The Travail of U.S. Communists

...is no victory at all...

...Early in March, quite soon after the Twentieth Congress concluded, William Z. Foster began a series of articles in the Daily Worker explaining to its readers the meaning and history of the "cult of the personality...

...The central object of the party's faith has contaminated itself before his eyes...

...A few weeks Iater the national committee of the CPUSA confirmed Foster's position: "We believe that the resolution of the CPSU provides a convincing answer to the Big Business enemies of socialism, who claim that the gross mis takes made under Stalin's leadership are inherent in socialism...

...They "demanded" explanations of the "excesses," insisted that all those guilty in the Rajk case be brought to trial, could not understand how confessions had been "rigged" in the courtroom, were "strongly dissatisfied" when no official statement on anti-Semitism was forthcoming...

...The stream of critical letter petered out to an entirely manageable trickle...

...Eugene Dennis presented what was necessarily a sad substitute: his "Sorrow and Perspectives...

...I for one looked hopefully, but vainly, at the end of the document for a pledge that the last execution had taken place on Soviet soil...

...What after all, Dennis clearly implied, is Yiddish culture compared to that achievement...

...It coincides with our estimate...

...For the next months, and probably years, the CP will be on good behaviour...

...Like the little boy, they dared not step into the street, though had they heard Khrushchev's call they might have bounded across easily enough...

...This was supplied—and with a vehemence which might have surprised Foster and Dennis—by the more imaginative editors of the Daily Worker, who sensed immediately the possibilities of "criticism" and of the doctrine of "national communist parties...

...denial of collective leadership...

...The logic of "independence" might even require more than this: the Worker printed letters demanding that the Browderite expulsions be reconsidered, and one hesitant reader thought that the Trotskyites, for all their wickedness, might be within the pale after all...

...Others only begged to be comforted: "...when I read about the horrible deeds, I felt terrible...

...But no editorial ever appeared, and the casual tone of the welcome soon vanished from the paper...

...what was actually required was a touch of pure unreality...

...That may well have been so...

...How come these things were allowed to happen in the Soviet Union...

...The significant thing, of course, was that the new position which Gates, Alan Max, and a few others developed did not differ substantially from the dulled reiterations of their party superiors...

...For the privilege of a place "within the people's movement for a more democratic America" they were willing to repeat many times their confession: "We were wrong, terribly wrong...

...It took some courage to mention the betrayed dream...

...The Worker welcomed the statement as the most recent contribution to its "fraternal discussion" and promised an editorial analysis...

...Instead I learned that three more executions had been announced.., and my stomach turned over with the bloodletting, with the madness of vengeance and counter-vengeance, of suspicion and counter-suspicion...

...As it was, many readers urged such a dissolution (while an approximately equal number warned against "rightist tendencies...

...This ought to be remembered in the coming night of piety...

...And amid the confusion of the medicine men a few individuals managed to make their escape...

...Then early in July the Central Commmittee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union issued its long-awaited answer to the "criticism," and one by one the "national" CPs acknowledged its omniscience...

...Perhaps the first sign of this was the choice of Dennis' Worker article, "The Khrushchev Speech and the USA," for reprinting in Pravda...

...Foster did admit that this raised certain problems, and chief among these was the problem of opposition: "What alternative policies to Stalin's were suggested...

...He had failed to understand, he wrote, "that to win socialism and to abandon the holy right of man to his own conscience...

...Perhaps the Worker editors will be given a certain leeway, while Dennis retains control of the party machine...

...They turned away from the workers of Poznan...

...Surprisingly, the one who spoke openly for those who refused to be protected from despair was Howard Fast...

...never again can I accept as a just practice under socialism that which I know to be unjust...

...But "reality as a whole" did not offer sufficient comfort...

...Even Dennis acquiesced in it, though with little spirit...

...He can hardly expect men like Dennis and Foster to understand his attitude, or to accept it...

...Quickly to reestablish the old atmosphere of unconditional obedience is now impossible...

...For the Soviet Union is the country where working people suffered privation, hunger and war" to build socialism...

...He offered his condolences, as it were, "for these outrages, which invoke the most profound horror and indignation...

...And George Murray admitted the mistake of "leaving" the CIO...

...there would be no need to suppress even bourgeois parties...

...The Worker congratulated the "independent" CPs of Italy, France, England and Canada, rejoiced in their fraternal discussion, and in their common outlook...

...The "Black Belt" theory of Negro sovereignty was officially discarded in a column by Abner Berry, which also suggested a new look at integration...

...But only one letter, among the many which have appeared in the Worker's columns since March, publicly challenged all "explanation" and expressed complete disillusionment...

...Fast's reply to Lyons's "Open Letter" shows him still painfully caught betweenthe boldness of his Worker article and the years of habitual obedience to the party...

...But John Gates, Worker editor, proved the better medicine man...

...During April, May and June, they printed one letter after another attacking Foster and Dennis—most often as "apologists" for the Soviet Union...

...Communist Party proclaimed their newly discovered critical mind, then the workers of Poznan gave them a dramatic opportunity to exhibit it...

...And it is difficult to see how he can return to the paper...

...Americans who abhor the idea of anyone interfering in our country to stir up force and violence will be justified in demand ing an accounting from both Allen Dulles and brother John...

...So it was necessary for the patient to stage his own mock cure...

...And it made the same accusation as Radio Moscow had broadcast to the world: "...this was no 'spontaneous' up rising, but a long planned instigation...

...He warned that the stream of letters which greeted the paper's invitation might "turn into a destructive flood" unless it was given direction...

...As the revelations of horror appeared, one after another, he stoically added them to his manuscript, never changing its tone, or hinting that anything was wrong...

...It was addressed to the party's national committee: "You said that the evils bared 'created a peril for socialism.' In my opinion the evils summed up spell something which was not socialism...

...But the happiest thing about Fast's column was that it appears to have been his last...

...A note of actual worry crept into the letters of those who (signing themselves "Undaunted" and "Ever-Undespairing") pleaded that Marxist-Leninist purity be guarded "as the apple of our eye...

...But they obviously were thinking in popular front terms again themselves...

...one led by Dennis, which follows the Khrushchev line faithfully...

...Finally he held the balances and judged: "As for socialist-minded workers, they are obligated to deal with relaity as a whole...

...For the CP to survive, if it can at all, this public recantation is indispensable...

...The ritual of "criticism was inaugurated by those in the party who possessed a minimum of merely tactical sensitivity...

...On July 2 the Daily Worker answered the devil in a way that must have warmed his heart...

...Yet they strove everywhere to create the sense of difference, of criticism...

...But in July all this changed...

...My stomach does not turn over like Howard Fast's...

...For several months, in his column "The Current Scene," Fast talked around the revelations...

...The pattern of their reactions demonstrated once more, if demonstration were needed, the extreme limits of their cautious obedience* * Subsequently, Fast became involved inan interesting exchange with EugeneLyons in July issues of the New Leader...

...When James Allen sought to disagree, the Worker specifically disassociated itself from his views...

...At the time of this writing nothing further of his has appeared in the Daily Worker...

...What resistance was made in top official circles to Stalin's trend towards...

...It reveals a condition which Khrushchev would not, and probably could not, alter...

...For they have foresworn the very possibility of moral shock...

...pent-up grievances were exploited for ulterior motives...

...But the moral quality of American Communism was clearly revealed in the only letter commenting on Fast's column which the Worker printed: "When we read of men convicted as accomplices in the crimes of Khrushchev's report being executed, I say good...

...One correspondent wrote, as if defensively, that the letters were a "weak reflection of the deep inner turmoil that is rocking the party membership today...

...one led by the Worker editors, Gates and Max, which pushes toward a more "independent" line...

...He spoke only in approved phrases—and waited: "These problems can be met solely by a review of Stalin's work and this can be done most authoritatively only by those leaders who have worked closely with him in the top circles of the Communist Party...

...They threw open the letter columns of the Daily Worker and proclaimed a new era of democratic discussion in the CP...

...Since Foster's position is both impossible and obsolete from even the CP point of view, the likelihood is that a compromise will be reached between the second and third groups...

...are convinced that the Soviet Union under the leadership of the CPSU is moving ahead to a new period of unprecedented Socialist progress...

...His report was so much a diagnosis, however, that the disease demanded some attention...

...Its editorial response to the suppression of the Polish workers' strike might have come at any time in a thirty-odd year history of unthinking obedience...

...Instead it carried a statement from Foster couched in the only rhetoric he seems to know: "...the resolution of the CPSU goes a long way in explaining...

...Criticism," he insisted, was necessary to "repair and restore" the battered moral authority of the "countries of socialism...

...The Poznan editorial reveals the deepest sickness of the Communist Party...

...It was a test of newly acquired virtue which the devil himself might have devised...

...Hardly had the leaders of the U.S...

...I11 For a short time all this must have seemed like more than a game—at least for a few of the participants...

...Like Foster and Dennis the editors of the Worker never thought of examining Khrushchev's description of Stalin's Russia, nor of questioning his claim that Russia today is transformed...

...As well as he knew the answers to his questions—that the very structure of the Communist dictatorship made such suggestions and such opposition entirely impossible— Foster maintained his impenetrable calm...

...Could the CP extend its "criticism" to areas unspecified in Khrushchev's report, even to unpermitted areas...

...They "denounced and protested" all the crimes of the past...

...It isn't the socialism we've dreamed of and worked for all these years...

...About such matters the editors were silent...

...For the CP now faces the gravest crisis in its history, and it may well be to the interests of the larger international political movement it represents that locally it should dissolve itself as an organiza tion...

...It had clearly been the weakest of the critical pieces...

...in July a CP official admitted that "small groups" were leaving the party...

...But they could not make a reality of either intelligence or independence...

...In the meantime it is essential to notice that, whatever the new line, it will continue to be rooted in the same moral-political values as the line just repudiated...

...Fast did in fact strive to restore the moral authority of at least his own brand of "socialism...

...His article described a despair which, if it is honest, must drive him from the the CP...

...Perhaps the man who wrote in to say simply, "It will never be the same again," spoke for the many who left...

...But when the tragedy of Yiddish culture in the Soviet Union was made public in New York by the Communist Freiheit, something was needed which—to quote a letter—sounded more like "moral indignation...

...In the years before his death, it appeared, Stalin had become very mean...

...James Allen, an old party hand, claimed that Worker editorials demanding further "explanations" from Khrushchev smacked of "intervention" in the affairs of the socialist nation...

...And he offered his piti ful explanation: "They were perpetrated by Beria's gang and their predecessors as part of their conscious policy of stirring up national hatreds...

...the cleverest strategy will be to allow dissatisfaction to be expressed as a mechanism for rendering it ineffectual...

...And that would have meant the end of the CP...

...Perhaps they remembered also that the last major change in party line had been accompanied by an equally major change in party leadership...

...They suggested the foundation of a new "independent Marxist party," inclusive presumably of the Monthly Review and the National Guardian groups...

...It admitted only as much as the Polish government had already admitted: that many justified grievances existed...

...But shortly after the publication of Khrushchev's full report he faced them bravely: "There is little one can say to take the deadly edge off the Khrushchev speech...

...It correctly turns attention...

...The most significant revision however, featured in the Worker for several weeks, was the announcement by Max Weiss, national director of the CP, that the transition to socialism would be accomplished democratically...

...They did not doubt the guilt of any whom Khrushchev left unredeemed, nor did they wonder, or sorrow, as Fast did, at the latest execution in Azerbaijan...

...It is not ironic that such obedience turn upon its teacher, it is only traditional...

...The "rebellious" CPers resembled nothing so much as the little boy who announced his intention of running away from home, and then could not get very far—because he was not allowed to cross the street...

...Gates' method, as opposed to that of Allen, did at least permit a few unhappy let ter-writers to react publicly with shock, confusion, shame and anger...

...The Kremlin, apparently unhappy about Togliatti, was not accustomed to even the sounds of disagreement...

...But many veterans of previous party-line somersaults saw no reason for such fuss...

...With an assist from Togliatti the new critical attitude became virtually the line of the party...

...Whether in fact that is possible or not iS beside the point...

...It must be said that the number of such letter writers was few...

...And let's hope they don't abolish the death penalty until they get them all...

...The resolution correctly estimates...

...Nor did this happy reprieve exhaust Communist humility...

...They printed letters mocking Khrushchev's "fearlesness," and one which called him morally decadent...

...The rumors are that three "factions" have appeared in the top leadership of CP: one led by Foster, which tries to follow the Thorez strategy of minimizing the recent changes...

...one must face the fact that it itemizes a record of barbarism and paranoic blood-lust that will be a lasting and shameful memory to man...

...We...