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- From: jmc@sail.stanford.edu (John McCarthy)
- Subject: American communists and the Soviet Union
- Message-ID: <1992Nov18.205021.25244@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
- Followup-To: alt.activism.d
- Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Sender: news@mont.cs.missouri.edu
- Nntp-Posting-Host: pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
- Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 20:50:21 GMT
- Approved: map@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Lines: 47
-
- The opening of the archives of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
- has revealed many interesting facts about the connections between the
- American Communist Party, the Comintern (Communist International) and
- the Soviet espionage agencies. An article by Harvey Klehr and John Haynes
- in the 1992 December American Spectator gives some preliminary information.
- They are editing a three volume collection of documents from the Russian
- archives to be published by the Yale University Press.
-
- 1. Several of the top leaders of the Party, including Eugene Dennis
- and Earl Browder, spent years abroad in different countries as agents
- of the Comintern. The Comintern had the practice of supervising
- communist parties using foreign communists, called "CI reps", sort
- of like Papal Nuncios.
-
- 2. There really was a communist apparatus among New Deal bureaucrats
- who supplied information to Soviet intelligence in the 1930s. There
- is no fresh information about Alger Hiss yet.
-
- 3. Milton Wolff, the last commander of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
- in Spain, confirmed in 1992 much of the information about these
- connections.
-
- 4. U.S. Communist Party leaders helped General Donovan recruit agents
- for work in Europe until the Soviets told them to stop.
-
- 5. The party maintained an illegal apparatus for some years, for fear
- of being outlawed.
-
- 6. Harry Bridges, leader of the International Longshoreman's and
- Warehouseman's Union, whom the Government unsuccesfully attempted
- to prove was a communist subject to deportation, was not only a
- communist but a member of the Central Committee.
-
- Much of what the anti-communists and reformed communists of the 30s,
- 40s and 50s said about communist involvement in espionage and about
- Soviet control of American communism is now confirmed in detail by
- Soviet Communist Party records. The people who said it was *all* a
- witchhunt are refuted. Some of Senator Joseph McCarthy's more
- ambitious charges are not supported. There is no evidence as yet that
- any major American politicians were under communist control.
-
- --
- John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
- *
- He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
-
-
-