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  In keeping with Lenin's goals, the 1920 Comintern Congress explicitly stated that violence was central to the Communist mission. It instructed its delegates to support “armed insurrection” against non-Communist governments in order to supplant them with Communist regimes. As Pipes notes, these Communist regimes “would ultimately fuse into a worldwide Soviet Socialist Republic.”33 And among the twenty-one requirements for membership that the Comintern Congress issued, point seventeen declared bluntly, “The Communist International has declared war on the entire bourgeois world.”34

  The Comintern continued that pledge after Lenin departed this world. In 1924, a year that began with the Bolshevik godfather's death in January, the Fifth Congress reiterated the Comintern's global objectives: “The ultimate aim of the Communist International is to replace the world capitalist economy by a world system of Communism.” The “successful struggle” for the “dictatorship of the proletariat presupposes the existence in every country of a compact Communist Party, hardened in the struggle, disciplined, centralized and closely lined up with the masses.”35

  The Comintern was to be the permanent platform of the Soviet Communist state. Thus, when asked to pick a date for the start of the Cold War, some historians have chosen not customary dates like 1945 or 1947 or 1948, but 1920—the year the Comintern took flight.36

  The Comintern Comes to America: CPUSA

  In America, many within the non-Communist Left shrugged off the Comintern. For years, some questioned whether the organization had ever existed, let alone whether it harbored such global ambitions. These deniers were precariously susceptible to Communist manipulation.

  And yet it did not take long before the tentacles of Vladimir Lenin and the Comintern reached all the way into America.

  The Communist Party established in the United States was, like other Communist parties around the world, expected to thrive on lawlessness and deceit. This was made official at that first major Comintern Congress in July 1920. Point three of the twenty-one requirements for membership in the Comintern called on Communists in every country, including in America, to create a “parallel illegal apparatus,” which, “at the decisive moment,” would take charge of the revolution. When the moment was right, those comrades would assist the masters in Moscow in “performing [their] duty to the revolution.” Lest there be any doubt that the Soviets intended American Communists to understand this duty, Moscow widely disseminated these orders within the United States, in English, in a document titled “The Twenty-one Conditions of Admission into the Communist International.”37

  The American effort started in September 1919, only months after the establishment of the Comintern in Moscow. At a convention in Chicago, two U.S. Communist parties were formed: the Communist Labor Party and the Communist Party of America. After a few additional mergers and name changes, the American Communists in 1929 formed a single Communist Party USA (CPUSA). CPUSA became the political party for American Communists throughout the entirety of the Cold War.38

  It cannot be emphasized enough that American members of the Communist Party saw themselves as subservient to the Comintern and to Moscow. This is the single most important point in understanding the party, its positions, and why it was indeed a threat—and why anti-Communists were rightly concerned.

  From the outset, the Comintern micromanaged the party in America. It created an “Anglo-American Secretariat,” and stationed a representative of the American party in Moscow. This liaison delivered orders from Moscow to American Communists.39

  Moscow's control of the American party was constant and total, in ways far too numerous to summarize here. Historian and former Communist Theodore Draper provided a simple but telling indicator in his eye-opening account of CPUSA. Draper recalled that when a new member (like himself) joined the party in, say, New York in the 1920s, he signed a party registration card inscribed with these words: “The undersigned, after having read the constitution and program of the Communist Party, declares his adherence to the principles and tactics of the party and the Communist International, agrees to submit to the discipline of the party as stated in its constitution, and pledges to engage actively in its work.”40

  New members swore a loyalty oath, which stated: “I pledge myself to rally the masses to defend the Soviet Union, the land of victorious socialism. I pledge myself to remain at all times a vigilant and firm defender of the Leninist line of the party, the only line that insures the triumph of Soviet Power in the United States.” This particular oath was issued in 1935, during the height of Stalin's terror, which annihilated tens of millions.41

  Unflagging allegiance to the Bolsheviks was the mission of Americans who joined the Communist Party. They swore to it. They literally carried it with them. It is self-evident that this allegiance was not “American”; it most certainly stood in contrast to the principles of the American republic as conceived by its founders.

  The Comintern Archives on CPUSA

  CPUSA subservience to the Comintern/Moscow was so total that when CPUSA picked leaders for its own Central Committee, it first sent a list to the Comintern for permission. These lists exist for viewing today, declassified in the Comintern Archives on CPUSA.42 Portions of those archives are available for examination at the Library of Congress, which in the early 1990s purchased from the post-Soviet Russian government (of Boris Yeltsin) a sizable reservoir of material. Each reel of microfiche from those archives contains a day's worth of viewing material, compliments of CPUSA's fastidious reporting to bosses at the Comintern. And each details the American party's shocking subservience to Moscow. The files include reports to the Comintern from the American party's Central Executive Committee, instructions from the Comintern to CPUSA, financial reports, correspondence among the heads of the groups, and much more.43

  From the countless examples that can be drawn from those archives, here are three from the immediate September 1919 to November 1919 period when the American party was first created. These examples are significant in demonstrating the level of Comintern control over the American party and, in turn, the loyalty of those party members to Moscow.

  The first example, which is among the earliest documents in the massive Comintern Archives on CPUSA, is from the summer of 1919, just prior to the party's formation in Chicago in September. The heading on the double-spaced document states, “Soviet Power and the Creation of a Communist Party of America.” The three-page report, described as a “Thesis of the Executive Committee of the Third International,” carries two authoritative signatures: “For the Bureau of the Communist International, N. Bucharin, J. Bersin (Winter).”44 (See pages 24–25.) This refers to Nikolai Bukharin, one of the core Bolshevik founders, and Jan Berzin, who later became head of the GRU (Soviet military intelligence).

  The document begins by affirming that the American party will not be independent from the Soviet Comintern. It orders: “1) For the purpose of attaining an immediate success of the revolutionary class struggle, of systematically organizing it, of uniting and co-ordinating all really revolutionary forces, and for the purpose of unifying principles and organizations, it is necessary to form a Communist Party which should be affiliated with the Communist International.” The next line makes the allegiance clear: “2) The cardinal unifying and directing idea should be the recognition of the necessity for proletarian dictatorship, that is, Soviet power.”45 The document commits both the Soviet and American representatives to the Soviet superstructure.

  The Comintern concludes with a telling reminder to the “comrades” in America: “We call the attention of the comrades to the necessity of creating illegal underground machinery side by side with the legally functioning apparatus.” Here we see the essence of the third requirement of membership that the Comintern Congress delineated—but in a document issued months before the Congress produced its twenty-one-point manifesto. Moscow's order to the American comrades is unambiguous: you must carry forth your work of “revolutionary Marxism”—aimed at “the destruction of the bourgeo
is state machinery”—by all means available, legal and illegal.

  This was quintessential Leninist morality. “To speak the truth is a petit bourgeois habit,” said Lenin. “To lie, on the contrary, is often justified by the lie's aim.”46 The good comrades in America would agree.

  A second document in the Comintern Archives from the period appears to have been issued from the Chicago convention of September 1–7, 1919.47 (See page 27.) It is printed on the letterhead of the newly established Communist Party of America, at 1219 Blue Island Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. In this letter, the Communist Party of America's executive secretary, Charles Ruthenberg, an international hero of the Communist movement, addresses “International Delegates” and the Comintern in Moscow.48 The brief, celebratory letter bears four simple sentences:

  In the name of the Communist Workers of the United States organized in the Communist Party of America I extend greetings to the Communist Party of Russia.

  Hail to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!

  Long live the Russian Socialist Soviet Republic!

  Long live the Communist International!

  The level of loyalty to Moscow speaks for itself. The respect was mutual: upon Ruthenberg's death a decade later, his body was placed in memoriam at the wall of the Kremlin near Lenin's tomb, alongside other “heroes” of Bolshevism.49 This American chose to spend eternity in the cold bosom of his beloved USSR, as close as possible to the rotting breast of Vladimir Lenin.

  A third document, a remarkable seven-page letter dated November 24, 1919, is addressed “To the Bureau of the Communist International.” Sent from Chicago, the letter is signed by “International Secretary, Louis C. Fraina,” and attested to by “C. [Charles] Ruthenberg, Executive Secretary,” both with the Communist Party of America. (See page 29.) The letter begins, “Comrades: As International Secretary, I make application for admission of the Communist Party of America to the Bureau of the Communist International.” Noting that the Communist Party of America was officially organized on September 1, 1919, with “approximately 55,000 members,” Fraina and his comrades are now filing their official application.50

  And as they do, Fraina and friends make their loyalties frighteningly clear. Here is their close on page seven:

  The Communist Party realizes the immensity of its task; it realizes that the final struggle of the Communist Proletariat will be wage[d] in the United States, our conquest of power alone assuring the world Soviet Republic. Realizing all this, the Communist Party prepares for the struggle.

  Long live the Communist International! Long live the World Revolution!!

  Fraternally yours,

  International Secretary,

  Louis C. Fraina (signature)

  In absorbing this letter, consider that a long line of dupes would later defend the American Communist Party against charges that it was battling for the USSR, the Comintern, and global revolution. Those individuals simply did not know what they were talking about.

  As for Louis C. Fraina, he was one of the core founders of the American party, credited as the first Communist editor in the United States. Fraina edited Revolutionary Age, a Boston-based magazine that in its first edition, July 5, 1919—the day after America's birthday—devoted itself to the overthrow of the American government and “the annihilation of the fraudulent democracy of the parliamentary system.”51 Fraina's next issue, in August, called for a “dissolution and collapse of the whole capitalist world system” and “world culture,” to be “replaced by communism.” It advocated “an international alliance of the Communist Party of the United States only with the communist groups of other countries, such as the Bolsheviki of Russia.” These, said Fraina's Revolutionary Age, would be the principles to be adopted by the comrades at their convention in Chicago in September.52

  With Soviet Communism, Fraina had found his system and his calling—and so had his friends. Their servility lasted throughout the existence of the American party, which was and would remain a Bolshevik puppet.53 Herb Romerstein, a leading authority on Communism in America, sums it up: “From 1919, when it [the American Communist Party] was formed, to 1989, when the Soviet Union collapsed, it was under total Soviet control.”54

  Further Subservience to Moscow: Year Two

  Again, these examples of subservience to Moscow are only a tiny sampling of the evidence. Bear in mind, too, that this mountain of evidence comes from just a few months in 1919 immediately surrounding the formation of the American Communist Party. A similarly voluminous dossier can be assembled from practically any other time period covered in the Comintern Archives on CPUSA. To suggest the extensiveness of this evidence, I will cite a handful of additional remarkable cases, these from the second year of existence of the American Communist Party and the Comintern—the year 1920. These, too, are extremely telling. They are critical to understanding that American Communists were not members of a conventional political party.

  The first example is a three-page document titled “TO THE CENTRAL COMMITTEES OF THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY AND THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST LABOUR PARTY.” Dated January 12, 1920, the letter is issued from Moscow by “President of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, Zinoviev”—that is, Comintern chief Grigori Zinoviev.55 In the letter, Zinoviev indicates that the relationship between American Communists and the Soviet Union is to be underground, illicit, and insidious. The head of the Comintern suggests that Communists engage in all sorts of clandestine activity in America, ranging from “revolutionary propaganda among the masses” to “an underground printing-plant and distribution machinery.” Zinoviev closes the letter with this final order from the Comintern: “The Executive Committee urges the American Comrades immediately to establish an underground organisation, even if it is possible for the party to function legally.”56 So the clear order from the Comintern was that Communists in America needed to develop covert capabilities even when they were legally permitted to assemble as a political party. Here was another explicit instruction from the Comintern to establish an illegal “underground” in America, issued months in advance of the Comintern Congress's formal requirement that Communist parties overseas create a “parallel illegal apparatus.”

  The Comintern edicts that followed throughout 1920 displayed a similarly dictatorial tone. Among them is a caustic memo addressed “To All Members of the Socialist Party of the United States,” dealing with the May 1920 report issued at the National Convention of the American Socialist Party.57 In this seven-page memo, the Comintern expresses its frustration at the lack of centralization among America's comrades. It barks:

  The Communist International is not a hotel, where travellers may come with their baggage and carry on their private affairs. The Communist International is an army in wartime; volunteers who join the Army of the Revolution must adopt its principles and obey its orders, submit to its discipline. None but revolutionary, Communist parties are accepted in the Communist International.

  The Comintern demands a “strongly centralized form of organization, a military discipline.” This is “war,” after all—or, as the memo puts it, the party is “an army in wartime.” Getting testy, Moscow wants to know: are the American comrades on the side of Bolshevism, or not?

  Right on cue, the United Communist Party of America (a merger of the two previous parties) called a convention on May 31, 1920, where it responded with a brief one-and-a-half page resolution for the Comintern.58 (See page 32.) The delegates concluded by adopting this specific resolution:

  The United Communist Party, in its program, form of organization and methods of party activity conforms to every requirement of the Communist International; and it is a first desire of our party to make itself an [sic] native unit of the International in every possible respect.

  Greetings to the Communists of all countries!

  Long live the Communist International!

  This resolution ought to be a chilling wake-up call to those who have claimed that the American Communist Party was just another p
olitical party. Here the American Communists unequivocally declared their absolute dedication to the supreme party in Moscow and to the worldwide revolution.

  Moscow Money to CPUSA

  The most salient illustration of Soviet control over American Communists was the fact that the American party all along received funding from the Soviet government, beginning in 1919 and continuing until the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989.

  This fact publicly emerged only after the Cold War ended. We now know, however, that the Soviets did not provide some piddling sum; rather, they kept CPUSA afloat with massive stipends. By 1980 the funding had reached nearly $2.8 million annually. In the 1920s, when cash from the USSR was especially scarce, the Comintern supplied the American Communist movement with an enormous sum in valuables: several million dollars’ worth of gold, silver, jewels, much or perhaps all of which the Soviet regime had stolen, and in some cases had probably removed from sacred relics from ransacked churches.59

  The significance of this support cannot be overstated: a foreign government, with which America was effectively at war by the late 1940s, was funding an American political party, and that party concealed the funding. This was illegal at both ends, on the Soviet side and CPUSA side.