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Jakub Basista, PhD, DLitt
Institute of History
Jagiellonian University
COLD WAR 2015/2016
Meeting 8 Lecture Notes
Stalinism and McCarthyism.
Stalinism and the age of terror 1948-1956.
Synopsis
The system introduced after WW II in Central Europe changed over time. Its first period,
from the establishment of Communist rule lasted till the Thaw of 1956. It is referred to as
Stalinism after its creator – Joseph Stalin. And although Stalin himself died in March
1953, it took three more years for the situation to change. A signal was given by one of
Stalin’s successors – Nikita Chruschov. AT the XX Congress of the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union, he pronounced Stalin a criminal and his period as a period of
wrongdoing. The speech, intended to be secret, leaked out and let to changes in various
countries of the Soviet block. In some places they were slow and careful, in other they led
to Soviet intervention after Moscow saw that they went too far.
As far as Stalinism was concerned it was a period of totalitarian military-party regime.
Who is not with us is against us. Stated the party slogan. And if one were not with the
system, with comrade Stalin, one could end up in jail. The system included and overrun
every domain of life: politics, education, production, family life, culture, sports, travel.....
1. The system
2. Methods of maintaining power
- Leadership; Leader cult
- Pseudo-religious ritual
3. Party’s role in society/economy
- Economy
- Art; Literature
- Industrialisation
- Political domination
4. Soviet control of dependent states
“The Soviet-controlled people’s democracies were meanwhile in the grip of mature
Stalinism. It was characterized by the enforced imitation of political, administrative and
cultural institutions; absolute obedience to Soviet directives and even hints;
administrative supervision by Soviet personnel; bureaucratic arbitrariness; police terror
uncontrolled even by the local party; economic deprivation while pursuing overambitious
industrial investment programs and undercapitalized agricultural collectivization drives
(“lunar economics”); colonial-like foreign-trade dependence on the Soviet Union;
isolation from the non-Communist world and to some extent even from other people’s
democracies; synthetic Russomania; a mindless cult of Stalin adulation; and resultant
widespread social anomie, intellectual stagnation, and ideological sterility.”
Quote from Rothschild J., Return to Diversity, New York, Oxford 1989, p. 145.
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Communist Party Power
– gaining power (revolution, war)
– purposeful process of history
– the state ruled by workers
– party guarding the revolution
Methods of maintaining power
– Personality cult: 1. Link with Lenin 2. Role in achievement of success
3. Relationship with the people 4. Scientific achievements/writings
– Pseudo-religious ritual
Party’s role in economy/society
– economy
– art,literature
– industrialisation
– political domination
Practice
– army
– peoples’ militia
– party membership
– education/censorship
Soviet community of states
– control of other states
– bilateral consolidation with Moscow
– Soviet embassies
– close contact between party bodies
– direct penetration of institutions
– isolation of peoples’ democracies
– the Warsaw Pact
– COMECON
STALINIST REPRESIONS
1944-53 are the years of the hardest repressions in Poland: in 1954 at least 5 million people
were entered into the files of the security organs as „criminals and suspects’
1945-1953 at least 756000 were in custody (jails, arrests) with barely 12 % having a court
sentence
1945-53 Special Committee to Combat against Economic Misdoings sentenced 310000
persons (loss of property and alike)
1944-56 probably 20439 were executed or died in prisons
1946-55 there were 3468 death verdicts announced by the
Regional Military Courts
1946-55 at least 1363 death verdicts were carried out
SHOW TRIALS
January 1946 – court case against 15 members of the so called „special corps” – seven
persons executed, others sentenced to 5-19 years
August-September 1946 – trial in Katowice against six members of „Wolnośc i Niezawisłość”
(3-10 years prison)
October 1946 – court case against founders of „Narodowe Zjednoczenie Wojskowe (Leon
Mirecki tortured yet sentenced after one year only to five years)
Summing up – probably 150000 were detained and accused in connection with political
activity in the years 1945-46
1945-48 some historians claim 71336 persons were detained in connection with military
activity
Labour and Concentration camps
Stalinist show trials begin on 12 May 1949 with a trial against the Albanian Minister of
Interior, Koci Xoxe (Titoist).
The trial against him and his followers started in Sofia on 7 December 1949.
Those tried with him were Prof. Ivan StefanoT, Nikola Pavlov, Nikola Nachev, Boris A.
Hristov, Tsonyu S. Tsonchev, Ivan S. Gevrenov, Ivan G. Tutev, Blagoy I. Hadzhipanzov,
Vassil A.Ivanovski and Ilia I. Bayaltsaliev.
The accusation was the following:
a) of treason, because they had organized an illegal organization and groups aiming to
overthrow the legally established people's power by forceful means; that they have committed
actions-aiming at worsening the friendly relations of Bulgaria with the Soviet Union and the
People's Democracies;
b) of espionage for having collected and transmitted to the British, American and Yugoslav
Intelligence Services Information considered as a state secret and also have placed themselves
under the orders of a foreign Intelligence Service for spy work;
c) of sabotage for having committed criminal acts aiming at the disorganization of the
national economy and the supply system of the country.
Kostov received his sentence on 14 December 1949: death, depriving of all rights and
confiscation of all properties. The death sentence was executed on 16 December 1949, by
hanging. In reality the aim of Kostov and his followers was to save Bulgaria from full Soviet
influence and economic exploitation. After the 20th Congress of the Soviet CP and the BCP's
CC plenum of April 1956, Rostov and those sentenced together with him were rehabilitated.
Arrests start on 18 May 1949 (six days after the opening of Xoxe trail).
Laszlo Rajk Hungarian Communist; Stalinist; victim of the system he helped create;
obviously he was eliminated because of his backgroud – he was a Hungarian Communist, not
‘imported’ from Moscow.
Slánský was found guilty of "Trotskyite-Titoist-Zionist activities in the service of American
imperialism" and on 3 December hanged in Pankrác Prison with 10 ‘accomplices’.
McCarthyism
Mar 21, 1947
Truman Loyalty Oaths
President Harry S. Truman issues Executive Order 9835, establishing a Loyalty- Security
Program for all federal employees. Designed to pre-empt Republican charges of Communist
infiltration of the government, Truman's loyalty oaths only heighten the country's growing
fears of Communist subversion.
Jun 23, 1947
Taft-Hartley Act
Congress passes the Taft-Hartley Labor-Management Relations Act over President Truman's
veto, sharply curtailing the rights of organized labor while forcing unions to purge
Communists from their ranks.
Oct 20, 1947
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Un-American Activities Committee opens hearings investigating Communist
activity in Hollywood.
Oct 27, 1947
John Lawson Refuses
Screenwriter John Howard Lawson, a hostile witness before the House Un-American
Activities Committee, refuses to answer, on constitutional grounds, whether he is or was a
member of the Communist Party. He is ejected from the hearing and later charged with
Contempt of Congress.
Nov 24, 1947
Hollywood Ten
The House of Representatives issues citations for Contempt of Congress to the Hollywood
Ten—John Howard Lawson, Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk,
Ring Lardner Jr., Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo.
Nov 25, 1947
Hollywood Blacklisting
The Motion Picture Association confirms the blacklisting of the Hollywood Ten from
employment in the film industry.
May 1, 1948
Arrest in Alabama
Glenn Taylor, Progressive Party candidate for Vice President on Henry Wallace's ticket, is
arrested in Alabama for violating segregation laws by attempting to hold an integrated
political rally. Taylor's jailor is Birmingham police commissioner Bull Connor, who will later
became notorious for unleashing attack dogs on peaceful civil rights protestors associated
with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Aug 3, 1948
Alger Hiss Named a Communist
Former Communist Whittaker Chambers testifies before the House Un-American Activities
Committee, naming Alger Hiss—an important figure in Franklin Roosevelt's State
Department—as a Communist agent.
Aug 5, 1948
Alger Hiss Testifies
Alger Hiss testifies before the House Un-American Activities Committee, denying that he is,
or ever was, a member of the Communist Party.
Aug 25, 1948
First TV Broadcast of Congressional Hearing
Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers both testify in a televised hearing of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. It is the first time any Congressional hearing has been
broadcast over television.
Nov 2, 1948
Truman’s Surprise Reelection
President Harry S. Truman is elected to a second term as president, defeating Republican
Thomas Dewey, Progressive Henry Wallace, and Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond in the election
of 1948.
Nov 2, 1949
CIO Boots Communist Labor
The Congress of Industrial Organizations votes in its national convention to revoke the charter
of the United Electrical Workers, the third largest union in the CIO, for failing to purge itself
of Communist influence. Ultimately twelve left-leaning unions, and countless individual leftwing organizers, will be booted from the CIO.
Jan 21, 1950
Alger Hiss Convicted
Alger Hiss is convicted for perjury after a jury concludes that he made false statements in
denying Whittaker Chambers' allegations that the two men had known each other as
Communists in the 1930s. Hiss will serve more than three years in federal prison.
Feb 9, 1950
Joseph McCarthy Claims Targets
Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy gives a speech in Wheeling, Virginia, dramatically
claiming, "I have in my hand a list of 205 cases of individuals who appear to be either cardcarrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist Party" within the United States State
Department.
Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was a U.S. lawyer, civil servant,
administrator, businessman, author, and lecturer.
In 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a government informant and former Communist Party member,
testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that Hiss had secretly
been a Communist while in federal service. Called before HUAC, Hiss categorically denied
the charge. When Chambers repeated his claim in a radio interview, Hiss filed a defamation
lawsuit against him.
At both trials, a key piece of prosecution testimony was that of expert witnesses who stated
that identifying characteristics of the typed Baltimore documents matched samples known to
have been typed on a typewriter owned by the Hisses at the time of his alleged espionage
work with Chambers. Also presented as prosecution evidence was the typewriter itself, which
the Hisses had given away years earlier; it had been located by defense investigators.
In the second trial, Hede Massing, an American ex-Communist, provided some corroboration
of Chambers's story when she recounted meeting Hiss at a social function in which they both
spoke obliquely about their Communist activities.
The second trial jury found Hiss guilty on both counts; on January 25, 1950, he was sentenced
to five years imprisonment. The verdict was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for
the Second Circuit (case citation 185 F.2d 822) and the Supreme Court of the United States
(340 U.S. 948). Hiss served 44 months at the Lewisburg Federal Prison before he was
released November 27, 1954.
The term "Red Scare" has been applied to two distinct periods of intense anti-Communism in
United States history: first from 1917 to 1920, and second from the late 1940s through the
mid-1950s. Both periods were characterized by widespread fears of Communist influence on
U.S. society and Communist infiltration of the U.S. government. These fears spurred
aggressive investigation and (particularly during the first period) jailing of persons associated
with communist and socialist ideology or political movements.
American communists who were executed in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage. The
charges related to passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. This was
the first execution of civilians for espionage in United States history.
Rosenbergs were convicted of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union on Mar 29, 1951
and executed on June 19, 1953.
http://civilliberty.about.com/od/freespeech/tp/McCarthyism-Timeline-History.htm
1946
Using elaborate (and completely fictional) war stories, forged documents, and a fake limp,
Wisconsin politician Joseph McCarthy successfully wins election to the U.S. Senate as a war
hero.
1947
The U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee destroys the careers of ten prominent
Hollywood figures for their refusal to testify about alleged ties to U.S. progressive and
socialist movements. While McCarthy is not directly involved in the HUAC's work, it appears
to have inspired his later efforts.
1950
In a February speech, Joseph McCarthy argues that the United States is losing the Cold War
and that the fault rests with McCarthy's political enemies in the Truman administration:The
reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because our only powerful
potential enemy has sent men to invade our shores, but rather because of the traitorous actions
of those who have been treated so well by this Nation. It has not been the less fortunate, or
members of minority groups who have been traitorous to this Nation, but rather those who
have had all the benefits that the wealthiest Nation on earth has had to offer - the finest
homes, the finest college education and the finest jobs in government we can give.
This is glaringly true in the State Department. There the bright young men who are born with
silver spoons in their mouths are the ones who have been most traitorous. I have here in my
hand a list of 205- a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being
members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy
in the State Department.The explosive accusations transformed Joe McCarthy, a little-known
freshman senator from Wisconsin, into a household name.
1952
McCarthy's book, McCarthyism: The Fight for America is published, and his characterization
of the Democratic Party as soft on Communism helps General Dwight Eisenhower win the
November presidential elections. Eisenhower would later become a critic of McCarthy's
tactics.
1953
McCarthy becomes chair of the Senate Operations Committee, and uses his authority in this
role to assign himself as chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which he
uses as an instrument to push his "anti-Communism" efforts.
1954
The four-day Army-McCarthy hearings, nationally televised and broadcast on the radio,
damage McCarthy's standing among the American public. He is censured by the U.S. Senate
and stripped of his chairmanship, and his role as a national politician effectively comes to an
end. Later that year, Eisenhower famously refers to McCarthyism as "McCarthywasm."
1957
His career as a national politician essentially over, Joe McCarthy dies of alcohol-induced
hepatitis.
1958
The John Birch Society, which advances paleoconservative principles and targets alleged
Communists in the U.S. government, is founded.
2003
Conservative pundit Ann Coulter's Treason, which portrays McCarthy as an American hero,
is published.
2007
Conservative revisionist historian M. Stanton Evans' Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story
of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies, which further attempts to
rehabilitate McCarthy's image, is published.
2010
Citing the work of American Nazi author Elizabeth Dilling (who, ironically, was herself
convicted on sedition charges in 1944), right-wing pundit Glenn Beck argues that Joseph
McCarthy was "absolutely right."
2012
Rep. Allen West (R-FL) accuses Democratic politicians of secretly belonging to the American
Communist Party:What percentage of the American legislature do you think are card-carrying
Marxists? I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party that are members
of the Communist Party. They actually don’t hide it. It’s called the Congressional Progressive
Caucus.Earlier in the year, West called on Democratic leaders to leave the country:This is a
battlefield that we must stand upon ... Take your message of equality of achievement, take
your message of economic dependency, and take your message of enslaving the
entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else. You can take it to
Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the
hell out of the United States of America.This is consistent with the older Tea Party
movement's emphasis on anticommunism and other policies associated with
paleoconservatism.