Already have an account? Log in. Log in through your institution. This essay traces the vicissitudes of Western European communist parties between and It seeks to explain why the radicalism of the war years which had led them to reach their electoral peak by saw most of them utterly defeated by and unable to become significant forces in the political life of their respective countries.
Their activism in the war years, superior to that of their socialist rivals, was due to their internal organisation, but this advantage could not be carried out easily in a framework of electoral politics.
Cold war politics is seen as the decisive factor in the sudden and ultimate defeat of Western communism, but national aspects and the relative importance of the resistance to Nazism account for the markedly stronger post-war performance of the French, Finnish and Italian Communist parties. Contemporary European History covers the history of Eastern and Western Europe, including the United Kingdom, from to the present.
America wasn't losing the Cold War—it was being betrayed by traitors from within. The revelation in that Ethel and Julius Rosenburg actually had sold some atomic plans—albeit not very important ones—only added to McCarthy's credibility and popularity.
In addition, the Truman administration had helped pave the way for McCarthyism by using rhetoric that simplified international relations into a struggle between the "free world" and evil communists. Thus, the logic of McCarthy's persecution of communists and suspected communists was congruent with the logic of U.
Even after the fear of domestic subversion declined and the Supreme Court overturned many of the McCarthyist restrictions on communists' liberties in the late s and early s, the fear of an overarching communist conspiracy continued to underpin American foreign policy. Beginning with the Korean War, the US interpreted every communist insurgency as a simply a pawn advanced by the Kremlin to test American resolve.
This logic made every nation seem strategically vital since any failure to contain communism would make America appear weak, leading Moscow to redouble its aggression. American diplomats also repeatedly misinterpreted nationalist and anti-colonialist movements across the globe as Soviet-led ploys. This type of thinking eventually led the U. American leaders could not comprehend that Ho Chi Minh's strength derived less from Soviet and Chinese support than from his promise to expel the colonialists.
Most Americans simply thought those pesky Soviets were at it again; it was just like those devious fellows in the Kremlin to test American willpower in some far-away place that appeared to have little strategic importance.
Americans' faith in the righteousness of the Cold War unraveled rapidly after the Tet Offensive in Although relatively few Americans believed that the whole concept of containment was fundamentally flawed, a majority came to question many tenets of Cold War orthodoxy.
Why should the US prop up a government despised by most of its own citizens? Why should the US fight a major war in a strategically insignificant country? The Vietnam War thus eroded the American public's confidence in its military and political leaders and reduced public willingness to support repressive regimes or to deploy US troops abroad.
In addition, Vietnam convinced many Americans—including Richard Nixon—that more skillful diplomacy could reduce America's dependence on military force to contain communism. Unlike previous presidents, Nixon realized the Kremlin was not ruthlessly pursing world domination and that communism was not a monolithic force. In Nixon exploited a growing Sino-Soviet rift and normalized diplomatic and economic relations with Beijing.
In the U. The Cold War finally ended in and when pro-democracy uprisings in eastern Europe and pro-independence movements in many Soviet republics led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its sphere of influence. Indeed, many Americans now occasionally wax nostalgic about the Cold War—an era when the U. Hunting Reds in the Evergreen State. The Cold War profoundly affected domestic politics as well as international relations.
As we have seen, the logic of America's foreign policy supported the logic of McCarthyism. Since communists were more powerful in Washington than in virtually every other state in the union, it was perhaps not surprising that conservatives in Washington latched on to the "Red issue" before anti-radicals elsewhere.
Events in Washington often provided a model for other states to follow. Several states copied the resolution that created Washington's Canwell Committee.
The University of Washington's decision to fire three pro-communist professors in set off a wave of similar dismissals on colleges throughout the nation. Although the Red Scare in Washington state was unique in many respects, it also helped establish a national pattern and contributed to the growing persecution of communists across the country. Washington Republicans made anti-communism the central theme of their campaign, charging that Democrats had "sold their soul to the Communist Party.
Republicans asserted quite accurately that DeLacy was secretly a member of the CP. The accusations that Democrats aided communism, combined with a mild post-war recession, led Republicans to sweep the elections, regaining controlled of the Washington state legislature for the first time in 16 years.
Albert Canwell was one of the many Republicans whisked into the state house in the landslide. During the legislature, he introduced a resolution to create a committee with broad powers to investigate "organizations whose membership includes communists.
The resolution passed by a wide margin since a majority of Democrats decided to support it. Most Democrats knew all too well that their tolerance of communists, which had broadened their base of support in the late s and early s, was now a massive electoral liability.
Voting against Canwell's resolution seemed like political suicide. Disgusted by this treatment from their former allies, Washington's communists walked out of the Democratic Party and joined the Progressive Party led by former vice-president Henry Wallace.
The Democrats never let the communists back in. The press referred to the group simply as the "Canwell Committee. Canwell's task was simplified by the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in mid This act required every leader of a union to disavow membership in the Communist Party before the National Labor Relations Board could recognize the union. The leaders of many unions, including some in Washington, responded by purging all communists from positions of power. With the communists already being evicted from the labor movement, Canwell could focus the first hearing solely on the WPU.
At the start of the first public hearing, Canwell laid down a series of rules that ensured that the proceedings would be rather one-sided. Only the Canwell Committee's hand-picked witnesses and its investigators could speak at the hearings. Those accused of being communists could neither question their accusers nor make statements in their own behalf. Canwell ordered the State Patrol to eject anyone in the audience who tried to make a speech or otherwise "disrupt" the hearings.
Document 4 is a photo of WPU vice-president E. Pettus being thrown out of the hearings. As the Committee had intended, the first set of hearings made the front page of newspapers across the state in January and February The Committee began by taking testimony from several ex-CP members who had become professional anti-communist witnesses. The Committee paid these witnesses for testifying that the American CP was subservient to Moscow, that communists' participation in seemingly reformist "front" groups was simply a ruse to attract soft-headed liberals the CP wanted to convert, and that the ultimate aim of the CP was the violent overthrow of the US government.
See document 8 for an example of this testimony. The Committee then heard a large number of local ex-communists who swore they saw WPU officials at closed meetings of the CP where only "comrades" were allowed.
See documents 7 , 13 , and These local witnesses offered fairly convincing proof that most WPU leaders were communists and that the WPU had consistently supported Soviet foreign policy through all its twists and turns. The hearings, however, fell far short of proving that the WPU received frequent instructions from Moscow or that the group was really unconcerned with helping the elderly.
The hearings weakened but did not destroy the WPU. Membership in the WPU dropped somewhat after the hearings, but the organization still had little trouble gathering enough signatures to place on the ballot a measure to provide free health care to impoverished Washingtonians. The Canwell Committee held a second set of public hearings in July about "Communist activities at the University of Washington.
Unlike the first hearings, the Committee also subpoenaed people suspected to be communists or former communists. The second professor to take the stand, ex-communist Garland Ethel, set a courageous example by testifying about his own activities in the Party, but refusing to give the names of people he had seen at communist meetings.
Ethel's testimony is document All the subsequent professors followed Ethel's lead and refused to name names. All in all, six professors, including Ethel, admitted they had once been members of the CP. Professors Melvin Rader and Joseph Cohen vehemently denied they had ever been communists; they proclaimed that the witnesses who had said otherwise were lying.
Three professors and Florence and Burton James, the directors of the Seattle Repertory Playhouse, declined to answer any questions about their political affiliations. The Jameses explain their decision not to testify in document The Seattle Repertory Playhouse never recovered from the negative publicity generated by the Canwell hearings. During the hearings, several witnesses alleged that the Playhouse produced "communist plays" and served as a "recruiting ground" for the CP.
The witnesses supplied little evidence to corroborate their charges, except for the fact that some members of the Playhouse had occasionally provided entertainment at CP fund-raisers. Nevertheless, attendance at the theater declined precipitously after the July hearings, and the Playhouse's income fell by two-thirds the following year.
In early the Playhouse filed for bankruptcy. The UW tenure code required the Faculty Senate to create a Tenure Committee to try the administration's charges against the professors. The Tenure Committee had to find the professors guilty of "incompetency, neglect of duty, incapacity, dishonesty, or immorality" before the administration could fire them.
The Tenure Committee's rules are described in document The tenure hearings stretched from October to December The administration contended that Butterworth, Phillips, and Gundlach were all present members of the CP and that their unswerving devotion to communist dogma rendered them incapable of fulfilling their scholarly duty to "seek the truth wherever it may lead.
The administration also argued these three professors were immoral because they belonged to an organization dedicated to overthrowing the government. Ethel, Eby, and Jacobs—all former communists—were charged with having committed these offenses in the past. All six were also accused of having been dishonest with UW President Raymond Allen when he questioned them about their political affiliations.
Each professor offered a different defense, but all six introduced abundant evidence that their colleagues and students found them to be objective and thoroughly competent scholars whose teaching did not reveal pro-communist biases. See document Rather than attempting to refute this testimony, the administration insisted it was irrelevant. The administration asserted that regardless of how qualified the professors appeared to be, the fact that they were or had been members of the CP rendered them inherently unfit.
The professors' lawyers argued that the since the administration could not prove their clients' individual guilt and incompetence, it had fallen back on the unsound doctrine of "guilt by association.
The Tenure Committee voted to dismiss Ralph Gundlach and retain the other five professors. To change or withdraw your consent choices for Investopedia. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page. These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data. We and our partners process data to: Actively scan device characteristics for identification.
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What Is Communism? Understanding Communism. The Communist Manifesto. The Soviet Union. Communist China. The Cold War. Why Did Communism Fail? Key Takeaways Communism is an economic ideology that advocates for a classless society in which all property and wealth are communally-owned, instead of by individuals.
The communist ideology was developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and is the opposite of a capitalist one, which relies on democracy and production of capital to form a society. Prominent examples of communism were the Soviet Union and China.
While the former collapsed in , the latter has drastically revised its economic system to include elements of capitalism. Compare Accounts. The offers that appear in this table are from partnerships from which Investopedia receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where listings appear. Investopedia does not include all offers available in the marketplace. Related Terms Marxism: Theory, Effects, and Examples Marxism is a set of social, political, and economic theories created and espoused by Karl Marx that became a prominent school of socialist thought.
Both sides wanted countries to conform to their adopted ideologies for their own gains. Events during World War Two further alienated the emerging superpowers. This delay allowed Hitler to concentrate his forces against the Soviets. Stalin suspected that the USA and Britain were leaving Germany and the Soviet Union to fight, so that both countries would be weakened.
This led Stalin to search for increased security for his country in the future. He wanted to create a geographical buffer of friendly Eastern European countries to safeguard against future aggression from the west. The USA was opposed to this as they envisaged the creation of democratic states and free trade.
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