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TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century
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TIME, Almanac of the 20th Century.ISO
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1930
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1994-02-27
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<text>
<title>
(1930s) Popular Front
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1930s Highlights
</history>
<link 07844>
<link 00015>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
Popular Front
</hdr>
<body>
<p> [In the 1930s, the prevailing attitude of cynicism about
overseas involvements after the disaster of World War I and the
resulting pacifism was coupled with increasing insecurity as the
Depression swept through America, upsetting established
attitudes and leaving many with a feeling of disillusion and
loss of nerve. In the search for solutions to seemingly
overwhelming problems, it became increasingly plausible to
include radical, even revolutionary ideas. These attitudes were
both fostered and exploited by the U.S. Communist Party, which
was able to attract thousands of new members and fellow
travelers, especially among the college youth and intellectuals
consciously or unconsciously rebelling against convention.
</p>
<p> In the latter half of the decade, the C.P. was greatly aided
by a twist in the Moscow-dictated party line that called for
support of the New Deal and organized labor, and for a Popular
Front against fascism and for peace. The 1936 Communist Party
nominating convention provided a forum for Popular Front
sentiment.]
</p>
<p>(July 9, 1936)
</p>
<p> The real hero of the convention was not present. He was John
Llewellyn Lewis, no Communist.
</p>
<p> Party Secretary Earl Browder gave him credit for progressive
planks in the Democratic platform. Speaker after speaker urged
Communists to join him in his fight for industrial unionism.
Thunderous cheers greeted every prediction of a nationwide wave
of strikes to be touched off by a great steel strike under John
L. Lewis' leadership as he moved to organize that industry.
</p>
<p> Red cheers for John L. Lewis stemmed from the major shift in
Communist policy decided at the Seventh World Congress of the
Third International in Moscow last summer. Since the U.S. Reds
have soft-pedaled talk of the Communist revolution, worked for
a United Front with left-wing Socialists, non-Communist trade
unionists and farmers. This year, it was said last week, the
Party's members (51,000) would vote the national Communist
ticket, support Farmer-Labor candidates in local and
congressional elections. Their goal was to help form a national
Farmer-Labor party in 1940. To achieve that, urged Secretary
Browder, comrades must drop their Communist jargon, learn to
speak the language of the U.S. workingman, shape their program
to his ways of thinking. "Ours is not program of revolutionary
overthrow of capitalism," declared he in an astonishing Red
rightabout. "It can be realized within the present American form
of government."
</p>
<p> [Within two years, the Communists had 90,000 members, many
times that number of sympathizers and fellow travelers and a new
respectability. But when, at decade's end, the nefarious pact
between Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany called for 180-degree
change of policy, U.S. Communists were revealed as being
committed, not to democracy and anti-racism, but to the party
line, wherever it led.
</p>
<p> Q: Is there any possibility as has been often suggested, of
the Soviet Union entering into an agreement with Germany?
</p>
<p> A:...There is about as much chance of such an agreement as of
Earl Browder being elected president of the American Chamber of
Commerce.]
</p>
<p>(September 4, 1939)
</p>
<p> So spake Earl Browder, general secretary of the Communist
Party in the U.S., when he was questioned at the Institute of
Public Affairs in Charlottesville, Va. last July 5. Comrade
Browder up to last week's end had not been elevated by the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce. That the U.S.S.R. and Nazi Germany had made
up, a shaken world knew.
</p>
<p> Befuddled, appalled, embarrassed were Earl Browder and his
U.S. Comrades. The Party press went first into a silence, then
into a great writhing. Back to Manhattan from vacation hastened
Comrade Browder to set the capitalist press aright in his
ninth-floor eyrie. Said he with aplomb: 1) "The announcement of
the Pact has done no injury whatsoever to the Communist Party
cause here. I know my Party.;" 2) the Soviet Union and the
Communist Party in the U.S. have neither abandoned nor
compromised their fight on world Fascism; 3) the Pact
constitutes "a distinct contribution to world peace"; 4) when
disclosed in toto, the agreement would leave Russia a way out
if Germany turned aggressor. (Until last week, U.S. Communists
supposed that Germany already was an aggressor.)
</p>
<p> For a whole legion of non-Communist but hitherto sympathetic
pinkos, the New Republic and the Nation deplored "Stalin's
Munich," Hitler's "colossal diplomatic victory." For thousands
of citizens who had contributed to the Front simple libertarian
goodwill, there was no outlet save a murmur of disillusion over
the land. For millions of suspicious isolationists the worst
opinion of the Reds was merely confirmed. Famed Editor William
Allen White's son William L. reported from Emporia: "...No one
in Kansas was stunned this morning, and we are doing business
as usual...It's much simpler now that the dictatorships are
arranged in one neat pile."</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>