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extending the political influence of the Soviet Union in the democracies,
where it would add to the strength of his country in world affairs, than
in
enlarging the national Communist parties. But although the American
radical movement of the thirties was in this sense a movement of revolu–
tionary idea rather than a movement of revolutionary action, for intellec–
tuals the imagination of political change was always one of violence and
barricades. American intellectuals were not drawn in any number to the
Socialist Party; the Socialist Party was a party of reform, not a party of
violent class conflict, and it was therefore felt to be both cowardly and
ineffectual. As the thirties went on and Roosevelt restored the nation to
economic stability, the desire for an American revolution on the model of
the Russian revolution almost entirely disappeared. The radical zeal of
earlier years of the decade was now replaced in this country by a liberal
zeal of self-criticism. Liberals came to feel that while we might not be in a
position to emulate the Soviet Union, neither were we in a position to
feel superior to it; we had our own house to clean. This development,
too, had Stalin's approval. In fact, he helped initiate the change by creat–
ing the "popular front": in 1935 it was announced that the Communist
movement had abandoned its old hostility to other factions of the left and
would now lead a movement against fascism in which all well-meaning
people must join. Stalin's presumed leadership of a world union against
fascism brought into being the period of his greatest influence in the
West, certainly among intellectuals. Today, with the defeat of
Communism in Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it re–
quires a considerable effort of historical memory to bring back to mind
the extent to which Stalinism dominated American culture in the years
before the Second World War: in art, journalism, editing and publishing,
in the theater and the entertainment industries, in the legal profession, in
the schools and universities, among church and civic leaders, everywhere
in our cultural life the Soviet Union exercised a control which was
all
but
absolute. The submission to Stalinism by our opinion-forming population
was not always politically conscious. It represented the fashionable trend
in what was presumed to be enlightened thought.
Lionel's and my intimacy with the radical movement of the early
thirties would have a deep and lasting effect on our thinking about poli–
tics and society and on the kind ofwork we did for the rest of our lives.
It
made anti-Communists of us: from our firsthand knowledge of the au–
thoritarianism and dishonesty of the Party and its cynical betrayal of its
own proposed goals, we came to our early understanding of the nature of
the Soviet dictatorship and of the workings of Communism throughout
the world. Neither of us was ever a Party member; at our most ardent, we
came far short of making this much of a commitment. But as members of
