Communist Party USA

The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) is one of several Marxist-Leninist groups in the United States. While the CPUSA played a significant role in organizing industrial unions and defending the rights of African-Americans in the 1930s and 1940s, it was effectively eliminated as a political force by McCarthyism and the Cold War.

Soviet funding of the Party and espionage

The USSR covertly subsidized the CPUSA from its foundation in 1919 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Releases from the Comintern archives show that all national Communist parties that conformed to the Soviet line were funded in the same fashion. The Comintern supplied the tiny American Communist movement with the equivalent of several million dollars in valuables, an enormous sum in the 1920s. http://www.fas.org/sgp/library/moynihan/appa4.html From the Communist point of view this international funding arose from the internationalist nature of communism itself; fraternal assistance was considered the duty of Communists in any one country to give aid to their comrades in other countries, even if this meant influencing the internal affairs of sovereign countries in ways that these same Communists would denounce in public.

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In the 1930s the CPUSA recruited several hundred persons among thousands of new employees hired by the federal government under the impact of the New Deal's rapid expansion of governmental programs. Federal regulations forbade partisan political activity by federal employees, and open membership in the Communist Party brought discharge. The CPUSA evaded the law by organizing caucuses of government employees that met in secret.

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Whittaker Chambers has alleged that Sandor Goldberger—also known as "Josef Peters": he commonly wrote under the name J. Peters—a Comintern apparatchik who worked in the Fourth Department, headed the party?s underground secret apparatus from 1932 to 1938 and pioneered its role as an auxiliary to Soviet intelligence activities. Bernard Schuster, Organizational Secretary of the New York District of the CPUSA was the operational recruiter and conduit for members of the CPUSA into the ranks of the secret apparatus, or "Group A line".

Related Topics:
Whittaker Chambers - J. Peters - Bernard Schuster

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Stalin publicly disbanded the Comintern in 1943. A Moscow NKVD message to all stations on 12 September 1943 detailed instructions for handling intelligence sources within the CPUSA after the disestablishment of the Comintern. Earl Browder had been both Chairman of the CPUSA and recruiter for the NKVD (in the Venona project he is known as Agent "HELMSMAN"). He was expelled from the leadership when the Soviet Union policy shifted. His crime had been to follow Moscow's orders in 1941 and "disband" the party in a show of unity with the U.S. government. But the NKGB thought his services worth keeping, and they succeeded in covertly financing him, by setting him up as a representative of Soviet publishers. Even then, that didn't work, as Browder was dropped after violating the Party Line again in favor of Titoism. Lovestone said of Browder, "There, but for an accident of geography, walks a dead man".

Related Topics:
12 September - Earl Browder - NKVD - Venona project - NKGB - Titoism

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From 1959 until 1989, when Gus Hall attacked the initiatives taken by Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, the Party received a substantial subsidy from the Soviet Union. There is at least one receipt signed by Gus Hall in the KGB archives. http://members.iglou.com/jtmajor/SovWorl.htm Starting with $75,000 in 1959 this was increased gradually to $3,000,000 in 1987. This substantial amount reflected the Party's subservience to the Moscow line, in contrast to the French and later Italian Parties, whose Eurocommunism deviated from the orthodox line in the late 1970s.

Related Topics:
1959 - 1989 - Mikhail Gorbachev - Soviet Union - 1987 - Line - Italian Parties - Eurocommunism

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The cutoff of funds in 1989 resulted in a financial crisis resulting in cutting back publication in 1990 of the Party newspaper, the People's Daily World, to weekly publication, the People's Weekly World. (References for this section are provided .)

Related Topics:
1990 - People's Weekly World

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With the declassification of the FBI's files on the CPUSA, Russian archives holding the records of the Communist International and the CPUSA, and decrypted World War II Soviet messages between NKVD offices in the United States and Moscow, also known as the Venona Cables, the extent of the CPUSA's involvement in espionage is now becoming public. The Venona cables appear to confirm that Julius Rosenberg was guilty of espionage.

Related Topics:
NKVD - Julius Rosenberg

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Theodore Hall, a Harvard-trained physicist and CPUSA member, began passing information on the atomic bomb to the Soviets soon after he was hired at Los Alamos at age 19. Hall, who was known as Mlad by his KGB handlers, escaped prosecution. Hall's wife, aware of his espionage, claims that their NKVD handler had advised them to plead innocent, as the Rosenbergs did, if formally charged.

Related Topics:
Theodore Hall - Harvard - Physicist - Los Alamos

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It was the belief of opponents of the CPUSA such as J. Edgar Hoover, long-time director of the FBI, and Joseph McCarthy, for whom McCarthyism is named, and other anticommunists that the CPUSA constituted an active conspiracy, was secretive, loyal to a foreign power, and dedicated to the clandestine infiltration of American cultural and political institutions. This is the "traditionalist" view of some in the field of Communist studies such as Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes.

Related Topics:
J. Edgar Hoover - Joseph McCarthy - McCarthyism - Anticommunists - Conspiracy - Infiltration - Communist studies

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In the "Findings and declarations of fact" of the United States Congress in passing the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950 (50 U.S.C. Chap. 23 Sub. IV Sec. 841), states,

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:"The Congress finds and declares that the Communist Party of the United States, although purportedly a political party, is in fact an instrumentality of a conspiracy to overthrow the Government of the United States. It constitutes an authoritarian dictatorship within a republic, demanding for itself the rights and privileges accorded to political parties, but denying to all others the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution. Unlike political parties, which evolve their policies and programs through public means, by the reconciliation of a wide variety of individual views, and submit those policies and programs to the electorate at large for approval or disapproval, the policies and programs of the Communist Party are secretly prescribed for it by the foreign leaders of the world Communist movement. Its members have no part in determining its goals, and are not permitted to voice dissent to party objectives. Unlike members of political parties, members of the Communist Party are recruited for indoctrination with respect to its objectives and methods, and are organized, instructed, and disciplined to carry into action slavishly the assignments given them by their hierarchical chieftains. Unlike political parties, the Communist Party acknowledges no constitutional or statutory limitations upon its conduct or upon that of its members. The Communist Party is relatively small numerically, and gives scant indication of capacity ever to attain its ends by lawful political means. The peril inherent in its operation arises not from its numbers, but from its failure to acknowledge any limitation as to the nature of its activities, and its dedication to the proposition that the present constitutional Government of the United States ultimately must be brought to ruin by any available means, including resort to force and violence. Holding that doctrine, its role as the agency of a hostile foreign power renders its existence a clear present and continuing danger to the security of the United States. It is the means whereby individuals are seduced into the service of the world Communist movement, trained to do its bidding, and directed and controlled in the conspiratorial performance of their revolutionary services. Therefore, the Communist Party should be outlawed" http://www.lii.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/50/841.html

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