American Communism and Soviet Russia: With a new introduction by the author

Communism in American Life

by Theodore Draper

This companion volume to The Roots of American Communism brings to completion what the author describes as the essence of the relationship of American Communism to Soviet Russia in the first decade after the Bolsheviks seized power. The outpouring of new archive materials makes it plain that Draper's premise is direct and to the point: The communist movement "was transformed from a new expression of American radicalism to the American appendage of a Russian revolutionary power." Each generation must find this out for itself, and no better guide exists than the work of master historian Theodore Draper. American Communism and Soviet Russia is acknowledged to be the classic, authoritative history of the critical formative period of the American Communist Party. Based on confidential minutes of the top party committees, interviews with party leaders, and public records, this book carefully documents the influence of the Soviet Union on the fundamental nature of American Communism. Draper's reflections on that period in this edition are a fitting capstone to this pioneering effort.

Genres: History, Politics

626 pages, Paperback

First published May 28, 1960

About the author

Theodore H. "Ted" Draper was an American historian and political writer. Draper is best known for the 14 books he completed during his life, including work regarded as seminal on the formative period of the American Communist Party, the Cuban Revolution, and the Iran-Contra Affair. Draper was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the 1990 recipient of the Herbert Feis Award for Nonacademically Affiliated Historians from the American Historical Association.

Reviews

[Julio The Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

The great "What if?" of American Communism is what if the American Communist Party, born in 1919 from a split in the Socialist Party, had followed its own course in coming to grips with such issues as how to build class struggle trade unions in the United States, tackling American racism and recruiting a large segment of the Black proletariat, and breaking the U.S. working class away from the Democratic Party. We'll never know, because the Party leadership got caught up in squabbles relating to the Russian Communist Party instead of doing the hard work of addressing those life-and-death domestic issues; meanwhile, the Communist Party's dependence on Russia, including for finances, made it alien to most U.S. workers. Thedore Draper concludes this second volume on the origins of American Bolshevism on this sad note, "what might have been".

[FiveBooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Professor Harvey Klehr has chosen to discuss Theodore Draper’s American Communism and Soviet Russia , on FiveBooks as one of the top five on his subject - Communism in America, saying that:


"...This book 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.

The full interview is available here: http://thebrowser.com/books/interview...