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To: "H-HOAC-ED-JEH" <haynes@mail.h-net.msu.edu> Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 6:03 PM Subject: Re: Hiss and the Evidence Re: Professor Sandilands' post Sandiland writes: "Incidentally, regarding Stephen Schwartz's strong claim today (citing Chambers' friend Meyer Schapiro) that Whittaker Chambers (a demonstrably chronic fantasist) was incapable of lying, it is worth reading what Jeff Kesselhoff says about Schapiro's testimony." I read Kisseloff's comments on Meyer Schapiro. Kissellof writes: "Specifically, Chambers and his friend, the art historian Meyer Schapiro, had both testified that after Chambers' break with the Party, Schapiro obtained translation work for him. The defense then produced letters from Oxford University Press which showed that in March 1938 Chambers was already working on a translation for the publisher." And what, precisely, does this prove? That Meyer Schapiro did not know Chambers was already working for someone else? So what? Schapiro was an art critic, not a psychiatrist or a priest. Chambers was not obliged to tell him everything. And how does this infer a lie on Chambers part? Kisselloff's language appears to be deliberately ambiguous so as to suggest an impeachment of Schapiro that does not hold up. Intellectuals commenting on this forum should do some due diligence on people they are writing about before they question their reputations. Meyer Schapiro is universally recognized as one of the most intelligent and sober art critics of the 20th century and an individual of exceptional rectitude. Trying to undermine him is like trying to undermine James T. Farrell or Sidney Hook, but more so. It doesn't wash. These desperate attempts to rehabilitate a miserable bourgeois adventurer caught in the web of his treasonous lies more resemble cultist meanderings from the Rosicrucians or some other marginal group than serious historiography. I am waiting for the "demonstration" that Whittaker Chambers was a "chronic fantasist." He was a gifted imaginative journalist and author. Is that what is meant here? There is no evidence whatever of anything else except the typical exaggerations found among Stalinists in the 1930s, when all of them loved to pretend they were commissars or close to commissars, tough guys who would face anything in the style of a Malraux novel (now THERE was a fake and a liar), etc. etc. But I won't wait too long. I knew the truth about Chamber 40 years ago and I know it now. Hiss was guilty. Chambers told the truth. Stalin was evil, and Stalinists evilly served his regime. Stephen Schwartz
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