them off.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_03: It both created an institutional base,
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_03: which was good,
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_03: created a counterculture,
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_03: which was good,
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_03: but it kind of built a castle,
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_03: an intellectual castle with a moat around it,
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: which very few outsiders would venture across.
• 28:26
  Morris,
• 28:26
  there's so many great people in this book and so many vivid individuals.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is probably an unfair question, but who's your favorite?
• 28:36
  Dorothy Healy,
• 28:37
  who I also collaborated with on an earlier book,
• 28:41
  California Red.
• 28:42
  Her mother was a charter member of the Communist Party in Denver,
• 28:45
  then they moved to California.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_03: Dorothy was five when the Communist Party was founded.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_03: But she came of age as a teenager in the early 1930s.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_03: She was part of that YCL generation,
• 28:56
  that first generation native born who came of age in the Great
• 29:01
  Depression and who
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: were my primary source
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_03: when I was beginning to research this question,
• 29:07
  which I did in graduate school at the University of Rochester
• 29:10
  in the late 1970s.
• 29:12
  And I had the great good fortune of being able to speak to
• 29:17
  several score veterans
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_03: of the movement,
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_03: most of them having left in 1956 or a few years thereafter.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_03: A few of them still in the party,
• 29:26
  but dissidents and who were very thoughtful and self-critical
• 29:32
  and eager to speak to me,
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_03: which if I started my research 10 years earlier,
• 29:37
  when the last vestiges of McCarthyism were still very much
• 29:40
  being felt in American
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_03: culture and legally.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think they would have been so open,
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_03: but they opened up to me,
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_03: I think in part because,
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: here I was this 20-something historian and writing my first book.
• 29:53
  And I think they thought of it as a way of getting their story
• 29:57
  out to a broader perspective.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_03: readership.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_03: So Dorothy was one of those.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_03: And she joined the YCL,
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_03: went off as a teenager,
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_03: 17 years old,
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_03: to organize farm workers in the Imperial Valley in California,
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_03: nearly all Mexican farm workers at that point,
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_03: was arrested for leading a strike,
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_03: spent six months in jail before she turned 20,
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_03: became the leader of the Los Angeles Communist Party some years later,
• 30:22
  and oversaw the growth of the Los Angeles Communist Party from
• 30:26
  a few hundred
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_03: members when she joined.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_03: to 5,000 members by the late 1940s.
• 30:32
  One of the things that was interesting that she told me was
• 30:36
  that in the very
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_03: beginning of the Red Scare,
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_03: after the Second World War,
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_03: the Communist Party was still growing.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_03: Communist Party in 1945 in Los Angeles had
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_03: 3,000 members.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_03: By 1948, the Communist Party in Los Angeles had 5,000 members.
• 30:50
  And not only that,
• 30:52
  it had black members,
• 30:53
  it had Mexican members,
• 30:55
  it had 500.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_03: That was a real achievement.
• 30:57
  And it showed dedication and political skills that that YCL
• 31:02
  generation that Dorothy
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_03: was a part of could bring to it.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_03: Unfortunately,
• 31:06
  as the party turned inward in a time of repression and a time
• 31:11
  of heightened
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_03: tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States,
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_03: when everybody expected a third world war,
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_03: it lost that.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_03: Membership shrunk.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_03: The ties with the people outside the party were broken.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_03: Dorothy herself was indicted under the Smith Act,
• 31:26
  which was a law that made it illegal to teach the desirability
• 31:32
  of advocating the
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_03: overthrow
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_03: of the government.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't overthrowing the government.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't like January 6th.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_03: She didn't ever storm the Capitol,
• 31:41
  but she was part of a conspiracy to teach the desirability of
• 31:44
  doing that sometime
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_03: in the undefined future.
• 31:47
  And so she and 150 other top communists tried and many of them
• 31:51
  sentenced to five
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: years in prison.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_03: Some of them served longer than that.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_03: Dorothy's case went all the way to the Supreme Court.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_03: And finally,
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_03: fortunately for her,
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_03: the court was turning in a more liberal direction under Earl Warren.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so her case was dismissed in 1956.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_03: But she'd lived for many years under that threat.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_03: So she was prepared to make those sacrifices.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_03: In the end, she had to leave the party herself.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: She didn't leave in 56.
• 32:17
  She stepped down from leadership in 1968 when the Soviet Union
• 32:22
  invaded Czechoslovakia.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_03: She was a strong supporter of the Czech Communist Party.
• 32:27
  She'd been in Prague in 1967 and admired the Czechs as communists,
• 32:31
  as open-minded.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: They wanted to build socialism with a human face.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_03: And finally, in 1968, she decided she couldn't carry on.
• 32:40
  Someone with that much dedication and that much self-sacrifice
• 32:44
  and that thoughtful,
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_03: I think,
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_03: stayed in a little too long,
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_03: like 10 or 20 years too long.
• 32:49
  But in the end,
• 32:50
  you know,
• 32:51
  realized that there was no transforming the movement.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_03: So for me, she's really emblematic of that whole YCL generation.
• 32:59
  And of course,
• 33:00
  there are all these moments in the book and Hungary is one of them.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: The Khrushchev revelations is another.
• 33:05
  The non-aggression pact in 1939 is another in which party
• 33:10
  members realize that they
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: are actually totally out of touch with what's going on in Moscow.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_03: Here's another example.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_03: I hadn't known much about before I wrote the book,
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_03: but a labor journalist,
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_03: a woman named Mary Heaton Vorce,
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_03: who emerges as a kind of a hero of the book for one reason,
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_03: because she kept a diary and she confided her real feelings to the diary.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: She had been a pre-war sort of bohemian feminist,
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_03: suffragist,
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_03: socialist writer in Greenwich Village.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_03: In 1912, she went to cover the
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_03: IWW,
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: Industrial Workers of the World,
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: strike in Lawrence Textile Mills,
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_03: the famous Bread and Roses strike.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: She was at virtually every important major strike.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_03: It seemed between 1912 and 1937, the Flint sit-down strike.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: And she initially...
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_03: hated the Communist Party.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_03: Her lover,
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_03: Robert Minor,
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_03: who had been an anarchist,
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_03: who met Lenin,
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_03: went to Moscow in 1920,
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: initially was repelled by the Soviet authoritarianism,
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_03: switched and became by 1921 a major leader of the Communist Party,
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_03: which would remain down to the 1940s.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_03: And Mary Heaton Vorst was appalled by that.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_03: But sometime in the mid-20s,
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_03: she changed her mind because this is where the action seemed to be.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_03: And so she secretly joined the Communist Party in that year.
• 34:33
  But she kept bumping up against aspects of the movement and
• 34:38
  aspects of the Soviet
• 34:39
  Union that she found very difficult to accept in 1931 when
• 34:43
  Soviet collectivization began.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_03: of agriculture was going on and the so-called kulaks,
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: that is the rich peasants,
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_03: which meant they,
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_03: in Russian terms,
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_03: they owned an acre or two of land,
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: were being driven from the land,
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_03: often executed,
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_03: vilified.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_03: She wrote in her diary,
• 35:01
  I find myself in a very bourgeois state of mind when it comes
• 35:06
  to the kulaks.
• 35:08
  What difference does it make which class rules if the sum of
• 35:13
  injustice remains unchanged?
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_03: And that's a very good question.
• 35:17
  It wasn't a good enough question or she didn't have a good
• 35:19
  enough answer for it to
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_03: quit the Communist Party at that point.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_03: But a few months later,
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_03: she wrote in her diary,
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_03: I remain a communist,
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_03: a small C communist,
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_03: as she wrote it,
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_03: because I can't see anything else to be.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_03: And this is the height of the Great Depression.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_03: That makes sense.
• 35:35
  But I'm a small C communist who hates,
• 35:38
  in large CCs,
• 35:40
  communists and communism.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_03: So that gets to the tragic nature of this,
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_03: that she was drawn to the goals of the movement,
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_03: its aspirations to build an equal society,
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_03: its values.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_03: And yet at the same time,
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_03: she was repelled by so many aspects of the movement,
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_03: both here and abroad.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's it for today's show.
• 36:21
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• 36:22
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• 36:35
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• 37:08
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• 37:10
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• 37:17
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