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In terms of the the points discussed by Mr. Smith and Mr. Beichman, I am surprised to find myself between the two positions. It is foolish, I think, not to carefully document and weigh the relations between the Soviets and the CPUSA, as the American party was under continual pressure to follow a pretty clear international line. It is also true, depending a bit on the period you are talking about (there is actually a HISTORY to this relationship), that often not too much pressure was needed, that the CPUSA leadership often followed the Soviets quite readily. Lovestone, who has somehow been reincarnated in some circles as an indepdently minded radical, was completely absorbed with reading -- and following -- the various twists and turns until his fatal misstep in 1929. He was the consumate factionalist and it was all predicated on the disposition of the Soviets. Foster, who is quickly written up as the archtypical Stalinist, spent the first part of his career giving the CI and the American party leadership fits and the last part of his career ... as an archtypical Stalinist. But to completely ignore very real debates in the CPUSA with very real consequences and more importantly, to assume that the line discussed at various cocktail parties in NYC actually reflected what rank and file members were thinking and doing is bad history. Given the type of organization it was, it is essential to watch the international relationship and even the rather boring factional struggles in New York City rather closely, but if you are not doing research on the actual experience of communist activists in the field, then you really don't know too much about them. You cannot, in fact, extrapolate their entire political lives from a statement by Stalin, or Browder, or Lovestone. We have been doing that for too long and it leads to the tedious sorts of exchanges we get here all too often. To take the particular case of the Duclos article, one of Browder's problems was precisely that his rather important decision to transform the CP into a political organization did not reflect orders from Moscow, though it was tolerated for some time. Likewise, when the Duclos letter did arrive, it arrived in the wake of an important split in the CPUSA leadership over the entire nature of the party. The Duclos letter does indeed indicate the weight of Soviet opinion in the US party and the return to an orthodox M-L line is part of the explanation for what destroyed the party in the postwar era (that and a quite unprecedented onslaught by the government at various levels and the advent of the Cold War). But the prequel to the Duclos letter, the continuation of a great deal of Pop Front sorts of activities at the local level, and continuing dissent within the party all suggest that the story is little more complicated than "orders from Moscow." Jim Barrett
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