Historians of American Communism

Last updated
Historians of American Communism (HOAC)
FormationApril 2, 1982;41 years ago (1982-04-02)
FounderLowell Dyson, Hyman Berman, Max Gordon, John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, William Pratt
Headquarters Tamiment Library at New York University
Location
ProductsAmerican Communist History
Official language
English
President
Vernon L. Pedersen
Vice President
Denise Lynn
Timothy V. Johnson, Katherine A. S. Sibley, James G. Ryan, Randi J. Storch
Website historiansofamericancommunism.com

Historians of American Communism (HOAC) is a national academic association, established in 1982, bringing together historians, political scientists, and independent scholars interested in the study of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) and other communist and anti-communist organizations in the United States. The society publishes a semi-annual journal, American Communist History, produced by the British academic publisher Routledge. [1] The organization also maintains an internet newsgroup on H-Net.

Contents

Organizational history

Formation

In March 1982, historian Lowell Dyson invited scholars interested in the history of the American Communist Party (CPUSA) to attend an organizational meeting held in conjunction with the 1982 Convention of the Organization of American Historians in Philadelphia. This meeting was held on April 2, 1982, with Dyson occupying the chair. Dyson noted that a chance meeting of several historians interested in various aspects of American Communism in which he participated at the 1980 Upper Midwest History Conference in Duluth, Minnesota had yielded productive discussion and he suggested that a new national organization of individuals interested in such matters might provide a forum for a mutually beneficial exchange of ideas. The small circle who had participated in the informal 1980 conclave had constituted themselves a General Organizing Board for such a new group, an organization tentatively called "The John Reed Club." [2]

The organizers envisioned a society which would help interested scholars make contact with one another to exchange in academic discourse. The group would additionally publish information about research in progress, it was hoped, as well as aid in the search for obscure sources — no simple task in the days before easily searchable library catalogs via the internet. Further, organizers sought a place to where one might take esoteric questions about little-known aspects of American communism and hope to find an answer. [2]

Discussion at the organizational meeting centered around the parameters of the organization, with some arguing in favor of inclusion of other radical political organizations outside of the CPUSA, while others sought a more limited and tightly focused orientation. It was decided that a concentration upon the history of the CPUSA alone would make for a more useful organization in its initial phase. [2]

As objection was raised to the political connotation of naming the organization after John Reed, a founding member of the American Communist Party, a new name was called for. The gathering decided upon the name "Historians of American Communism." [2] A second meeting of the organization was called for later in 1982, to be held in conjunction with the convention of the American Historical Association (AHA) in Washington, D.C.

The General Organizing Board of the new organization approved by the April 2, 1982, meeting consisted of Hyman Berman of the University of Minnesota; Lowell Dyson of Alexandria, Virginia; Max Gordon of New York City; John Earl Haynes of Washington, D.C.; Harvey Klehr of Emory University; and William Pratt of the University of Nebraska. A two-page mimeographed newsletter was published by Haynes, entitled Newsletter of the Historians of American Communism — a publication which would continue uninterrupted through the summer of 2004. [3]

No organizational dues were set for 1982, but a $5 membership fee was levied for 1983, with proceeds to pay for production of the newsletter, projected to be a quarterly. [4]

Development of the organization

The second meeting of the Historians of American Communism was held in December 1982 in conjunction with the annual convention of the AHA. At that gathering, the General Organizing Board distributed copies of a draft constitution and bylaws for the organization. After a discussion about possible changes, the Board announced that a revised draft would be subsequently mailed out to all members after the first of the year for approval or rejection. [5]

Ballots were sent out early in March 1983, with the mail election closing on the 29th of that month. [6] The draft constitution was duly approved.

The constitution of HOAC lists as the organization's objective "To stimulate interest in, promote the study of, and facilitate research and publication on the history of American Communism." [7]

HOAC's system of office was convoluted. The organization was to feature four officers: a President, Vice President, General Secretary, and Treasurer. Vice Presidents were to automatically succeed to the office of president in the subsequent year and were thus to be the chief competitive election. A nominating committee appointed by the President was to provide one nominee, with others added to the list by membership petition. A six-member Central Committee, elected to a three-year term, was to directly appoint the General Secretary and Treasurer, who would join the Central Committee, along with the President and Vice President and the three most recent past presidents. This Central Committee was to meet annually at a time and place determined at its pleasure. [8] Dues were formally set at $5 per annum by the constitution, with a special life membership made available to anyone contributing $1,000 or more to the organization. [9] This dues rate remained in effect until 1990, when dues moved to a rate of $10 per annum by decision of the HOAC Central Committee. [10] Dues rose again in 2002, this time to $25 per year, due to the launch of a new academic journal, subscriptions to which were included in the cost of membership dues. [11]

Elected as first President of the organization was Hyman Berman, with Harvey Klehr elected Vice President. The six members of the initial Central Committee were elected for staggered terms: John Haynes and Max Gordon for a three-year term, Daniel Leab and Ellen Schrecker for a two-year term, and Kenneth Waltzer and David J. Garrow for a one-year term. Thereafter, two of the six members would come up for election each year.

A membership list published in September 1985 indicated that HOAC had a paid membership of 117 for that year. [12]

In the Spring of 1986, HOAC President Harvey Klehr asked Dan Leab to assume the role of "Executive Secretary" of the organization (originally called "General Secretary" in the HOAC constitution). [13] Leab continued in this position until his death in 2016.

Function of the organization

Throughout its first 20 years of existence, HOAC's primary function related to its compilation and publication of a listing of "Writings on the History of American Communism." Begun by John Haynes in 1982, this task was later taken over by Peter Filardo, an archivist at Tamiment Library, located at New York University. Haynes converted this material and further additions to digital form in the 1990s, a listing which he continues to maintain on his personal website into the 21st Century. [14] The organization also publicized "Research in Progress" and "Recent Publications and Papers by Members" in its quarterly newsletter. The organization also fostered the exchange of primary source materials gathered from the Federal Bureau of Investigation under the Freedom of Information Act.

Publications

American Communist History journal

Beginning in 2002, HOAC began the publication of a semi-annual academic journal, American Communist History. This marked a move for HOAC from its previous function of facilitating and chronicling academic publications in other venues to actually engaging in academic publication itself. American Communist History is a scholarly journal with the worthiness of submitted articles anonymously juried by recognized experts in the field prior to their acceptance for publication. Editor of the publication from its first issue through 2016 was Daniel J. Leab of Seton Hall University.

At the time of the new journal's launch, HOAC Editor John Haynes defined the purpose of the new publication:

American Communist History will be the impartial, leading journal for scholarship about the history of the Communist Party in the United States and its social, political, economic and cultural impact on its members, on its opponents, and the public at large. The journal will deal with the American party and with the various outside influences which have dealt with its representation, with the controversial folklore that has been engendered about it, and with the many differing views about its antecedents, and its diverse opponents on the Left and Right. While rooted in the United States, the journal welcomes contributions which are transnational or international in scope. [11]

HOAC newsgroup

In March 2003, HOAC launched its own newsgroup via the academic newsgroup coordinator, H-Net. In the initial post announcing the new forum, co-moderator of the forum John Haynes wrote:

H-HOAC has several tasks. It will provide a forum for discussion of the history of American communism and domestic anticommunism. It is, however, also a place to report on research in progress, recent publications, openings of archival resources, raise research questions, and provide information about upcoming conferences and symposia or to report on what happened... Historical scholarship is in part the lonely task of a historian in the archive studying documents and then writing in isolation. But we write so that others will read, and if others do not know about what we write, they cannot read it. We hope authors will send in brief announcements of new publications with complete citations and, if one wishes, a short annotation describing the essay... We hope scholars of American communism and anticommunism will treat H-HOAC as a common forum for the exchange of scholarly gossip (civilly worded) about who is writing what. [15]

Newsletter of the Historians of American Communism

The 2002 advent of American Communist History, and its regular announcement of new publications, and the H-HOAC newsgroup, and its regular announcement of research in progress and exchange of information about various esoteric research issues, made the continuation of the Newsletter of the Historians of American Communism moot. That publication terminated publication effective with the July 2004 issue.

Presidents of HOAC

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Communist Party USA</span> American political party

Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), also known as the American Communist Party, is a Marxist–Leninist communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Earl Browder</span> American Communist political activist

Earl Russell Browder was an American politician, spy for the Soviet Union, communist activist and leader of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Browder was the General Secretary of the CPUSA during the 1930s and first half of the 1940s.

In political ideology, a deviationist is a person who expresses a deviation: an abnormality or departure. In Stalinist ideology and practice, deviationism is an expressed belief which does not accord with official party doctrine for the time and area. Accusations of deviationism often led to purges. Forms of deviationism included revisionism, dogmatism, and bourgeois nationalism.

Marion Bachrach (1898–1957) was the sister of John Abt and also a member of the Ware group, a group of government employees in the New Deal administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt who were also members of the secret apparatus of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) in the 1930s.

Harry Magdoff was accused by a number of authors as having been complicit in Soviet espionage activity during his time in US government. He was accused of passing information to Soviet intelligence networks in the United States, primarily through what the FBI called the "Perlo Group." Magdoff was never indicted, but after the end of the Cold War, a number of scholars have inspected declassified documents from U.S. and Soviet archives. They cite these documents to support the claim that Magdoff was involved in espionage. Other authors have taken issue with some of the broader interpretations of such materials which implicate many Americans in espionage for the Soviet Union, and the allegation that Harry Magdoff was an information source for the Soviets is disputed by several academics and historians asserting that Magdoff probably had no malicious intentions and committed no crimes.

Harvey Elliott Klehr is a professor of politics and history at Emory University. Klehr is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist movement, and on Soviet espionage in America.

John Earl Haynes is an American historian who worked as a specialist in 20th-century political history in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. He is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist and anti-Communist movements, and on Soviet espionage in America.

Bolesław Konstanty "Bill" Gebert was a top Communist Party official, remembered as one of the organization's top Polish-language speaking leaders. He was a Soviet agent during the years of World War II and was an official of the Polish Communist government after the war.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harrison George</span>

Harrison George was a senior Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) leader. He is best remembered as the editor of the official organ of the Profintern's Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat (PPTUS) as well as the party's West Coast newspaper, People's World.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Morris Childs</span>

Morris H. Childs was a Ukrainian-American political activist and American Communist Party functionary who became a Soviet espionage agent (1929) and then a double agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (1952) until leaving both services by 1982. Beginning in 1958, Childs acted as a secret courier on behalf of the American party, briefing Soviet officials on political affairs in the American party and carrying funds to support the American Communist movement from Moscow to New York City, reporting details all the while to his FBI handlers. Over the course of two decades of activity in this role, Childs played a major part in the transfer of more than $28 million in Soviet subsidies to the American movement. For his activity as a courier on behalf of the Soviet government, Childs was awarded the Order of the Red Banner in 1975. His work as a spy for the American intelligence community was recognized in 1987 when Childs was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan.

The League of American Writers was an association of American novelists, playwrights, poets, journalists, and literary critics launched by the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) in 1935. The group included Communist Party members, and so-called "fellow travelers" who closely followed the Communist Party's political line without being formal party members, as well as individuals sympathetic to specific policies being advocated by the organization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Stachel</span> American Communist Party official (1900–1965)

Jacob Abraham "Jack" Stachel was an American Communist functionary who was a top official in the Communist Party from the middle 1920s until his death in the middle 1960s. Stachel is best remembered as one of 11 Communist leaders convicted under the Smith Act in 1949, for which he served a sentence of five years in prison.

The following is a bibliography on American Communism, listing some of the most important works on the topic.

<i>American Communist History</i> Academic journal

American Communist History is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Routledge on behalf of the Historians of American Communism. It covers research on the historical impact of Communism in the United States. The journal was established in 2002 and its founders were primarily founding editor-in-chief Daniel J. Leab, and John Earl Haynes. The journal's editorial board is balanced between revisionists and traditionalists and includes some foreign scholars. The current editor is Denise Lynn.

Clarence A. "Charlie" Hathaway was an activist in the Minnesota trade union movement and a prominent leader of the Communist Party of the United States from the 1920s through the early 1940s. He is best remembered as the party's leading organizer of the Federated Farmer-Labor Party in 1923 and 1924, as the editor of The Daily Worker (1933–1940), and as a longtime member of the Communist Party's governing Central Committee. He was also a longtime informant for the FBI.

The Washington Commonwealth Federation (WCF) was a political pressure group established in the American state of Washington in 1934 as "Commonwealth Builders, Incorporated" (CBI). The organization changed its name to Washington Commonwealth Federation in 1935. The organization did not run political candidates in its own name but rather functioned as an organized faction in the Washington State Democratic Party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Unemployed Councils</span>

The Unemployed Councils of the USA (UC) was a mass organization of the Communist Party, USA established in 1930 in an effort to organize and mobilize unemployed workers to advance party policy goals in preparation for an anticipated final conflict to overthrow capitalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Workers Alliance of America</span>

The Workers Alliance of America (WAA) was a Popular Front era political organization established in March 1935 in the United States which united several efforts to mobilize unemployed workers under a single banner. Founded by the Socialist Party of America (SPA), the Workers Alliance was later joined by the Unemployed Councils of the USA, a mass organization of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), and by the National Unemployed Leagues originating with A.J. Muste's Conference for Progressive Labor Action (CPLA) and successor organizations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Leab</span> American historian

Daniel Joseph Leab was an American historian of 20th-century history. He made significant academic contributions to fields of American labor unions and anti-Communism. He was long-time editor of three journals and magazines.

References

  1. ↑ "American Communist History: The journal of the Historians of American Communism". Routledge (Taylor & Francis). Retrieved 18 November 2012.
  2. 1 2 3 4 John Earl Haynes, "To The Reader," Newsletter of Historians of American Communism, vol. 1, no. 1 (June 1982), pg. 1.
  3. ↑ The final issue, volume 23, no. 1, with John Earl Haynes still in the editorial chair, was dated July 2004.
  4. ↑ John Earl Haynes, "Paying for the Newsletter," Newsletter of the Historians of American Communism, vol. 1, no. 2 (October 1982), pg. 1.
  5. ↑ John Earl Haynes, "Report on the December 1982 Meeting," Newsletter of the Historians of American Communism, vol. 1, no. 3 (March 1983), pg. 1.
  6. ↑ John Earl Haynes, "Referendum and Election of Officers," Newsletter of the Historians of American Communism, vol. 1, no. 3 (March 1983), pg. 1.
  7. ↑ "Constitution of the Historians of American Communism," Article II. Published in Newsletter of the Historians of American Communism, vol. 1, no. 3 (March 1983), pg. 1.
  8. ↑ "Constitution of the Historians of American Communism", Articles IV, V, and VI.
  9. ↑ "Bylaws of the Historians of American Communism," Article I. Published in Newsletter of the Historians of American Communism, vol. 1, no. 3 (March 1983), pg. 2.
  10. ↑ John Earl Haynes, "Professional," Newsletter of the Historians of American Communism, vol. 8, no. 2 (June 1989), pg. 1.
  11. 1 2 John Earl Haynes, "Special Announcement: American Communist History: A New Journal," Newsletter of the Historians of American Communism, vol. 20, no. 4 (December 2001), pg. 1.
  12. ↑ John Earl Haynes, "Membership List," Newsletter of the Historians of American Communism, vol. 4, no. 3 (September 1985), pp. 2–5.
  13. ↑ John Earl Haynes, "Professional Activities," Newsletter of the Historians of American Communism, vol. 5, no. 1 (March 1986), pg. 2.
  14. ↑ The listing stood in early 2009 at over 8,500 titles. See: http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page94.html
  15. ↑ John Earl Haynes, "Who is Writing What?" H-HOAC, March 19, 2003. Available online.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.