The Harold Rosenberg essay, which was originally published (in a more radical, remember Norman Mailer's, "White, "I can understand why a Harlem street kid would bash in the brains of a Jewish shopkeeper, " Negro, appeared in Dissent originally) Dissent, I read first, some twenty yrs. ago or so in a Grove Press anthology of the first decade of Dissent, has a different (or another, I'll re-read it) point than TW states. Unless I'm mixing it up with another Harold Rosenberg piece, isn't it a polemic against the cold war liberal attack on the socialist left, in toto, by lit critter Leslie Fiedler, as being, as a whole with no significant exceptions, examples, naive or cold bloodedly complicit with the crimes of Stalinism? Hold on, 'sez Rosenberg, what about the Trotskyists, libertarian and democratic socialists and anarchists?
One didn't have to dig in dusty bookshops in 1936 to find crits of the Purge Trials or the crushing of the Kronstadt rebellion. THe New International of the Trotskyists esp. had quite lively and scholarly debates.The so-called back of the book of The Nation (in contrast to the I guess you'd say front of the book articles, editorials) in the 30's published every week, anti-Stalinist leftists, whether marxist or left-liberal. See, "Radical Visions and American Dreams, " by Richard Pells with extensive documentation, the numerous vols. on the Partisan Review set (I'd recommend, the New Left acct. by James Gilbert, Alan Wald's neo-Trot, "The NY Intellectuals, " or William O'Neill, "The Great Schism: Stalinism and the American Intellectuals, " which while cold war liberal in tone, is fair (esp. on the pro-CCP fellow travellers) to folks he disagrees with.
Another Rosenberg essay, btw, well worth digging up is, "Marxism: Criticism and/or Action." -- Michael Pugliese