Straight out of the New Masses right out after the Molotov Pact was signed in '39. I've got a collection, Carrol. You want some Xeroxes? Full of calumny against Dwight MacDonald and others who started a League for Cultural Freedom and Socialism after a statement signed by Lillian Hellman, Corliss Lamont et. al. a few weeks before the Pact was signed by Hitler and Stalin's ambassadors, braying against anti-Stalinist leftists and liberals critical of the Purge Trials. Paulsen, your ilk (ilk alert!) would have hounded Victor Serge.
See, "The New Yoprk Intellectuals, " by Alan Wald, "Writers On The Left, " by Daniel Aaron, preface by AlaN wld of Solidarity.
This Lerner fracas is reminiscent of nothing so much as the Old Left divisions between various tendencies of Trotskyism, Stalinists, left socdems/democratic socialists and left-libs.
-- Michael Pugliese
"Without knowing that we knew nothing, we went on talking without listening to
each other. Sometimes we flattered and praised each other, understanding that
we would be flattered and praised in return. Other times we abused and shouted
at each other, as if we were in a madhouse." -Tolstoy