As the world outside our movement grew increasingly hostile, we huddled more closely together.\u00c2\u00a0 Crowds at street corner meetings were becoming less friendly.\u00c2\u00a0 In some places our supporters were so few we had to give up holding meetings altogether.<\/p>\n
Then, in August of 1939, came a political thunderclap — the Nazi – Soviet Nonaggression Pact.\u00c2\u00a0 It felt like the end of our cause.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it was.\u00c2\u00a0 How could we explain this treaty between a socialist country and the most hated fascist regime?<\/p>\n
As the headlines were screaming out the news of the pact to divide up Europe, I made my way in a state of total confusion to the YCL headquarters.\u00c2\u00a0 Everyone was there, looking for explanations.\u00c2\u00a0 Seymour told us that the Politburo of the Central Committee was in session at that very moment to consider the Party’s position.\u00c2\u00a0 He was sure they would come up with a clear explanation of why the Soviets had signed the pact.<\/p>\n
On our way to a meeting at Webster Hall that evening we were beseiged by a group of Trotskyites waving copies of their paper, The Militant.\u00c2\u00a0 Its headline read “Socialism Betrayed — Stalin Signs Pact With Hitler.”\u00c2\u00a0 An argument with the Trotskyites invariably ended in a screaming match.\u00c2\u00a0 Even to me, my arguments sounded limp, and I was glad when someone pulled me away:\u00c2\u00a0 “C’mon Schrank.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a waste of time.\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody is going to convince anyone of anything.”<\/p>\n
In the packed, hushed hall, hundreds of party members leaned forward in their seats as Earl Browder, the general secretary of the party and our very own midwestern college professor, quietly began to explain.\u00c2\u00a0 Ever since the rise of Hitler in Germany, he said, the central objective of the imperialist powers had been, directly and indirectly, to supprt and build German fascism in order to prepare for an assault on the Soviet Union.\u00c2\u00a0 It was no accident that the West had stood back as Hitler marched across Europe.\u00c2\u00a0 The Munich agreement, Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, the failure of the West to act — all convinced Stalin that Russia should not, as he put it, “pull their [the capitalists’] chestnuts out of the fire.”\u00c2\u00a0 Browder explained that at times socialism had to take many steps backwards in order to move forward.\u00c2\u00a0 This was such a time.\u00c2\u00a0 Stalin’s agreement with Germany would defeat the capitalists’ scheme of letting these two powers destroy each other while Britain, France, and the United States looked on, licking their chops in anticipation of spoils.<\/p>\n
The hall broke out in wild applause.\u00c2\u00a0 Of course!\u00c2\u00a0 That was it!\u00c2\u00a0 It was a brilliant manuever!<\/p>\n
But did we believe it?\u00c2\u00a0 At the cafeteria after the meeting, we were not so sure.\u00c2\u00a0 Henry pointed out that intellectuals like Browder could explain anything.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a Faustian gamble.\u00c2\u00a0 Could we sign a pact with the devil and not be destroyed by him?\u00c2\u00a0 Hitler was now ready to move east against Poland, and Churchill was saying that World War II was about to begin.<\/p>\n
To those of us in the American Communist Party, Moscow was something like the Vatican to Catholics.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a far-off place that periodically issued directives — papal bulls or the party line — about subjects followers in distant lands may have known or cared little about.\u00c2\u00a0 With the exception of high party officials, most of us in the movement had never been outside the United States.\u00c2\u00a0 To me, Europe was a place Papa had characterized as cursed by an incurable and deadly nationalism.\u00c2\u00a0 Looking back, I think the outlook I learned from him didn’t give me much hope for Europe, and even less for Russia.\u00c2\u00a0 I suppose I was a provincal American.\u00c2\u00a0 I was humbled by the intellectuals in the party leadership.\u00c2\u00a0 I simply assumed they knew things I couldn’t possibly understand and continued to think of myself as a dumb worker.\u00c2\u00a0 Whatever doubts I had about the wisdom of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, I continued to believe in what we were doing in the United States.<\/p>\n
Wasn’t That A Time, Robert Schrank, 175-176, 1998<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the world outside our movement grew increasingly hostile, we huddled more closely together.\u00c2\u00a0 Crowds at street corner meetings were becoming less friendly.\u00c2\u00a0 In some places our supporters were so few we had to give up holding meetings altogether. Then, in August of 1939, came a political thunderclap — the Nazi – Soviet Nonaggression Pact.\u00c2\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-regurgitates-forward"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3461,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3460\/revisions\/3461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}