Harvey Klehr - Böcker

For the first time, the hidden world of American communism can be examined with the help of documents from the recently opened archives of the former Soviet Union. By interweaving narrative and documents, the authors of this book present a convincing new picture of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), one of the most controversial organizations in American public life. Heated debates about whether the Communist Party harbored spies or engaged in espionage have surrounded the party from its inception. This authoritative book provides proof that the CPUSA was involved in various subversive activities. At the same time, it discloses fascinating details about the workings of the party and about the ordinary Americans and CPUSA leaders who participated in its clandestine activities.The documents presented range from letters by Americans wishing to do international covert work for the Soviet Union to top secret memos between the head of Soviet foreign intelligence, the Comintern, and the CPUSA. They confirm that--the Soviet Union heavily subsidized the CPUSA and that some prominent Americans laundered money for the Comintern;--the CPUSA maintained a covert espionage apparatus in the United States with direct ties to Soviet intelligence;--the testimony of former Communists concerning underground Communist activity in the United States can be substantiated;--American Communists working in government agencies stole documents and passed them to the CPUSA, which sent them on to Moscow;--the CPUSA played a role in atomic espionage;and much more.An engrossing narrative places the documents in their historical context and explains key figures, organizations, and events. Together the narrative and documents provide a revealing picture of American communism and convey the contradictory passions that drew so many Americans into the Communist movement and eventually tore that movement apart.

The Secret World of American Communism (1995), filled with revelations about Communist party covert operations in the United States, created an international sensation. Now the American authors of that book, along with Soviet archivist Kyrill M. Anderson, offer a second volume of profound social, political, and historical importance. Based on documents newly available from Russian archives, The Soviet World of American Communism conclusively demonstrates the continuous and intimate ties between the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) and Moscow. In a meticulous investigation of the personal, organizational, and financial links between the CPUSA and Soviet Communists, the authors find that Moscow maintained extensive control of the CPUSA, even of the American rank and file. The widely accepted view that the CPUSA was essentially an idealistic organization devoted to the pursuit of social justice must be radically revised, say the authors. Although individuals within the organization may not have been aware of Moscow’s influence, the leaders of the organization most definitely were.The authors explain and annotate ninety-five documents, reproduced here in their entirety or in large part, and they quote from hundreds of others to reveal the actual workings of the American Communist party. They show that:• the USSR covertly provided a large part of the CPUSA budget from the early 1920s to the end of the 1980s;• Moscow issued orders, which the CPUSA obeyed, on issues ranging from what political decisions the American party should make to who should serve in the party leadership;• the CPUSA endorsed Stalin’s purges and the persecution of Americans living in Russia.

An unprecedented exposé of Soviet espionage in the United States during the 1930s and 40sThis stunning book, based on KGB archives that have never come to light before, provides the most complete account of Soviet espionage in America ever written. In 1993, former KGB officer Alexander Vassiliev was permitted unique access to Stalin-era records of Soviet intelligence operations against the United States. Years later, living in Britain, Vassiliev retrieved his extensive notebooks of transcribed documents from Moscow. With these notebooks John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr have meticulously constructed a new, sometimes shocking, historical account.Along with general insights into espionage tactics and the motives of Americans who spied for Stalin, Spies resolves specific, long-seething controversies. The book confirms, among many other things, that Alger Hiss cooperated with Soviet intelligence over a long period of years, that journalist I. F. Stone worked on behalf of the KGB in the 1930s, and that Robert Oppenheimer was never recruited by Soviet intelligence. Spies also uncovers numerous American spies who were never even under suspicion and satisfyingly identifies the last unaccounted for American nuclear spies. Vassiliev tells the story of the notebooks and his own extraordinary life in a gripping introduction to the volume.

Drawing on secret and therefore candid coded telegraphs exchanged between Communist Party leaders around the world and their overseers at the Communist International (Comintern) headquarters in Moscow, this book uncovers key aspects of the history of the Comintern and its significant role in the Stalinist ruling system during the years 1933 to 1943. New information on aspects of the People’s Front in France, civil wars in Spain and China, World War II, and the extent of the Comintern’s cooperation with Soviet intelligence is brought to light through these archival records, never examined before.

Communism was never a popular ideology in America, but the vehemence of American anticommunism varied from passive disdain in the 1920s to fervent hostility in the early years of the Cold War. Nothing so stimulated the white hot anticommunism of the late 1940s and 1950s more than a series of spy trials that revealed that American Communists had co-operated with Soviet espionage against the United States and had assisted in stealing the technical secrets of the atomic bomb as well as penetrating the US State Department, the Treasury Department, and the White House itself. This book, first published in 2006, reviews the major spy cases of the early Cold War (Hiss-Chambers, Rosenberg, Bentley, Gouzenko, Coplon, Amerasia and others) and the often-frustrating clashes between the exacting rules of the American criminal justice system and the requirements of effective counter-espionage.

Communism was never a popular ideology in America, but the vehemence of American anticommunism varied from passive disdain in the 1920s to fervent hostility in the early years of the Cold War. Nothing so stimulated the white hot anticommunism of the late 1940s and 1950s more than a series of spy trials that revealed that American Communists had co-operated with Soviet espionage against the United States and had assisted in stealing the technical secrets of the atomic bomb as well as penetrating the US State Department, the Treasury Department, and the White House itself. This book, first published in 2006, reviews the major spy cases of the early Cold War (Hiss-Chambers, Rosenberg, Bentley, Gouzenko, Coplon, Amerasia and others) and the often-frustrating clashes between the exacting rules of the American criminal justice system and the requirements of effective counter-espionage.

Arguments about whether distinctive features of American society, culture, political structure, economic system, or population account for the relative weakness of American radicalism have engaged historians, sociologists, and political scientists for decades. Influential concepts such as "frontier theory" have been linked with the absence of class conflict in America. Other analysts have attributed the failure of the American Left to fierce repression, giving red scares and the McCarthy era as illustrations. Some have linked the American Left's failure to American immigration, winner-take-all elections, and the cultural values of individualism. The Communist Party, one of America's largest and longest lasting radical groups, offers many lessons about how radical political groups can take advantage of-or squander-their opportunities.Klehr focuses on the theme of American exceptionalism and problems that America's capitalist society raised for Marxism and other radical groups. The Communist Experience in America deals with dissident communist formulations. Such groups included a number of talented men who went on to a variety of political and literary careers. Klehr also deals with fellow travelers, some of whom wrote fascinating essays on American exceptionalism and the decline of political extremism.In part, Klehr hopes to inspire the same moral outrage about Communism that fuels those dedicated to ensuring that Nazi crimes are never forgotten or obfuscated. Communism, in practice everywhere in the world, also came at enormous human cost. Regardless of their other virtues or qualities, those who supported or defended Communism from the safety of the United States must be called to account. This work does just that; in detail and depth.

Arguments about whether distinctive features of American society, culture, political structure, economic system, or population account for the relative weakness of American radicalism have engaged historians, sociologists, and political scientists for decades. Influential concepts such as "frontier theory" have been linked with the absence of class conflict in America. Other analysts have attributed the failure of the American Left to fierce repression, giving red scares and the McCarthy era as illustrations. Some have linked the American Left's failure to American immigration, winner-take-all elections, and the cultural values of individualism. The Communist Party, one of America's largest and longest lasting radical groups, offers many lessons about how radical political groups can take advantage of-or squander-their opportunities.Klehr focuses on the theme of American exceptionalism and problems that America's capitalist society raised for Marxism and other radical groups. The Communist Experience in America deals with dissident communist formulations. Such groups included a number of talented men who went on to a variety of political and literary careers. Klehr also deals with fellow travelers, some of whom wrote fascinating essays on American exceptionalism and the decline of political extremism.In part, Klehr hopes to inspire the same moral outrage about Communism that fuels those dedicated to ensuring that Nazi crimes are never forgotten or obfuscated. Communism, in practice everywhere in the world, also came at enormous human cost. Regardless of their other virtues or qualities, those who supported or defended Communism from the safety of the United States must be called to account. This work does just that; in detail and depth.

Beginning in the late 1960s, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr say, the study of communism in America was taken over by "revisionists" who have attempted to portray the U.S. as the aggressor in the Cold War and saw suspicion about the American Communist Party (CPUSA) as baseless "paranoia." In this intriguing book, they show how, years after the death of communism, the leading historical journals and many prominent historians continue to teach that America's rejection of the Party was a tragic error, that American Communists were actually unsung heroes working for democratic ideals, and that those anti-Communist liberals and conservatives who drove the CPUSA to the margins of American politics in the 1950s were malicious figures deserving condemnation. The focus of "In Denial" is what the authors call "lying about spying." Haynes and Klehr examine the ways in which revisionist scholars have ignored or distorted new evidence from recently-opened Russian archives about espionage links between Moscow and the CPUSA.They analyze the mythology that continues to suggest, against all evidence, that Alger Hiss, Julius Rosenberg, Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Currie, and others who betrayed the United States were more sinned against than sinning. They set the record straight about the spies among us. Haynes and Klehr were the first U.S. historians who used the newly opened archives of the former Soviet Union to examine the history of American communism. "In Denial" is the record of what they discovered there. They show that while the international communist movement may be dead, conflict over the meaning of the communist experience in America is still very much with us.