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the skills, the means, and the inclination to do so." This supposedly ex–
onerates the Party from corruption. But the point is impeccably made:
when asked to partake, many did, in the belief that their aid to the So–
viets was helping the worker's revolution and the march toward future
paradise on earth. And once one accepts this truth, then it is certainly
the next step to acknowledge that government security agencies had a
responsibility to watch carefully over Communists and to keep them out
of sensitive government positions.
Other eminent historians have seen the book more favorably. Writ–
ing in
The New Republic,
Arthur Schlesinger,
Jr.
praised it, correctly
noting that the documents prove "beyond any question that the Ameri–
can Party functioned as an instrument of Soviet espionage." As an old
Cold-War liberal - indeed, creator of the concept of a vital center -
Schlesinger never had any illusions about American Communists or about
"the doctrine of Communist innocence." Yet he feels that the authors
are "rather uncritical about American ex-Communists." He sees their
defense of Whittaker Chambers as plausible, but that of Elizabeth Bent–
ley, he writes, "is less so." In fact, the volume's section on Bentley is a
model of scrupulous and careful scholarship, and the authors conclude,
based on NKVD memos they found, that Bentley's story is in the main
supported. It appears that Schlesinger has had somewhat of a failure of
nerve in the face of the fact that those named by Bentley appear to in–
clude some who managed to hoodwink honest New Dealers into coop–
erating with them during the war years.
Schlesinger concludes by arguing that the authors, like the pro–
Communists revisionists, have "a penchant for exaggerating the impor–
tance of the CPUSA." He says that they "overplay the impact of
ephemeral Party members serving in marginal bureaus and congressional
committee staffs." Looking back, he observes, "I don't think that the
CPUSA had much influence on anything," that the New Deal, the CIO
et al. "would have evolved in the same way if the CPUSA had never ex–
isted." This is certainly a case of history as wish-fulfillment. The fact is
that the Communists were in key government agencies, not simply
"ephemeral" backwater bureaus. They controlled many of the key CIO
unions; they had scores of influential supporters in the entertainment in–
dustry, especially Hollywood; and they had tremendous influence in the
forging of a pro-Soviet attitude among influential liberal opinion-mak–
ers. During the early Cold War, as Stalin was seeking to expand the So–
viet empire abroad and break the back of Western policy, the Commu–
nists in Europe, and yes, in America, made up a key Second Front
among the ranks of Stalin's supporters. One has only to look at the
