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Article: The Secret World of American Communism.
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- June 12, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Secret World of American Communism, by Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov (Yale, 348 pp., $25)
OVER the last two decades, most historians of Communism in America -- perhaps not surprisingly -- have tended to sympathize with the American Communist enterprise. Many are "red-diaper babies" -- i.e., the children of Party members and/or sympathizers. Others, to be sure, came to their radical-Left sensibilities without familial encouragement. In either case, however, their purpose has been to depict the CP as an indigenous populist movement -- linked to the Soviet Union by bonds of admiration, but otherwise authentically American.
A ...