scholarly journals Review: The Folk Singers and the Bureau: The FBI, the Folk Artists and the Suppression of the Communist Party, USA-1939-1956, by Aaron J. Leonard, and Woody Guthrie: An Intimate Life, by Gustavus Stadler

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 194-198
Author(s):  
Francisco E. Robles
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Communist Party Usa ◽  
Intimate Life

Framing William Albertson: The FBI's “Solo” Operation and the Cold War

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 63-85
Author(s):  
John Earl Haynes ◽  
Harvey Klehr
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
National Committee ◽  
Federal Bureau Of Investigation ◽  
Intelligence Operations ◽  
Executive Secretary ◽  
Successful Intelligence ◽  
High Level ◽  
Communist Party Usa ◽  
The Cold War

William Albertson, who was executive secretary of the New York Communist Party and a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), was framed as an informant for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1964. Only in recent years have newly released FBI records enabled scholars to understand why the FBI undertook the operation and how much damage it did to the CPUSA. In 1964 two leaks from the FBI hinted that the bureau had a high-level informant in the CPUSA who was providing information about secret Soviet subsidies. The leaks were accurate and endangered one of the FBI's most successful intelligence operations, Operation Solo, which involved the use of two brothers, Morris Childs and Jack Childs, who were confidants of CPUSA General Secretary Gus Hall, as key informants. The framing of Albertson was intended to deflect CPUSA and Soviet attention from the real FBI informants to a bogus one. The ploy succeeded. The forged documents the FBI planted convinced Hall and other senior CPUSA officials that Albertson was the FBI informant. Despite Albertson's vehement denials and energetic defense, he was expelled. The CPUSA thought it had eliminated the informant, and the Childs brothers were able to continue in their role until old age forced their retirement in 1977.

Richard Wright and the Critique of Class Theory

2018 ◽  
pp. 45-63
Author(s):  
Cedric J. Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Richard Wright ◽  
Class Theory ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Marxist Ideology ◽  
To Come ◽  
Communist Party Usa

Cedric J. Robinson’s previously published essay discusses how Wright’s art expresses both the terrors and the possibilities of modern times. According to Robinson, Wright’s choices of literary forms enabled him to explore the complexities and subtleties of radical politics more authentically than conventional history, biography, or political-tract writing would allow. Through novels, Wright brought living consciousness into direct confrontation with social theory and ideology. Believing that Marxist ideology paternalistically remained for rather than of the (especially black) proletariat, Wright wanted to draw on existing folklore to express blacks’ deep and complex consciousness. Robinson argues that for the Communist Party USA to make good on its promise to serve as the greatest guarantee against fascism, it had to come more fully to terms with the appeal of fascism among the working class. Wright’s art tried to make sense of that troubling phenomenon.

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.

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