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.

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.

The Legal Framework for the Sovietization of Czechoslovakia 1941–1945

1997 ◽  
Vol 25 (02) ◽  
pp. 255-268
Author(s):  
Basil Dmytryshyn
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Foreign Minister ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Asylum ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries

Literature in many languages (documentary, monographic, memoir-like and periodical) is abundant on the sovietization of Czechoslovakia, as are the reasons advanced for it. Some observers have argued that the Soviet takeover of the country stemmed from an excessive preoccupation with Panslavism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by a few Czech and Slovak intellectuals, politicians, writers and poets and their uncritical affection and fascination for everything Russian and Soviet. Others have attributed the drawing of Czechoslovakia into the Soviet orbit to Franco-British appeasement of Hitler's imperial ambitions during the September 1938, Munich crisis. At Munich, Czechoslovakia lost its sovereignty and territory, France its honor, England its respect and trust; and the Soviet Union, by its abstract offer to aid Czechoslovakia (without detailing how or in what form the assistance would come) gained admiration. Still others have pinned the blame for the sovietization of Czechoslovakia on machinations by top leaders of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, who, as obedient tools of Moscow, supported Soviet geopolitical designs on Czechoslovakia, who sought and received political asylum in the USSR during World War II, and who returned to Czechoslovakia with the victorious Soviet armed forces at the end of World War II as high-ranking members of the Soviet establishment. Finally, there are some who maintain that the sovietization of Czechoslovakia commenced with the 25 February 1948, Communist coup, followed by the tragic death of Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk on 10 March 1948, and the replacement, on 7 June 1948, of President Eduard Beneš by the Moscow-trained, loyal Kremlin servant Klement Gottwald.

Soviet and Muslim

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eren Tasar
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Soviet Central Asia

Long associated with its aggressive promotion of atheism, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union adopted a nuanced, flexible, and often contradictory approach toward Islam in the USSR’s largest Muslim region, Central Asia. “Soviet and Muslim” demonstrates how the Soviet state unwittingly set in motion a process of institutionalization during World War II that culminated in a permanent space for Islam in a society ruled by atheists. Central Asia was the sole Muslim region of the former Russian empire to lack a centralized Islamic organization, or muftiate. When the Soviet leader Stalin created such a body for the region as part of his religious reforms during World War II, he acknowledged that the Muslim faith could enjoy some legal protection under Communist rule. From a skeletal and disorganized body run by one family of Islamic scholars out of a modest house in Tashkent’s old city, this muftiate acquired great political importance in the eyes of Soviet policymakers, and equally significant symbolic significance for many Muslims. This book argues that Islam did not merely “survive” the decades from World War II until the Soviet collapse in 1991, but actively shaped the political and social context of Soviet Central Asia. Muslim figures, institutions, and practices evolved in response to the social and political reality of Communist rule. Through an analysis that spans all aspects of Islam under Soviet rule—from debates about religion inside the Communist Party, to the muftiate’s efforts to acquire control over mosques across Central Asia, changes in Islamic practices and dogma, and overseas propaganda targeting the Islamic World—Soviet and Muslim offers a radical new reading of Islam’s resilience and evolution under atheist rule.

Art, Politics, and War, 1941–1945

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert W. Cherny
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Fund Raising ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
War Effort ◽  
American Society

During World War II, Victor and Lydia threw themselves into organizing and fund-raising for Russian War Relief, organized the Russian American Society, and took active parts in the American Russian Institute, all in support of the Soviet war effort. Becoming more active in the Communist party, they met Soviet consular officials, including at least one KGB agent. The FBI opened a file on Arnautoff. The Arnautoffs applied for permission to emigrate to the Soviet Union but were turned down.

scholarly journals COMMUNIZATION AND DE-COMMUNIZATION OF TOPONYMS IN KAMYANETS’-PODIL’S’KY

2017 ◽  
pp. 112-118
Author(s):  
Ihor Starenkyi ◽  
Yaryna Zaishliuk
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
New Wave ◽  
World War ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Party Ideology ◽  
New City

The Communisation about change on toponymy map in Kamyanets’-Podil’s’ky during the 1920s – early ХХІ century. Within the first 20 years of Soviet rule, most microtoponyms that did not fit into the ideological system of the Communist Party were renamed – appeared the names of party and military leaders of the USSR, the ideologists of the communist movement. During the next 30 years, some of those objects were renamed again due to the unprecedented scale repressive movement and different kinds of executions of Soviet leaders. After World War II, Communisation toponymy held mainly by the new street names, instead of renaming existing ones. Since the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of dominance of the Communist Party ideology, starts the reverse process – decommunization. Primarilyold name was returned to the historic streets of Kamyanets’-Podil’s’kyin 1990 over 1992-1995. De-communization held by renaming streets of the new city, which bore the names of communist leaders. The new wave of decommunisation is associated with Revolution of dignity and the Law of Ukraine«On the condemnation of Communist and National Socialist (Nazi) totalitarian propagation and ban their symbols». During this period, toponymic objects included in the list of those subject decommunization given new names. If the situation Kamyanets’-Podil’s’ky, streets and lanes provided the names of the dead patriots during the Revolution of dignity and Russian-Ukrainianwar in Eastern Ukraine.

The Soviet Union, the Austrian Communist Party, and the Anschluss Question, 1918-1938

Slavic Review ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Alfred D. Low
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
The Political ◽  
German Unification ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union

During the interwar period, the leadership of the Soviet Union did a onehundred- eighty degree turn in its policy toward the political link-up between Austria and Germany. The Soviets first denounced the victorious Western powers’ prohibition of the Anschluss. Later they showed outright opposition to the Nazi drive for German unification in Central Europe. The Austrian Communist Party and international communism promptly executed the same turnabout. In accordance with the new line, during and at the end of World War II, the Soviet Union joined the Allies in supporting the restoration of Austrian independence and sovereignty.

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