The Red Flag: A History of Communism

by Priestland, David

  27. S. Bartolini, The Political Mobilization of the European Left, 1860–1980: the Class Cleavage (Cambridge, 2000), pp.429–31.

  28. C. Pennetier and B. Pudal, ‘Du parti bolchevik au parti stalinien’, in M. Dreyfus et al., Le Siècle des communismes (Paris, 2000), pp.338–9.

  29. On autobiographies, see C. Pennetier and B. Pudal (eds.), Autobiographies, autocritiques, aveux dans le monde communiste (Paris, 2002).

  30. J. Haslam, The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Collective Security in Europe, 1933–1938 (London, 1984), pp.107–15.

  31. For support for the Communists, see H. Graham, The Spanish Republic at War, 1936–1939 (Cambridge, 2002), pp.182–5.

  32. E. Hobsbawm, Interesting Times. A Twentieth-Century Life (London, 2002), p.133.

  33. L. Stern, Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, 1920–40: From Red Square to the Left Bank (London, 2007), p.17.

  34. Ibid.

  35. B. Webb and S. Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization (London, 1937), p.429.

  36. The trip is recounted by Ludmila Stern on the basis of the VOKS archive. See Stern, Western Intellectuals, pp.146–9.

  37. S. Taylor, Stalin’s Apologist: Walter Duranty, the New York Times’s Man in Moscow (Oxford, 1990).

  38. Stern, Western Intellectuals, pp.31, 24–5.

  39. Cited in D. Caute, Fellow Travellers. A Postscript to the Enlightenment (London, 1973), p.165.

  40. P. Neruda, Memoirs, trans. H. St Martin (London, 2004), p.132.

  41. P. Drake, ‘Chile’, in M. Falcoff and F. Pike (eds.), The Spanish Civil War, 1936–39. American Hemispheric Perspectives (Lincoln, Nebr., 1982).

  42. I. Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky, 1929–1940 (London, 1963), p.434.

  43. Stern, Western Intellectuals, p.32.

  44. Jackson, Popular Front in France, pp.239–43.

  45. Graham, Spanish Republic, pp.264–5.

  46. S. Payne, The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism (New Haven, 2004), pp.228–9.

  47. G. Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (London, 1986), p.213.

  48. For a view that blames the Communists and the USSR, see R. Radosh, M. Habeck and G. Sevostianov (eds.), Spain Betrayed: the Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War (New Haven, 2001). For an interpretation more sympathetic to the Communists, see Graham, Spanish Republic.

  49. For this view, see Payne, Spanish Civil War, pp.240, 275–8.

  50. On the ideology of the Trotskyist movement, see especially Robert Alexander, International Trotskyism, 1929–1985. A Documented Analysis of the Movement (Durham, NC, 1991), pp.1–20; A. Callinicos, Trotskyism (Milton Keynes, 1990), pp.6–16.

  51. A. M. Wald, The New York Intellectuals (Chapel Hill, 1987), chs.6–9.

  52. Soviet foreign policy in this period has been the subject of a good deal of controversy. For those who argue that Stalin positively welcomed a Nazi alliance, see R. Tucker, Stalin in Power: the Revolution from Above, 1928–1941 (New York, 1990), chs.10, 21. For a very different view, see T. Uldricks, ‘Soviet Security Policy in the 1930s’, in G. Gorodestsky (ed.), Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1991. A Retrospective (London, 1994). This account agrees with Pons, Stalin; Van Ree, Political Thought, ch.15.

  53. F. Firsov, ‘Arkhivy Kominterna i vneshnaia politika SSSR v 1939–1941 gg.’, Novaia i noveishaia istoriia 6 (1992), pp.18–19.

  54. Ibid.

  55. M. Johnstone, ‘Introduction’, in F. King and G. Matthews, About Turn. The British Communist Party and the Second World War, the Verbatim Record of the Central Committee meetings of 25 September and 2–3 October 1939 (London, 1990), pp.13–49.

  56. Cited in E. Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: the Nazi–Soviet War 1941–1945 (London, 2005), p.49.

  57. G. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion. Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia (New Haven, 1999), esp. pp.279–80, 296–7.

  58. Mawdsley, Thunder, p.229.

  59. M. Harrison, ‘The Soviet Union: the Defeated Victor’, in M. Harrison (ed.), The Economics of World War II. Six Great Powers in Comparison (Cambridge, 1998), p.271; Mawdsley, Thunder, pp.26–7.

  60. Mawdsley, Thunder, p.215.

  61. I. Ehrenburg and K. Simonov, In One Newspaper. A Chronicle of Unforget-table Years, trans. A. Kagan (New York, 1987), p.70.

  62. G. Hosking, Rulers and Victims. The Russians in the Soviet Union (Cambridge, Mass., 2006), p.201.

  63. R. Stites, ‘Frontline Entertainment’, in R. Stites (ed.), Culture and Entertainment in Wartime Russia (Bloomington, 1995), pp.133–4.

  64. McDermott and Agnew, The Comintern, p.207.

  65. Literaturnaia Gazeta, 12 September 1990.

  66. See A. Weiner, Making Sense of War (Princeton, 2001), pp.138–54.

  67. W. Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in the Ukraine (Chapel Hill, 2005), p.24.

  68. A. Agosti, PalmiroTogliatti (Turin, 1996), pp.15–26.

  69. S. Gundle, ‘The Legacy of the Prison Notebooks: Gramsci, the PCI and Italian Culture in the Cold War Period’, in C. Duggan and C. Wagstaff (eds.), Italy in the Cold War. Politics, Culture and Society 1948–58 (Oxford, 1995), pp.131–47.

  70. S. Gundle, I Comunisti italiani tra Hollywood e Mosca : la sfida della cultura di massa (1943–1991) (Florence, 1995), pp.19–28.

  71. M. Harrison, Accounting for War: Soviet Production, Employment, and the Defence Burden, 1940–1945 (Cambridge, 1996), p.163.

  72. Elena Zubkova, Russia after the War. Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945–1957 (New York, 1998), pp.16–18.

  73. G. Dimitrov, Dnevnik (9 mart 1933–6 fevruari 1949) (Sofia, 1997), p.464.

  74. Cited in Van Ree, Political Thought, p.244.

  75. G. Eisler, quoted by his widow. Cited in Epstein, The Last Revolutionaries, p.123.

  76. N. Naimark, The Russians in Germany: a History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), p.180.

  77. T. Toranska, Oni: Stalin’s Polish Puppets, trans. A. Kolakowska (London, 1987), p.246.

  78. M. Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, trans. M. Petrovich (London, 1962), p.84.

  79. K. Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 1943–1948 (Berkeley, 1991), pp.111–13.

  80. A. Rieber, ‘The Crack in the Plaster: Crisis in Romania and the Origins of the Cold War’, Journal of Modern History 76 (2004), pp.62–106.

  81. B. Abrams, The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation. Czech Culture and the Rise of Communism (Lanham, 2004), p.164.

  82. M. Gorbachev and Z. Mlynář, On Perestroika, the Prague Spring, and the Crossroads of Socialism (New York, 2002), pp.13–14.

  83. M. Pittaway, Eastern Europe 1939–2000 (London, 2000), pp.46–7.

  84. For these arguments, see M. Conway, ‘Democracy in Postwar Western Europe: The Triumph of a Political Model’, European History Quarterly 32 (2002), pp.70–6.

  85. V. Dimitrov, ‘Communism in Bulgaria’, in M. Leffler and D. Painter, The Origins of the Cold War: an International History (London, 2005), pp.191–204.

  86. M. Djilas, Tito. The Story from Inside (London, 1981), p.16.

  87. V. Dedijer, Tito Speaks. His Self-Portrait and Struggle with Stalin (London, 1953), pp.4–7.

  88. Djilas, Tito, p.7.

  89. Ibid., p.46.

  90. Ibid., p.20.

  91. Djilas, Conversations, pp.50–1.

  92. Ibid., p.76.

  93. Dedijer Tito Speaks, p.343.

  94. Djilas, Tito, p.31.

  95. This, of course, is not the place to try to resolve this complex issue, and the literature on the debate is enormous. For a traditionalist view that emphasizes the role of ideology, see H. Feis, From Trust to Terror: the Onset of the Cold War, 1945–1950 (New York, 1970). For one that stresses Russian national interests, see H. Morgenthau, In Defense of National Interest. A Critical Examination of American Foreign Policy (New York, 1951). For one of the classic early revisionist works, see G. Kolko, The Politics of War. Allied Diplomacy and the World Crisis of 1943–1945 (London, 1969).
For an account of the state of the debate, see O. Westad (ed.), Reviewing the Cold War (London, 2000).

  96. This is argued convincingly by Van Ree, Political Thought, chs.15–16.

  97. V. Pechatnov, ‘The Soviet Union and the Outside World’, p.2, forthcoming in Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. i.

  98. Cited in ibid., p.3.

  99. This is the argument of Leffler, see M. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, 1992).

  100. Cited in M. Leffler, For the Soul of All Mankind. The United States, the Soviet Union and the Cold War (New York, 2007), p.43.

  101. See especially N. Naimark, ‘Stalin and Europe in the Post-war Period, 1945–1953. Issues and Problems’, Journal of Modern History 2 (2004), pp.28–56.

  102. Pechatnov, ‘Soviet Union’, pp.8–9.

  103. G. Kennan, Memoirs 1925–1950 (Boston, 1967), pp.549–51, 557, 555.

  104. H. Truman, 1946–1952. Years of Trial and Hope (New York, 1965), vol. ii, p.125.

  105. Cited in Leffler, Preponderance, p.190.

  106. Pechatnov, ‘Soviet Union’, p.13.

  107. Truman, Years of Trial, vol. ii, p.129.

  108. P. Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988 (Harmondsworth, 1990), p.116.

  109. Kennan, Memoirs, p.559.

  110. M. Hogan, The Marshall Plan. America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947–1952 (Cambridge, 1987), pp.427–30.

  111. For this term, see M. Hogan, A Cross of Iron. Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954 (Cambridge, 1998), pp.312–14.

  112. V. Pechatnov, Ot soiuza – k kholodnoi voine. Sovetsko-amerikanskie otnosheniia v 1945–1947 gg. (Moscow, 2006), pp.158–9.

  113. V. Zubok and C. Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: from Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, Mass., 1996), pp.50–3.

  114. Toranska, Oni, p.257.

  115. See L. Gibianskii, ‘Kak voznik Kominform. Po novym arkhivnym materialam’, Novaia i noveishaia istoriia 4 (1993), pp.131–52; Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin, pp.125–33.

  116. P. Spriano, Stalin and the European Communists (London, 1985), pp.292 ff.

  117. Van Ree, Political Thought, pp.252–3.

  118. S. Pons, ‘Stalin and the Italian Communists’, in Leffler and Painter (eds.), Origins, p.213.

  119. New York Times, 2 May 1950; for a full account of these ‘occupations’, see Richard Fried, The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming! Pageantry and Patriotism in Cold-War America (Oxford, 1998), ch.3.

  120. Zagovor obrechennykh (1950), dir. M. Kalatozov.

  121. For the Soviet side, see Chapter Seven. For American mobilization and the Cold War, see L. McEnaney, ‘Cold War Mobilization and Domestic Politics’, forthcoming, in Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. i; L. McEnaney, Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties (Princeton, 2000).

  122. Ginsborg, History of Contemporary Italy, p.187.

  123. Several hundred were also imprisoned and two, the Rosenbergs, were executed. See E. Schrecker, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston, 1998), p.xiii.

  124. For the various groups which took part in the anti-Communist campaigns, see ibid., pp.x ff.

  125. Though it was never entirely dominant. See R. Fried, ‘Voting against the Hammer and Sickle: Communism as an Issue in American Politics’, in W. Chafe (ed.), The Achievement of American Liberalism: The New Deal and Its Legacies (New York, 2003), pp.99–127.

  126. G. Gerstle, American Crucible. Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 2001), pp.245–6.

  127. D. Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War (Oxford, 2003), pp.26–7.

  128. Gerstle, American Crucible, pp.249–56.

  129. For the breach between Jews and Communism, see Y. Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton, 2004), pp.313–15.

  130. G. Lundestad, ‘Empire by Invitation? The United States and Western Europe, 1945–1952’, Journal of Peace Research 3 (1986), pp.263–77.

  131. NSC 51, US Policy towards Southeast Asia, 1 July 1949. Declassified Documents Reference System.

  132. Djilas, Conversations, p.141.

  THE EAST IS RED

  1. Ho Chi Minh, On Revolution. Selected Writings 1920–1966 (London, 1967), p.5.

  2. For this episode, see W. Duiker, Ho Chi Minh: a Life (New York, 2000), pp.57–62.

  3. Brocheux is sceptical of this. See P. Brocheux, Ho Chi Minh. A Biography, trans. C. Duiker (New York, 2007), p.26.

  4. E. Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford, 2007), p.107.

  5. Mao Zedong, ‘Study the Extremist Party’, 14 July 1919, in Mao’s Road to Power. Revolutionary Writings, 1912–1949 [MRPRW ], ed. S. Schram (Armonk, NY, 1992), vol. i, p.332.

  6. Manela, Wilsonian Moment, pp.23–30.

  7. Duiker, Ho, pp.46–55.

  8. Cited in Brocheux, Ho, p.21.

  9. Cited in Duiker, Ho, p.82.

  10. Ho, On Revolution, p.5.

  11. Ho Chi Minh, Textes, 1914–1969, ed. A. Ruscio (Paris, 1990), p.21, translation from Brocheux, Ho, p.12.

  12. Pervyi s”ezd narodov vostoka. Stenograficheskie otchety (Petrograd, 1920), p.5.

  13. M. Roy, Memoirs (Bombay, 1964), p.225.

  14. Ibid., p.306.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Ibid., p.379.

  17. Lu Xun, ‘A Madman’s Diary’, in Lu Hsun, Selected Stories (New York, 2003), pp.8, 18.

  18. L. Ou-Fan Lee, ‘Literary Trends: The Quest for Modernity, 1895–1927’, in M. Goldman and L. Ou-Fan Lee, An Intellectual History of Modern China (Cambridge, 2002), p.188.

  19. Cited in V. Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (Berkeley, 1986), p.110.

  20. Cited in ibid., p.109.

  21. L. Feigon, Chen Duxiu: Founder of the Chinese Communist Party (Princeton, 1983), p.104.

  22. M. Meisner, Li Ta-Chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism (New York, 1970), p.34.

  23. For this point, see Feigon, Chen, p.145.

  24. D.-S. Suh, The Korean Communist Movement, 1918–1948 (Princeton, 1967), p.132.

  25. Thanh nien, 20 February 1927, cited in Hu`ynh Kim Khánh, Vietnamese Communism, 1925–1945 (Ithaca, 1982), p.80.

  26. W. Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (Boulder, 1996), pp.27–8.

  27. S. Wilson, ‘The Comintern and the Japanese Communist Party’, in T. Rees and A. Thorpe (eds.), International Communism and the Communist International, 1919–1943 (Manchester, 1998), pp.285–307.

  28. Schwarcz, Chinese Enlightenment, pp.128–36.

  29. ‘The True Story of Ah Q’, in Lu Hsun, Selected Stories, pp.65–112.

  30. P. Short, Mao: a Life (London, 1999), p.86.

  31. Cited in Feigon, Chen, pp.152–3.

  32. This account is from S. Smith, A Road is Made: Communism in Shanghai 1920–1927 (Honolulu, 2000), pp.59–60.

  33. Zhang Guotao, The Rise of the Chinese Communist Party. The Autobiography of Chang Kuo-t’ao (Lawrence, Kans., 1971), vol. i, p.139.

  34. J. Price, Cadres, Commanders and Commissars. The Training of the Chinese Communist Leadership (Folkestone, 1976), pp.31–8.

  35. Ibid., pp.90–3.

  36. Yu Miin-Ling ‘Chiang Kaishek and the Policy of Alliance’, in R. Felber, M. Titarenko and A. Grigoriev, The Chinese Revolution in the 1920s. Between Triumph and Disaster (London, 2002), pp.98–124.

  37. S. Schram, Mao Tse-tung (Harmondsworth, 1966), p.48.

  38. E. Snow, Red Star over China (Harmondsworth, 1972), pp.153–6.

  39. A. Smedley, China Correspondent (London, 1984), pp.121–2.

  40. Mao Zedong, 1 April 1917, MRPRW, vol. i, p.113.

  41. Ibid., p.124.

  42. S. Schram, The Thought of Mao Tse-Tung (Cambridge, 198
9), p.27.

  43. H. Van de Ven, From Friend to Comrade: the Founding of the Chinese Communist Party, 1920–1927 (Berkeley, 1991), p.45.