The Red Decade

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The Red Decade by Eugene Lyons

The publication of this book happened at a historically fascinating time. The book was published in 1941, shortly after Hitler's surprise attack on Communist Russia caused yet another reversal of Russian Communist policy and, consequently, American Communist policy. The net result is that the American Communist dalliance with Nazis and “America First” is fresh in author Eugene Lyon's mind, and, so, we get to see it without the shading of the subsequent alliance of the democracies and Stalin.

Eugene Lyon was a leftwing journalist assigned to Moscow from approximately 1930 to 1935. He seems to have been initially been well-disposed to Communism, but while in Russia he found that he could not ignore the cruelty and oppression that Communists were inflicting on Russia as well as other American journalists. When he returned to America, he wrote “Assignment in Utopia,” revealing the problems of Communism and earning himself the title of “redbaiter. He looked down on his fellow journalists who continued to act as Communism's public relation agents.

This is a lengthy book that follows the back and forth of the many persons who associated themselves with Communism. The significance of a lot of this name-dropping is lost to time, but some names stand out. For example, Dashiel Hammett, Paul Robeson, Dorothy Parker and some other members of the Algonquin Round Table show up repeatedly as reliable fronts for Communist petitions. I was personally interested in seeing Will Geer - Grandpa Walton - being outed as a Communist.

The thesis of the book is that the policies and leadership of the American Communist Party were determined in Moscow to comply with the perceived needs of Russian Communism at any particular moment. The result is that American Communists went through totally incoherent policy changes that were antithetical to the interests of American Communism. Lyons traces American Communism from the founding of the Comintern in 1919 through the “Red Decade” of the 1930s through five periods.

The first period involved the traditional imagery of Communists as radicals, complete with contempt for capitalism and wealth, and the wearing of leather jackets, etc. (“This was the First Period of the Comintern-shrilly revolutionary, conspiratorial and glorying in outlawry, appealing in all countries to genuine social rebels and to bold romantics.”)

The Second period involved a movement toward legality. According to Lyons: “This was the Second Period in the career of the Comintern and hence of its every extension abroad, roughly from 1921 to 1928. Wherever possible the Communist Parties retreated from plotting to mild propaganda within the laws of their respective countries. In many countries, among them the United States, the parties climbed out of romantic subcellars to the prosaic sidewalks of legality.”

The Third Period began in 1928 with Stalin's complete usurpation of power. The American Communist Party returned to talking about immediate revolution and a revolutionary ethos. “Such was the distemper of the fabulous Third Period. Its propaganda bristled with mouth-filling and soul-stirring talk of “ideological subjugation,” “opportunist deviations,” “chauvinistic demagogery,” “true Bolshevik intolerance,” “Leninist firmness,” “renegade theatricalism,” “social fascist betrayal.” The comrades wore caps and leather jackets and unshaven faces. The girls in the movement disdained lipstick and cut their hair short and lived demonstratively with Negroes.”

Along with this was anti-Americanism and Pro-Sovietism:

“But after a fine start the Councils began to lose strength. Droves of the unemployed were scared off by the Third Period slogans foisted on them: “Down with Yankee imperialism! Defend the Soviet Union! For a Soviet America!” At the same time a rival organization began to make great strides. It was the Workers Alliance, sponsored by the Socialist Party and liberal elements, and headed by a young, vigorous and capable socialist, David Lasser. The communists realized that their salvation lay in a merger. They were convinced, and rightly so, that once an amalgamation was achieved, they would control it. Besides, the Third Period was drawing to a close—symptoms of Moscow's abandonment of the “revolutionary upsurge” were multiplying.”

This period gave way to the American period where American Communists attempted to persuade Americans that Communism was as American as apple pie. Communist publications feature Lincoln and Lenin. This period was the period of the “popular front,” where Communists tried to appease the democracies in the interest of finding “collective security” against the threat of Hitler. As Lyons observes:

“Only when Hitler rejected the “very good relations,” preferring to set himself up temporarily as Europe's policeman against Bolshevism, did Moscow veer gloomily to its “democratic” anti-fascist line of recent memory. The epoch of People's Fronts, Popular Fronts, collective security and elaborate pseudo-democratic mummery, the Fourth Period, was thus virtually forced upon the Communist International by the German Führer.”

The Fifth Period was eventuated by Stalin's pact with Hitler. Overnight the Communists went from advocating attacking Hitler to advocating that the democracies stay home and leave Hitler alone.

“The Fourth Period came to an abrupt end in August, 1939, with the Soviet-Nazi Pact. Its sudden death, like its slow birth, had nothing to do with conditions in America or any other non-Soviet country. On the contrary, the world was never riper for a real democratic united front than at the moment when that front was kicked over by a Russian boot. The whole fantastic tale makes sense only in relation to the national interests of Russia. The history of Bolshevism in America makes sense only as a shifting shadow thrown on the screen of American life by a far-off dictatorship.
The Fifth Period, after the pact, unfolded smoothly enough for twenty-two months—until it was smashed on June 22, 1941, by the treachery of the Berlin partner. While it lasted, the Comintern swung back to world revolutionary pretensions and slogans, utilized primarily in the service of the very forces it had presumably been fighting against in the preceding period.”

A lot of attention has been spent on American conservatives and Republicans who were isolationists and “American Firsters,” but between September 1939 and June 1941, but consigned to the memory hole is the fact that the American Communists were leading isolationists:

“Not until two weeks later did the few writers and the mass of pseudo-writers who took part in this ill-fated congress realize that history was playing a nasty practical joke on them. Ignoring the “capitalistic lies” about Comrade Hitler's aggressive intentions against Führer Stalin, the muddled literati went all-out in support of Moscow's “peace” policy for the U.S.A. They passed resolutions condemning our “war mongering” aid to Hitler's victims, supporting outlaw strikers in our defense plants and glorifying Stalin's genius in keeping out of the unsavory imperialist squabble. They indicated their adherence to the “peace vigil” picket line maintained by the American Peace Mobilization around the White House. An entire session was given over to the memory of Randolph Bourne, who opposed American participation in the first World War and Theodore Dreiser was honored with a Randolph Bourne citation as the current embodiment of Left isolationism.”

All that changed precisely on June 22, 1941:

“The national organization especially created to promote the strictest isolationism and non-intervention, the American Peace Mobilization, called off its “peace vigil” at the White House and announced its support of aid to Britain. The whole communist “peace front”—until the night of June 22 so loud and busy and crowded—was soon silent and deserted, except for the faint wailing of honest pacifists trampled in the ignominious retreat of the comrades from fake-isolationism.”

Lyons also documents the “Red Terror” whereby the Communists would blacklist any writer who fell outside the pale:

“It was the price men of talent paid for refusal to play the Stalinist game. The price could not deter a Farrell or a Dos Passos. It did keep scores of lesser literati in line. The one word “GREATNESS” headed a review of a book by John Dos Passos in August, 1936. His skill, his social-mindedness and human qualities were constantly extolled in the communist and liberal press. Then Dos Passos, too, went to Spain. He was horrified by the operations of the Stalinist camarilla in and behind the Loyalist lines, and he said so. The much-reiterated verdict on him was thereupon reversed. Comrade Gold was the trigger man in a column denouncing not merely Dos Passos' politics but his art.”

Of course, it wasn't just Dos Passos, it was every writer or public intellectual who moved in Leftwing circles:

“The same ugly labels were plastered on Sam Baron, a well-known socialist who returned from Loyalist Spain critical of the dictatorial ruthlessness of the communists. A veteran of the Russian adventure in Spain sat in my office. He was distressed nearly to hysteria. “If I come out and tell what I really think about the Spanish affair,” he said, “I'll be called a traitor, a fascist, a spy. I'll be shunned by my friends and avoided even by some members of my own family.” At that time he was still making speeches for a Spanish aid committee under Muscovite control.”

Likewise, as is the case today, trendy people embraced trendy causes. “To merge yourself with Stalinism, therefore, was decidedly not a form of self-abnegation. It was a species of social climbing. In California at that time it meant the inside track in local cocktail society as well as government, labor, the New Deal. The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League claimed 4,000 members.”

This is a good primary historical source. The special utility of texts written at the time is that they haven't been subjected to the process of revision to fit the conventional wisdom that arises after the fact. Consequently, the information is often fresher and more reliable than the books written long after the fact.