Communist Party USA, 1919 to 1957

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R. Barrett
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
World War ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Party Usa

The largest and most important revolutionary socialist organization in US history, the Communist Party USA was always a minority influence. It reached considerable size and influence, however, during the Great Depression and World War II years when it followed the more open line associated with the term “Popular Front.” In these years communists were much more flexible in their strategies and relations with other groups, though the party remained a hierarchical vanguard organization. It grew from a largely isolated sect dominated by unskilled and unemployed immigrant men in the 1920s to a socially diverse movement of nearly 100,000 based heavily on American born men and women from the working and professional classes by the late 1930s and during World War II, exerting considerable influence in the labor movement and American cultural life. In these years, the Communist Party helped to build the industrial union movement, advanced the cause of African American civil rights, and laid the foundation for the postwar feminist movement. But the party was always prone to abrupt changes in line and vulnerable to attack as a sinister outside force because of its close adherence to Soviet policies and goals. Several factors contributed to its catastrophic decline in the 1950s: the increasingly antagonistic Cold War struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States; an unprecedented attack from employers and government at various levels—criminal cases and imprisonment, deportation, and blacklisting; and within the party itself, a turn back toward a more dogmatic version of Marxism-Leninism and a heightened atmosphere of factional conflict and purges.

Defining the McCarthy Era

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Lichtman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Political Repression ◽  
World War ◽  
Mccarthy Era ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Political Tactics ◽  
Widespread Belief ◽  
Communist Party Usa

This chapter considers the combination of circumstances and events following World War II that held the seeds of political repression during the McCarthy era. These developments signaled unmistakably that the Soviet Union and its allies threatened America’s security on the international scene. On the domestic front, McCarthy-era repression targeted the Communist Party USA and alleged “Communist front” organizations. Whether a significant internal Communist threat existed in the postwar years was open to question. However, the widespread belief that such a threat did exist, and the related claim that liberal Democrats—New Dealers and their political successors—bore responsibility and could not be trusted to respond adequately, would soon become a reality in American politics. McCarthyism was energized not by opposition to communism but by the linkage of Marxism with liberalism. It was also energized by bare-knuckle partisan political tactics.

MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE FOR THE WWORLD

2004 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. HART
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Good Neighbor Policy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Good Neighbor

Recent literature has argued that, beginning in the late 1940s, the increasing ideological competition between the Soviet Union and the United States-or, more broadly, between communism and capitalism-transformed America's record of racial discrimination and violence into an international issue with consequences for U.S. foreign policy. This article challenges that historiography by raising questions about both the timing and the cause of the increasing importance of civil rights to the U.S. foreign policy process. It focuses roughly equally upon the damage that discrimination against Latinos in the Southwest did to the Good Neighbor Policy and the dif�culties of the World War II propaganda organization, the Of�ce of War Information, in portraying America's racial practices to the world. To account for these examples requires us to recognize the World War II years-not the Cold War-as the decisive turning point when the history of domestic race relations could no longer be sanguinely ignored by U.S. policymakers.

The Anti-Aryan Moment: Decolonization, Diplomacy, and Race in Late Pahlavi Iran

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 691-702
Author(s):  
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Cold War

In 1946, the entertainer and activist Paul Robeson pondered America's intentions in Iran. In what was to become one of the first major crises of the Cold War, Iran was fighting a Soviet aggressor that did not want to leave. Robeson posed the question, “Is our State Department concerned with protecting the rights of Iran and the welfare of the Iranian people, or is it concerned with protecting Anglo-American oil in that country and the Middle East in general?” This was a loaded question. The US was pressuring the Soviet Union to withdraw its troops after its occupation of the country during World War II. Robeson wondered why America cared so much about Soviet forces in Iranian territory, when it made no mention of Anglo-American troops “in countries far removed from the United States or Great Britain.” An editorial writer for a Black journal in St. Louis posed a different variant of the question: Why did the American secretary of state, James F. Byrnes, concern himself with elections in Iran, Arabia or Azerbaijan and yet not “interfere in his home state, South Carolina, which has not had a free election since Reconstruction?”

Choice in the West

1953 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-167
Author(s):  
S. Bernard
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Working Out

The advent of a new administration in the United States and the passage of seven years since the end of World War II make it appropriate to review the political situation which has developed in Europe during that period and to ask what choices now are open to the West in its relations with the Soviet Union.The end of World War II found Europe torn between conflicting conceptions of international politics and of the goals that its members should seek. The democratic powers, led by the United States, viewed the world in traditional, Western, terms. The major problem, as they saw it, was one of working out a moral and legal order to which all powers could subscribe, and in which they would live. Quite independently of the environment, they assumed that one political order was both more practicable and more desirable than some other, and that their policies should be directed toward its attainment.

Dwight Eisenhower

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Nuclear Arsenal ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Arms Race ◽  
American Society ◽  
The 1960S

Assessments of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s performance as the Supreme Allied Commander during World War II and the nation’s thirty-fourth president have evolved across the more than seventy-five years from the conclusion of World War II in 1945 to the dedication in 2020 of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, DC. Historians have sought to explain Eisenhower’s unlikely rise from his modest upbringing in Abilene, Kansas, to his ascendance to command of western allies in the European theater. Selected over several senior officers in 1942 to command the invasion of North Africa (Operation Torch), Eisenhower initially experienced a series of setbacks and controversies resulting from inexperienced troops, incompetent subordinate leaders, a formidable enemy, and political deals with leaders of Vichy France. Although historians continue to debate his decisions regarding command and strategy in the European theater, they generally praise Eisenhower’s ability to maintain the western alliance amid national rivalries, professional jealousies, strong personalities, and competing political ambitions. Assessments of Eisenhower’s performance as president have undergone a remarkable transformation. Initially ranked in 1961 near the bottom in assessments of presidential leadership, he currently appears within the top tier. Initial accounts in the 1960s portrayed Eisenhower as a bumbling, docile president who appeared to be out of touch with the basic policies and operations of his administration. He appeared unwilling to address the major issues confronting American society, and to defer to his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, on matters of foreign policy and national security. For his critics, Eisenhower perilously, inflexibly, and imprudently relied upon the superiority of the nation’s nuclear arsenal to contain communist expansion, then allowed the Soviet Union to beat the United States into space and create a missile gap. Scholars collectively labeled “Eisenhower Revisionists” assessing declassified documents beginning in the mid-1970s forged a revised consensus that Eisenhower was clearly thoughtful, informed, and firmly in command of his administration. Moreover, the nation’s nuclear arsenal retained and even strengthened its predominance of power. “Postrevisionist” analysts generally concur that Eisenhower was clearly the dominant decision-maker and developed an effective policy development process, but they question the efficacy of some of his decisions and policies, including his management of crises in this dangerous period of the Cold War, his increased use of covert operations and propaganda, his approach to decolonization, and his efforts to ease tensions and slow the nuclear arms race.

The Origins of the Cold War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Edelstein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Common Cause ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter traces the deterioration of Soviet-American relations at the end of World War II and into the beginning of the cold war. While the United States and the Soviet Union found common cause during World War II in defeating Hitler’s Germany, their relationship began to deteriorate as the eventual defeat of Germany became more certain. The chapter emphasizes that it was growing beliefs about malign Soviet intentions, rather than changes in Soviet capabilities, that fuelled the origins of the cold war. In particular, the chapter details crises in Iran, Turkey, and Germany that contributed to U.S. beliefs about long-term Soviet intentions. As uncertainty evaporated, the enmity of the cold war took hold.

“If You Want Peace, Prepare for War”

2019 ◽  
pp. 12-38
Author(s):  
Petra Goedde
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Peace Activism ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Military Preparedness ◽  
Diplomatic Relationship

The first chapter of The Politics of Peace provides an analysis of peace within the context of the diplomatic relationship between East and West. Between the late 1940s and early 1960s, both sides in the Cold War battle used the rhetoric of peace to advance their own domestic and international political agendas. By repeating the narrative of their failure to prevent World War II, US and Western European governments promoted a strategy of peace through strength and military preparedness. The United States in particular regarded peace advocates as a threat to national security and often accused them of being either communist agents or naïve idealists who had been duped into becoming puppets of international communism. While the Soviet Union and its allies followed a similar strategy of military preparedness, they linked the rhetoric of peace to internationalism, often institutionalizing peace activism within the bureaucratic machinery of the Communist Party.

Neutrality or Involvement? World War II and Evolution of Foreign Policy Concepts of the Nordic Countries

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 222-256
Author(s):  
E. V. Korunova
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Fundamental Reason ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Cold War

In the middle of the 20th century a unique subsystem of international relations emerged in the Northern Europe, which has turned it into one of the stablest and most peaceful regions during the Cold War period. Nowadays, rising international tensions bring new relevance to the history lessons of World War II, its origins and aftermaths. The paper examines the evolution of the Nordic countries’ views on the issue of neutrality from mid-1930s to the end of 1940s. The first section considers the approaches of the Scandinavian countries to the establishment of a collective security system in the region in the interwar period. In that regard, the paper focuses on the Swedish project of the Northern defense alliance, which was aimed at deepening military cooperation between the states of the region and strengthening their ability to jointly deter any aggression as the best way to guarantee their neutrality. However, this project had not been implemented, because it faced both cool reactions from the leaders of Norway and Denmark and suspicion from the leading powers. According to the author, the fundamental reason for the failure of that project was that Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland sought support and protection from different, opposing great powers. The latter circumstance had also to a large extent predetermined the fate of the Scandinavian countries during the war years, when almost all of them were in one form or another involved in the conflict. The victory of the anti-Hitler coalition both opened new opportunities and posed new challenges for the states of the region: in the emerging bipolar world they rapidly turned into the subject matter of dispute of the superpowers. In these conditions, Sweden once again put forward the idea that in order to preserve peace in the region, the Nordic countries should be able to defend their neutrality and proposed the establishment of a Scandinavian Defense Union. In the final section, the paper examines the reaction to this project of the Scandinavian countries, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Great Britain. The author shows that although this reaction was more than restrained, and the project was not implemented, Sweden’s initiatives contributed to the creation of a unique security architecture in Northern Europe, where each state of the region had its own role with the neutral Sweden serving as a balancing force.

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