Communism
...Historical Writing on Domestic Communism
and Anti-Communism
By John Earl Haynes
[A edited and modified version of this essay appeared as
"The Cold War Debate Continues:
A Traditionalist Looks at Historical Writing on
Domestic Communism and Anti-Communism"
in The Journal of Cold War Studies 2,1 (Winter 2000)]
The domestic side of the Cold War has been a contentious area of scholarly debate. And the most sensitive part has been the history of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the inextricably linked issue of domestic anticommunism. One symptom of the strong emotions these issues still raise and the fear that the intellectual status quo will be upset appeared in a 1998 editorial reprimand of traditionalist scholars by the nation’s leading newspaper, the New York Times. The editorial, entitled "Revisionist McCarthyism," thundered that America should "beware the rehabilitation of Joseph McCarthy" and denounced "a number of American scholars" -- the editorial mentioned no names -- who "armed with audacity and new archival information . . . would like to rewrite the historical verdict on Senator McCarthy and McCarthyism."[1] The strange aspect of this incident was that the likely targets of the editorial had made no attempt to rewrite the verdict on McCarthy. In a joint response, Ronald Radosh, Harvey Klehr, and this author noted that the new evidence on the CPUSA and espionage offered no vindication of McCarthy, stating:
In The Secret World of American Communism, two of us stated that "[i]n McCarthy's hands, anticommunism was a partisan weapon used to implicate the New Deal, liberals, and the Democratic Party in treason. Using evidence that was exaggerated, distorted, and in some cases utterly false, [McCarthy] accused hundreds of individuals of Communist activity, recklessly mixing the innocent with the assuredly guilty when it served his political...
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