An important obstacle to the study of political culture in the United States of the 1930s and after is the mystification of the terms “Communism” and “communism.” The capitalization or noncapitalization of the letter “c” makes a qualitative difference in the meaning of the term, to which the reader must be ever alert.
In 1967, thirty years after the break of Partisan Review magazine from the Communist Party, Philip Rahv, the journal’s central editor, felt the need to clarify in a public symposium in Commentary that “it was not communism, in its doctrinal formulations by Marx, or even Lenin, that we broke away from, but the Soviet embodiment of it known as Stalinism.” In other words, Rahv and his circle broke from Communism (by which they meant the official Soviet-dominated movement, which they characterized as Stalinist), but for some years remained communists (by which they meant general adherents of the revolutionary ideas of Marx and Lenin).
Following Rahv, this study uses the terms “Communism” and “Communists” (uppercase “C”) to refer to official doctrines and adherents of parties of the Soviet-dominated Third International, which after the late 1920s can be characterized as “Stalinist.” In contrast, “communism” and “communists” (lowercase “c”) refer to doctrines and adherents of the broader movement growing out of the Russian Revolution of October 1917, which includes not only the Stalinist current but also Trotskyists (the most important for this book), Bukharinists, and council communists.
Since one aim of this book is to vivify an important politicocultural experience as expressed through the lives and work of a talented group of intellectuals, a portfolio of photographs has been inserted in the text. Most of these photographs come from the private collection of the late Sylvia Salmi, although a few are from libraries and individuals who responded to requests. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the photographs were undated and in most cases it was impossible to offer a sound guess of the year in which they were taken or to identify the exact setting.
Even though the photographs exhibit the men and women at various stages of their lives, from youth to old age, it was decided to present the photographs roughly in order of the appearance of the individuals in the narrative. In some cases, there are two photographs that show the man or woman at different ages. The appearance or nonappearance of photographs of individuals, or the number of pictures printed, is not necessarily an indication of the centrality of the person to the narrative; the decision to include photographs was also based on the availability of the photographs and their quality.