Harvey Klehr on Communism in America

Your first book is American Communism and Soviet Russia by Theodore Draper.

That is a fairly old book now. I read it many, many years ago at graduate school. Theodore Draper was the leading light among historians of American Communism.

This book had a major impact, because it was so thoroughly researched and had lots of great detail. It was one of the first books that really allowed you to study the story of how American Communism was shaped by its reaction to the Russian Revolution. 

There are other numerous examples of where disputes within the American Communist Party were resolved by all the participants hurrying off to Moscow and presenting their respective positions to the Communist International. Moscow was the ultimate arbiter of what the American Communist Party did. 

And why is this book in particular important to you and your work?

It set the parameters of the way that I and a lot of other people came to understand how the Communist Party had operated in America and it helped us to understand why it had failed so miserably. And I think that’s because American radical groups have never done terribly well in the United States for many complex reasons that people have been arguing about for many years. In the case of the Communist Party, along with those reasons, another is because it was so beholden to the Soviet Union.

Your next book is The Rosenberg File which looks at that famous case and all the myths that surround it.

The Rosenbergs were executed in the early 1950s on the charge of spying for the Soviet Union, particularly for atomic espionage, and their case attracted worldwide attention at the time, both because they asserted their innocence and because here was this couple that nobody had ever heard of when they were arrested. Then they were convicted of this horrible crime and executed, leaving their two young kids as orphans. There were all kinds of appeals for clemency from European governments, from the Pope and demonstrations around the world, and the case has continued to fascinate scholars.

What the authors do with this book is to provide the first thorough, scholarly and objective examination of the case. They had access to United States government records. They interviewed many people who were involved in the case and they really produced a marvellous book which demonstrated that Julius Rosenberg in fact was guilty and that he had run a very large and effective espionage operation for the Soviets. 

And they also argued that Ethel Rosenberg, although she was involved in her husband’s spying operation, really played a very minor role in it and she had been arrested, convicted and sentenced to death in part to pressure him to name other people involved.

So it is a very significant book and the release of material from Russian archives has proved they were right about their arguments.

Whittaker Chambers by Sam Tanenhaus.

Whittaker Chambers was a key figure in the first major post-World War II spy case. He was a disillusioned communist who is a fascinating man and one of the attractions of this book is that it really gives Chambers his due. He was a very talented writer and a much tormented man who had become a Communist as a young man in college in the 1920s and he went into the Communist Party underground in the early 30s and become a courier for a Soviet spy ring.

By the late 1930s he quit and secreted away some material that he wanted to have to protect himself. He warned the Russians that he had this material and if he was ever harmed he would use it. In 1939, after the Nazi-Soviet pact, he was persuaded by a friend that he needed to tell what he knew to the American government – he did but nobody really believed him.

It was not until 1948 that he was called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities against Alger Hiss, formerly a high-ranking State Department official. Hiss’s later trial riveted the country and this was the case that convinced many Americans that there had been significant Soviet espionage. It was shortly after Alger Hiss was convicted that Joseph McCarthy came to prominence, so the case had a huge influence on American public life.