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The Cold War Debate Continues a Traditionalist View of Historical Survey Article The Cold War Debate Continues Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/2/1/76/695185/15203970051032381.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 A Traditionalist View of Historical Writing on Domestic Communism and Anti-Communism ✣ John Earl Haynes The domestic side of the Cold War has long been the subject of contentious scholarly debate. The most sensitive point of disagreement has been the history of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the inextricably linked question of domestic anti-Communism. The strong emotions that are still provoked by these issues were apparent in an October 1998 editorial in The New York Times, which warned that America should “beware the rehabilitation of Joseph McCarthy.” The editorial, entitled “Revisionist McCarthyism,” de- nounced “a number of American scholars”—without mentioning names—who, “armed with audacity and new archival information, . would like to rewrite the historical verdict on Senator McCarthy and McCarthyism.”1 In reality, the likely targets of the editorial had made no attempt to rewrite the verdict on McCarthy. In a joint response, Ronald Radosh, Harvey Klehr, and this author defended traditionalist scholars and emphasized that the new evidence on the CPUSA and espionage offered no vindication of McCarthy: In The Secret World of American Communism, two of us stated that “[i]n McCarthy’s hands, anticommunism was a partisan weapon used to implicate the New Deal, liberals, and the Democratic Party in treason. Using evidence that was exaggerated, distorted, and in some cases utterly false, [McCarthy] accused hundreds of individuals of Communist activity, recklessly mixing the innocent with the assuredly guilty when it served his political purposes.” And, in The Amerasia Spy Case, two of us made the point that “precisely be- cause Senator McCarthy was reckless and made false charges, actual Com- 1. “Revisionist McCarthyism,” The New York Times, 23 October 1998, p. A22. Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 2, No.1, Winter 2000, pp. 76–115 © 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 76 Historical Writing on Communism and Anti-Communism munists who engaged in and contemplated espionage sought to claim the status of victims.”2 Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/2/1/76/695185/15203970051032381.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 A year after the editorial appeared, The New York Times published a lengthy essay by Jacob Weisberg, entitled “Cold War without End,” which argued that it was time for the debate about Communism in America to come to a halt. The essay appeared as a cover story in the newspaper’s Sunday magazine section, which rarely features articles of any length about scholarly debates. Weisberg’s tone was world-weary and ironic; he suggested that fur- ther discussion of the subject was pointless. The whole issue, he implied, is now chiefly of interest only to Jews concerned about “acceptance and assimi- lation” and certain persons with “unresolved feelings of personal betrayal” as well as “the Oedipal conflicts of red-diaper babies,” all of whom have failed to “process the news that the Cold War is over.”3 There is no doubt that the Cold War has ended. The Soviet Union is no more, and Communists and Communism, although not gone, are fast disap- pearing. But historical debates over Communism and the Cold War are in many ways more lively and interesting now than ever before. The twentieth century saw war, revolution, mass murder, human butchery, terror, and cruelty on an extraordinary scale. Making historical sense of these appalling phenomena will be a major preoccupation for scholars. Communism and anti-Communism played central roles in that ghastly century. Frantic calls to “move on,” voiced by those who fear to upset the existing academic consensus,4 and denuncia- tions of historians who are “too zealous in setting the record straight,”5 likely will be ignored. Debates over Communism will continue well into the twenty- first century and, as scholars of the French Revolution can attest, will remain a topic of intense controversy for many years to come. This essay will review the immense historiography on the subject of Com- munism and anti-Communism in the United States that developed during the Cold War and continues to this day. The 40 years that followed the founding of the CPUSA in 1919 produced much polemical and journalistic writing, 2. Ronald Radosh, John Earl Haynes, and Harvey Klehr, “Spy Stories: The Times vs. History,” The New Republic, 16 November 1998, pp. 15–16. The latter reference is to Harvey Klehr and Ronald Radosh, The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism (Chapel Hill: University of North Caro- lina Press, 1996). A year later, a book appeared that actually came close to matching the claimed target of the Times’s ire, Arthur Herman’s Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator (New York: The Free Press, 1999), the first ever full-scale schol- arly defense, albeit qualified, of McCarthy. 3. Jacob Weisberg, “Cold War without End,” The New York Times Sunday Magazine, 28 Novem- ber 1999, pp. 116–123, 155–158. 4. Anna Kasten Nelson, “Illuminating the Twilight Struggle: New Interpretations of the Cold War,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 25 June 1999, p. B6. 5. David Oshinsky, “McCarthy, Still Unredeemable,” New York Times, 7 November 1998, p. A20. 77 Haynes some of high quality and enduring value, but little scholarly history. Scholarly examinations began to appear in the late 1950s and increased slowly in num- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/2/1/76/695185/15203970051032381.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 ber until the late 1970s, when interest in the subject blossomed. The 1987 compendium on Communism and Anti-Communism in the United States: An Annotated Guide to Historical Writings lists hundreds of books, articles, and dissertations—2,087 entries in all. If a new edition were prepared today, it would contain twice as many citations.6 In a literature this vast, generaliza- tions are subject to numerous qualifications and exceptions. That caveat stated, one can discern four broad waves of scholarship: (1) the 1950s to the mid-1960s; (2) the late 1960s to the mid-1970s; (3) the late 1970s to the early 1990s; and (4) the period following the collapse of Soviet Communism. The First Wave The late 1950s and early 1960s produced the first substantial scholarly stud- ies of the CPUSA. The ten books of the “Communism in American Life” se- ries, commissioned by the Fund for the Republic, embodied both the strengths and the weaknesses of this initial group.7 The books broke new ground, but, like all pioneering efforts, they contained serious gaps and flaws. For example, the lack of detailed monographic studies of particular incidents and controversies greatly handicapped Robert W. Iversen’s The Communists and the Schools. Iversen tried to write a synthesis when there was no body of scholarship to synthesize. Similar problems arose from the unavailability of primary documents. David Shannon’s The Decline of Ameri- can Communism: A History of the Communist Party of the United States Since 1945, relied largely on published sources because of the absence of archival materials for post–World War II events. 6. John Earl Haynes, Communism and Anti-Communism in the United States: An Annotated Guide to Historical Writings (New York: Garland, 1987). Citations since 1987 can be found in the author’s quarterly “Writings on the History of American Communism” in the Newsletter of the His- torians of American Communism, a publication that has appeared continuously since 1982. 7. Theodore Draper, The Roots of American Communism (New York: Viking Press, 1957); Daniel Aaron, Writers on the Left: Episodes in American Literary Communism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1959); Robert W. Iversen, The Communists and the Schools (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1959); David Shannon, The Decline of American Communism: A History of the Commu- nist Party of the United States Since 1945 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1959); Theodore Draper, American Communism and Soviet Russia: The Formative Period (New York: Viking Press, 1960); Clinton Rossiter, Marxism: The View from America (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1960); Ralph L. Roy, Communism and the Churches (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1960); Nathan Glazer, The Social Basis of American Communism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1961); Frank S. Meyer, The Molding of Communists: The Training of the Communist Cadre (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1961); and Earl Latham, The Communist Controversy in Washing- ton: From the New Deal to McCarthy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966). 78 Historical Writing on Communism and Anti-Communism Although many books from this era have become dated, several con- tinue to be of value. Daniel Aaron’s Writers on the Left remains a basic text Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/2/1/76/695185/15203970051032381.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 on the influence of Communism on literature, although there are now sev- eral competing accounts. Irving Howe’s and Lewis Coser’s The American Communist Party: A Critical History (published at this time, though not as part of the Communism in American Life series), was until recently the best and most comprehensive one-volume history of the CPUSA. It is still worth consulting. Two books from the first wave, however, remain without peer. Theodore Draper’s The Roots of American Communism and his American Communism and Soviet Russia: The Formative Period tell the story of the party up to 1929. Archival resources were more readily available for these early years, and Draper personally collected a substantial number of primary documents.
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