Party's Over, Comrade, It's History Now
By EMILY EAKIN
"Shop in advance." "Keep things simple but attractive." "Mayonnaise is cheaper and will do instead of butter."
As party planning tips go, these would hardly rate a second glance except that they were compiled by an organization better known for its factory-floor radicalism than for its mayonnaise dip: the American Communist Party. Who knew the Reds had a Martha Stewart streak?
To be sure, "Give a Party for the Party" is no ordinary how-to manual. Published in the late 1930's by the party's New York State branch and recently rediscovered by a Brandeis University historian browsing in his campus's collection of radical pamphlets, it's a 15-page illustrated tutorial in the art of ideologically correct fraternizing: long on political indoctrination - and penny-pinching strategies - and notably short on scented handicrafts.
Among the suggested high jinks: cutting editorials from The Daily Worker into little pieces and having guests compete to see who can put them back together fastest; passing around pictures of party leaders and having guests try to name them correctly; holding a mock convention on, say, nonintervention in Spain. "One guest is made chairman. Another is Chamberlain, another Leon Blum, a third Mussolini," the pamphlet cheerfully explains, adding, "A clever gathering can do wonders in political satire. It's grand fun."
Or why not try a round of anti-Fascist darts? "Buy darts from your stationer's, sporting goods or department store," the pamphlet instructs. "Draw a picture of Hitler, Mussolini, Hague or another Girdleresque pest. Put it on a piece of soft board with thumbtacks. Six throws for a nickel, and a prize if you paste Hague in the pants, or Trotsky in the eye." (Mind you, all this doctrinaire diversion is to be had on the cheap: the pamphlet recommends conserving beer by pouring into the middle of the glass, a method that "gives more foam and less liquid - stretches each barrel further.")
"For those who believed in it in the 1930's, the party was not just a political movement but a whole social context," said David Engerman, the Brandeis historian who found the pamphlet. Dispelling clichés about humorless hard-liners, "Give a Party for the Party" was deemed sufficiently eye-opening, and amusing, to merit inclusion in the inaugural issue of American Communist History, the first nonpartisan scholarly journal devoted to the history of the party in the United States. Scheduled to appear twice a year, this peer-reviewed journal is the latest sign of communism's transformation from a divisive ideology into a hot academic subject ripe for nuanced - even, where appropriate, lighthearted - analysis.
Other features in the inaugural issue, which arrived in libraries in November, include an essay on the party's activities in California during the early 1930's that draws on newly opened Comintern archives to show how local Communist leaders often exercised considerable independence from the Soviet Union on tactics and policies; a critique of "Song of Russia," a pro-Soviet Hollywood film from 1944; and a biographical account of Harvey Matusow, a disgruntled former Communist and paid witness for the Justice Department who later admitted to lying under oath during the trials of several party officials.
"Is it ever justifiable in a democracy for the government to maintain a stable of paid witnesses to testify on its behalf about the political affiliations (almost always lawful and First Amendment protected) of individuals holding unpopular views?" the article's authors, Robert Lichtman and Ronald D. Cohen, wonder. "How to explain the actions of Justice Department lawyers, ethically obligated to avoid the use of perjured testimony, who chose to present as witnesses persons whose truthfulness they had substantial reason to question?"
This thoughtful, searching tone is in keeping with the journal's aspirations to objectivity. "The key to the journal is that it's middle of the road," said the editor, Dan Leab, a history professor at Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J., and a leading member of Historians of American Communism, the organization sponsoring the journal. "It covers the waterfront but leaves the fringes out."
He noted that the journal's dispassionate approach benefits from the release of formerly classified documents in the United States and Russia, as well as the death of controversial cold war figures like Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers. "It's much less likely that people will sue," Mr. Leab said. (The second issue will include an analysis of Congressional committee transcripts from the Hiss case that were declassified a year and a half ago.)
Not that the word Communism has lost its ability to provoke visceral reactions in some quarters, he added. When his organization applied for nonprofit status, he said, government officials were wary. "It took a while to convince the government to give us our 501(c)3 status," he recalled. "My impression is that they're still more concerned about Communists than they are about Enron."
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/11/arts/11TANK.html> -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>