What Made Men Into Communists?:

...The dead documents ac-cumulate as time goes on, but the insight wanes as the impact of events recedes...

...Some PhD student, 100 years hence, will be commended if he unearths a fraction of this litera ture from oblivion, and will in any case probably be unable to under stand it...

...But in the process, the Moscow apparatus was enabled to forge that hold over the party which, after 1929 at any rate, deprived its members of even a semblance of independence or in dividuality...

...In what sort of predicament did they find themselves once they were involved...

...Moscow gold was a "rela tively minor" item and "it would not have made much difference if the Comintern had called the tune without having paid the piper...

...The Americans, in contrast, had aims and ideals and ideological enthusiasms, and they made the mistake of supposing that the Moscow apparatchiki were the same as themselves...

...There exist histories of a number of Western Communist parties, but none has ever succeeded in explain ing by what magic Moscow made the parties its tools...

...It was not money which created the dependence on Moscow, as Drapers meticulous investigation shows...

...There is the question of sources, since it usually takes some time before archives are thrown open to schol ars...

...The future historian may perhaps have at his disposal much more material of this kind—but will he have a fraction of Draper's in sight...

...What made men into Communists...

...No doubt neither Lovestone nor Foster wished the American party to become a mere captive agency of Moscow...

...Draper has also talked at length with those living witnesses who were willing to talk...

...Each doubtless believed at some stage that he was using Moscow for his own ends and for the benefit of the American party...

...I suppose there was no country in the '20s to which the Leninist prescription for utopia was less ap plicable than the United States...

...The case of Jay Lovestone is perhaps the best illustration of the process...

...Again, I have known many former Communists— indeed I am privileged to count a few of them among my friends...

...The outstanding merit of Draper's book is that it provides, by reason of this human quality of charitable understanding, an answer to this question...

...The scholarly sincerity and meticulous attention to facts, which are to be found on every page of Draper's work, show that this duty can be discharged just as honestly in writing about recent as in describing remote events...

...In so doing he taught his enemies to avenge themselves by following his example...

...Indeed, I should not be surprised if before long Draper's work as a historian—not only of events which are almost con temporary, but of a political move-ment best calculated to arouse the most intense passions—will be recog nized as a model for writing of this type...

...and with no desire to judge, let alone con demn...

...There is the question of preju-dice—contemporary events are live political issues and no man can be expected to rise above his political predilections...

...As for the risk of prejudice, what historian has been free from it, if prejudice in this context includes the moral values of right and wrong by which a man lives...

...an airtight rationale for politi cal captivity and personal irresponsi bility...

...Many of them are men of strong, in-dividual personality, steadfast in principle, with shining intellectual honesty...

...Yet, I suppose, while in the party they were grim automata, as like in action and in utterance to any other party member as two peas...

...This they did four years later...

...Step by step, the Americans were drawn both in to the Moscow double-talk and into the now very familiar—but in the early '20s still novel—technique of the party apparatus, with all its at tendant consequences...

...He repaid the debt by a subservience to the Comintern which "provided...

...These qualities are almost un known in other historians of Com munist parties, especially where the authors have at one time themselves been involved in the movement...

...The key to Draper's work as historian is his charity— his ever present passion to see and understand why human beings be have in the way they do...

...Lovestone gave it the most extreme expression when it suited his immediate purpose against Fos ter...

...Reviewed by Leonard Schapiro Author, "The Communist Party of the Soviet Union" THOSE WHO HAVE read Theodore Draper's study of the origins of Communism in America will rightly expect from him another masterpiece now that he has set his hand to the history of American Communism between 1920 and 1929...

...I doubt if even Draper could make the history of the American (or any) Communist party after 1929 of more than pathological in terest...

...In 1925, Lovestone won his domination over the party through manipulations by the Comintern...

...The French Revolu tion is a case in point...

...There is also the in convenient fact that some of the actors in the drama are alive and in a position to refute or distort the written record...

...Writing without documents in 1818, Madame de Stael in her Considerations sur les Principaux Evenemens de la Revolution, Francoise had the vision to perceive that it was liberty which was the tradition in France and tyranny the novelty...

...But even al lowing for our national prejudices, there are some cogent arguments to be advanced against premature as sessment of historical events...

...The writing of contemporary his tory is not treated with great respect in England—I understand the posi tion is different in America—by those who are quaintly called "pro fessional" historians...

...But what a historian he would make of the Comintern, which still awaits a worthy chronicler...

...At the risk of oversimplifying Draper's fascinating analysis of the process of gradual enslavement, I should de scribe it as involuntary but progres sive involvement of the less astute Americans by the much more astute Muscovites...

...The men of the ap paratus in Moscow enjoyed the enormous advantage that they knew almost from the start what they wanted to achieve: an American party that would obediently serve Moscow's interests...

...It would have been easy to write a book on American Communism which made this the central issue...

...And what effects did it have on them...

...His dili gence and familiarity with the field have enabled him to range widely over long-forgotten, ephemeral politi cal writings...

...No one can de mand of the historian that he should be false to these principles...

...But it is only very incidental in Draper's book because he is much more concerned with the "Why...

...This seems to me the core of the problem of writing contemporary history...

...These values will obtrude even in a study of life in the Stone Age...

...With the ex-ception of Tocqueville—and Tocque-ville is always an exception—this il-lumination escaped most of the "archive rats" (to borrow Stalin's elegant phrase) who began to fill volumes half a century later...

...When intrigues and squabbles arose, as was inevitable in a small doctrinaire party which had little relation to political realities, it was tempting for one faction to defeat its rivals by toadying to the Comin tern...

...As one who has himself attempted some excursions into contemporary history, I have naturally never been convinced by these arguments...

...They will not be disappointed...

...Take sources...

...With the help of what he modestly calls the "good fairy that works for historians" he has amassed about 1,000 pages of confidential minutes of the top Com munist committees for the period 1919-29—usually marked "Read and Destroy...

...But any lingering doubts I may have had have now been finally dispelled by Draper...

...His only imperative duty is to search dili gently for the facts to the best of his powers...