CPUSA went through numerous "incarnations". I don't think it would be fair or reasonable to respond without knowing what years you are discussing.
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Was the CPUSA historically an information cell of the SU?
I've recently been reading some books about early soviet history by J. Arch Getty (as recommended by a member of this board), and I stumbled upon one of his books about the CPUSA. In it, he argues that the CPUSA was for all intents and purposes a political enclave of the Soviet Union, and that it held most of said countries' intelligence agents within the organisation.
What do you think of this? I know that there are some well read members on this forums on the history of the CPUSA. Where they a working-class body, or where they just an american protectorate for the NKVD?
'despite being a comedy, there's a lot of truth to this, black people always talking shit behind white peoples back. Blacks don't give a shit about white, why do whites give them so much "nice" attention?'
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EARTH FOR THE EARTHLINGS - BULLETS FOR THE NATIVISTS
CPUSA went through numerous "incarnations". I don't think it would be fair or reasonable to respond without knowing what years you are discussing.
I'm sure the CPUSA was full of Soviet agents, but I doubt it was where the USEFUL Soviet spies were. It probably had as many FBI agents as Soviet spies, and the US government would have known that any member of the CPUSA had more affinity with the government of the USSR than their own government. In other words, it was not a good place to hide an intelligence agent. It had all of the subtlety of putting a spy in an embassy, but without the added benefit of diplomatic immunity.
The CPUSA did take policy directives from the USSR however while Stalin was alive (as evidenced by their slavish support of Stalin's detente with Nazi Germany during the 30s, then their overnight rush to condemn Germany with their invasion of Russia). This caused the party huge problems when Khrushchev denounced Stalin's style of ruling in the 50s.
Socialist Party of Outer Space
Sorry, my bad. It wasn't Getty.
The book is 'Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage' by Harvey Klehr and John Earl haynes. Though it's a best-buy to conservative anti-com nuts and holds a clear political tone, doesn't render the information in the book any less true.
It focuses on the party between the 1930s and the 1950s, I believe.
'despite being a comedy, there's a lot of truth to this, black people always talking shit behind white peoples back. Blacks don't give a shit about white, why do whites give them so much "nice" attention?'
- Top Comment on the new Youtube layout.
EARTH FOR THE EARTHLINGS - BULLETS FOR THE NATIVISTS
I imagine most spies in the CPUSA were actually there to manage American socialism in favor of Soviet interests.
Yeah they purged most of the founding leadership at some point or another. Browder was completely a sell out during the new deal. However they did a lot of anti racism work and their members largely at some point had a role in major union organizing. So no it wasn't always a Stalinist organization.
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"[I]t’s hard to keep potent historical truths bottled up forever. New data repositories are uncovered. New, less ideological, generations of historians grow up. In the late 1980s and before, Ann Druyan and I would routinely smuggle copies of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution into the USSR—so our colleagues could know a little about their own political beginnings.”
--Carl Sagan
Prior to that it was a revolutionary organization. The Communist Party of America-Communist Labor Party days, before the 'United CP' and what became the 'CPUSA'. One of the Stalinist oppositions of the organization today published a leaflet from the CPA circa 1920 about immediate arming of workers and abstentionism in the elections (not really sure why, since the ideas of the early American Communist parties were indebted to what the Stalinists called 'left deviation' or whatever).
It's not useful at all talk about the CPUSA in general, without specifying a general time frame or location, when it comes to matters of the relationship between the Kremlin and the American party. Things differed dramatically from branch to branch, and the main office had a relationship that changed quite dramatically over the years. One of the main debates in the history of the party is over the Draper thesis: the idea that the CPUSA was just an arm of the Soviet government attempting to infiltrate American society by diffusing a foreign ideology with little connection to the daily grassroots concerns of most Americans, oppressed or otherwise. Klehr was handpicked by Draper to finish the third book in his series on the history of the CPUSA (it was called They Heyday of American Communism or some such thing), so he and Haynes are very much acolytes of Theodore Draper.
IMO the best response to Draper's work is actually by James Cannon, who had first-hand knowledge of the CP's break toward Stalinism in the 1930s. You should definitely check out his book "The First Ten Years of American Communism," which is basically an extended conversation, through letters, that Cannon was having with Draper, followed by a useful review Cannon wrote of Draper's books. Following Cannon, the Draper thesis has also come under sustained attacked for over forty years as historians have demonstrated that even after the party was Stalinized, local branches enjoyed considerable autonomy and were very much attuned to the concerns of local activists.
CPUSA has been an opportunist sect during most of its life except its early years. just like its other "brother" parties, it had KGB agents in its ranks but that doesnt make the whole party a political enclave of the Soviet Union.
Lucretia's is the sanest response, but limited. The CPUSA was never simply a tool of the Soviets, though at many times a majority of its membership may have had a rather religious devotion to the USSR.
I'd recommend the excellent book by Ellen Schrecker, Many Were the Crimes, for a more nuanced view of the CP in the post war period. I really enjoyed Howard Fast's memoir Being Red, which I think probably speaks more to the reality of American Communism than blahblahblah on Browderism as an abstract ideology. Merrily Weisbord's The Strangest Dream is an excellent account of the Canadian CP in the same period.
