Sacco and Vanzetti

...materialize (the Russians had wanted to use his bookstore as a cover an d changed their minds) and he soon broke forever with his Communis t dreams...

...They have lost the vision...

...They would sacrifice everything, includin g their lives, for this higher good . How could such a system judge their acts ? Russell writes: Sacco and Vanzetti, like Hiss and the Rosenbergs, were to themselves innocent , accepting the yoke of martyrdom, guilt y only in the eyes and by the laws of the socie -ty they rejected...

...He provided Russell with a tap e of his father's words as well as the writ -ten document . Whether one considers this circumstantial evidence definitive depends on whether you think the art-ist or the scientist has the final word . Russell's book is written with the skil l and intuition of both the historian an d the artist...

...An answer never arrived . I thought of the letters of Ethe l Rosenberg, Nicolo Sacco, and th e courageous Walter Goldwater in con junction with reading Francis Russell's brilliant study, for in truth all thre e cases—the Rosenbergs, Hiss, and Sacco and Vanzetti—converge...

...But his scientific skills are considerable too—read his account o f the ballistic tests . And his accounts o f the anarchist world out of which Sacco and Vanzetti came, and the intellectual and historic context of the period, are absorbing...

...Myths of government and FBI calum - THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1986...

...The Sacco Vanzetti defenders claimed th e FBI had framed them and the files would show it...

...Russell states: In the feverish months of 1927 the case became a rallying point for the intellectua l and academic commonality that in man y cases set the tone for their entire lives . A s a vehicle of protest it filled a need . To in-tellectuals in their postwar sense of isola -tion and alienation, it gave a communit y of spirit, the pentecostal feeling of belong -ing, as well as the unadmitted satisfactio n of identifying themselves with an elite...

...SACCO AND VANZETTI : THE CASE RESOLVED Francis Russ.ell/Harper & Row/$16 .9 5 David Evanier ny...

...However, the most striking parallel is with the Rosenbergs : • The portentous political symbolism . Each case was—and remains—a sourc e of ideological fervor...

...Apparently, to be a Communit y Church communicant required believ-ing that Hiss and the Rosenberg cou-ple were as much victims of a frameup as were Sacco and Vanzetti . Though I still shared the latter belief, I couldn' t help wondering about the implacabili-ty of the dogma...

...This was equally true of the Rosenbergs...

...For years the Rosenberg defender s screamed for the release of the FBI file s which would prove a frameup . Since the files were released and pointed to guilt, they now claim they were th e "wrong"—manufactured—files...

...Published letters...

...To them, it was criminal...

...In fact, Sacco and Vanzetti won over all the -writers and artists...

...Unlike Hiss's situation , Goldwater wrote, the plan did not David Evanier is completing a novel about American Communism entitled The Prince of Progressive Humanity...

...Goldwate r wrote that, "like you," he had been ap-proached by Whittaker Chambers to engage in espionage for the Sovie t Union...

...Ideale Cambera , the son of a member of the first Sacco -Vanzetti defense group, communicate d with Russell after his father's death of his father's written statement tha t "everyone knew that Sacco was guilt y and that Vanzetti was innocent as far as the actual participation in the kill-ing...

...Russell writes that they were militant anarchists committed to violence . • Myths of spontaneous worldwide out -rage...

...In fact, they have reached the "certain age" that Walter Goldwater referred to in his let -ter to Alger Hiss...

...the Rosenbergs only most of them . Sacco and Vanzetti ha d the rich Boston dowagers (known to the Communists as "sob sisters") , Walter Lippmann, Heywood Broun , John Dewey, Norman Thomas, Joh n Dos Passos, H. L. Mencken...

...To ideologues, writers like Russell have "gone sour...

...q You shall know, my sons, shall know why we leave the song unsung...

...The role of Felix Frankfurter...

...It remained for Russell, after twenty-five years of indefatigable searching, to find someone to break the silence in th e Sacco Vanzetti case...

...Sacco and Vanzetti, like the Rosenbergs, hated the America n system...

...Russell writes that the SaccoVanzetti "world agitation, the great demonstrations, were Communist -organized and directed...

...As the dean of th e Harvard Law School (and schoolmat e of Frankfurter's) Roscoe Pound sai d -after exhaustively examining th e evidence in the Sacco-Vanzetti case: "Felix was completely wrong . . . . His humanitarian instincts had distorte d his judgment ." *The defendants' certitude about their "innocence" on a higher scale of morality...

...in fact they were ideological soldiers of Stalin . Sacco and Vanzetti were supposed t o be "harmless philosophical anar-chists...

...That such a notable per-sonage of the law as Frankfurter fel t the way he did added immeasurabl e weight to the belief of millions in th e innocence of both couples . The impact remains to this day...

...Such a silence (among the anarchists, amon g the Communists) must be the most im -portant expression of faith and com-mitment after the act itself . That this silence was momentarily broken b y Morton Sobell (convicted of conspir-ing with the Rosenbergs) in conversa-tions of a relatively candid nature with me in 1982—even though he insisted o n his innocence—must be one of the more unusual footnotes to the Rosen -berg case...

...Both Sacco and Vanzetti and the Rosenbergs achieved enormous impact with the publication of their letters...

...A letter two days before his death fro m Nicolo Sacco to his son . Francis Russell's new book is the further deflating of a myth he punctured in 1961 in his first study of the Sacco Vanzetti case, Tragedy in Dedham...

...To destroy it was the highest virtue...

...It is an age whic h connotes honesty, objectivity, an d courage...

...Russell writes of addressing an audience at Boston's leftist Community Church on the Sacco and Vanzetti case in 1958 . He writes of the church's bookshelf con -taining books on Sacco and Vanzett i and "more books and pamphlet s -defending the Rosenbergs and Alge r Hiss...

...To insist on their innocence, however incontrovertible the facts, was thei r moral obligation . . . . By their own defini-tion they had to be innocent...

...Their indignation was itself liberating, a catharsis of the emotions, a commitmen t of faith where the need to believe becam e the will to believe...

...Russell writes, "It i s now clear from the files that the . . . bureau agents were not aware of Sacco and Vanzetti before their arrest . . . . The bureau did not aid the prosecution and had no opinion as to guilt or in-nocence in a crime it considered out-side its jurisdiction...

...Radical chic . Francis Russell dispels -any notion that this state of mindless-ness started in recent years...

...The letter referred to Hiss ' s forthcoming birthday party, to whic h he had invited Goldwater...

...Allen Weinstein (on the Hiss case) an d Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton (on the Rosenbergs) would, in the 1980s , begin with the assumption of inno-cence and arrive at similar conclusions . About a year before his death i n 1985, Walter Goldwater, proprietor o f one of the legendary Manhattan book-stores, the University Place Bookshop , and a passionate advocate of huma n rights, showed me a letter he wa s writing to Alger Hiss, whom he knew slightly...

...Work and build my sons, a monument to love and joy, to human worth, to faith we kep t for you, my sons, for you...

...Sacco and Vanzetti's were, of course, far more eloquent than those of the Rosenbergs...

...It wasn't open to discussion or argument . " In fact, there are strong parallels be-tween the Sacco and Vanzetti case and both other cases...

...Ethel Rosenberg Ossining, New Yor k January 24, 195 3 Remember always, Dante, in the play of happiness, don't use all for yourself only, but down yourself just one step, at your side and help the weak ones that cry for help, help for the prosecuted and the victim, because they are your better friend,• they are all the comrades that fight and fall as your father and Bartolo fought and fell yester-day for the conquest of the joy offreedo m for all and the poor workers...

...At that time he blazed a trail that other historians would follow later in deal-ing with two other central cases that were centers of ideological storms . Beginning with the assumption tha t Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent, th e evidence he uncovered forced Russell t o conclude that Sacco was guilty...

...The silence maintained by all the prin -cipals in each case over the years...

...Goldwater went on to say that since both he and Hiss had now reached "a certain age," wasn't it tim e for Hiss at last to confess and tell th e truth...

...Or, as Russell's epigraph from Samuel Johnson puts it, "Most of our ideas ar e not propagated by reason but caugh t by contagion...

...Passionate advocates of both cases were recruited far more on the personal, emotional appeal of th e letters than on an objective examina-tion of the facts of each case...

...Frank-furter played an extraordinary role in both cases...

...The reasons for the rancor directe d at authors like Russell, Radosh, Milton , and Weinstein can be traced to wha t is at stake: the notion of the inno-cence of the left itself...

...The myths of the nonviolent, non-ideological character of the accused . The Rosenbergs were depicted as a "simple, progressive couple...