The Abramovitch Campaign and What It Tells Us about American Communism

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Minutes of the Secretariat, 17 January 1925, 1--2. Records of the United States Communist Party in the Comintern Archives (Fond 515), microfilm edition compiled by the Library of Congress and the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, reel 31, delo 171, Tamiment Library, New York University.

² On Abramovtich, see “R. Abramovitsh geshtorbn,” Forverts, 12 April 1963, 1, 12; D. B. [Daniel Bell], “Raphael Abramovitch, 1880-1963,” The New Leader, 29 April 1963, 3; Mark Khinoy, Fun tsarishn un sovetishn untergrunt (New York: Farlag “Der Veker”, 1965), 213--225; D. Shub, “Rafoel Abramovitsh-Rayn,” Forverts, 13 April 1963, 4--5.

³ “Genose Abramovitsh kumt keyn Amerike,” Forverts, 9 January 1925, 1.

⁴ “35 hundert mentshn gibn genose Abramovtish a erlkhn kaboles-punim in di Bronks,” Forverts, 26 January 1925, 1.

⁵ Forverts, 24 January 1925, 16.

⁶ “Gen. R. Abramovitsh redt haynt in Harlem,” Forverts, 28 January 1925, 1.

⁷ “Abramovich, Flunkey of Paris Imperialists, Slips into U. S. Quietly on Sinister Errand,” The Daily Worker, 19 January 1925, 1.

⁸ “Bittelman Scores Abramovich as Enemy of Soviet Russia and Murder of European Workers,” The Daily Worker, 24 January 1925, 4. See also, The Daily Worker, 4 March 1925, 6.

⁹ “Soviet Prisoners on Hunger Strike,” New York Times, 19 February 1925, 3; Abramovitch, “Bolshevism Up a Blind Alley,” The New Leader, 7 March 1925, 5; R. Abramovitch, “Bolshevizm, sotsyalizm un kapitalizm,” Der veker, 15 March 1925, 6–9.

¹⁰ Abramowich, “Bolshevism Up a Blind Alley,” The New Leader, 5.

¹¹ The Daily Worker, 19 January 1925, 1; “Abramovich, Here's Your Hat!” The Daily Worker, 22 January 1925, 6; The Daily Worker, 23 January 1925, 6; “Philadelphia Rejects Abramovich,” The Daily Worker, 17 February 1925, 6; “Workers Party Flays Enemies of Red Russia,” The Daily Worker, 14 March 1925, 1; Central Executive Committee of the Workers Party, “Abramovich—Servant of the Capitalists,” The Daily Worker, 4 March 1925, 6. See also N/A, The White Terrorists Ask for Mercy: A Comparison of Revolutionists by the White Terror and the Treatment of Counter-Revolutionists in Soviet Russia (Chicago, IL: Daily Worker Publishing Co., February 1925), 6.

¹² M. Olgin, “Der aroysgeshpigener Abramovitsh,” Di frayhayt, 17 January 1925, 4; Moissaye J. Olgin, “Abramovich's Honor,” The Daily Worker, 28 March 1925, 5.

¹³ Olgin, “Demokratye un diktatur,” Di frayhayt, 31 January 1925, 4.

¹⁴ Rose Karsner to Roger Baldwin, 21 January 1925 (Reel 1, International Committee for Political Prisoners, New York Public Library).

¹⁵ This was the number given by The New Leader; Di frayhayt, however, claimed 5000. Kh. Palats, “Der komunistisher purim shpil in Leksingon Opera Hoyz,” Der veker, 2 May 1925, 31; Shakhne Epshteyn, “Instsenirte efenthlekhe misphatim un zeyer dertsierishe badaytung,” Di frayhayt, 9 April 1925, 6.

¹⁶ The Daily Worker, 29 January, 6.

¹⁷ “Abramovich Is Forced to Flee at N.Y. Meeting,” The Daily Worker, 21 January 1925, 1; The Daily Worker, 29 January 1925; New Leader, 7 February 1925.

¹⁸ Khanin, Der Veker, 1925, 7.

¹⁹ The Daily Worker, 27 February, 1–2.

²⁰ Forverts, 25 January, 1925, 1.

²¹ Baldwin to Browder, 3 March 1925. Records of the United States Communist Party in the Comintern Archives (Fond 515), microfilm edition compiled by the Library of Congress and the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, reel 34, delo 510, Tamiment Library, New York University.

²² Browder to Baldwin, 17 February 1925. Records of the United States Communist Party in the Comintern Archives (Fond 515), microfilm edition compiled by the Library of Congress and the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, reel 34, delo 510, Tamiment Library, New York University.

²³ Abramovitch eventually settled in the United States in 1940, along with the remainder of the Mensheviks’ Foreign Delegation, and continued to promote his brand of socialist anti-Communism as a journalist, leader of the American Labor Conference on International Affairs, and editor of the respected journal, The Modern Review.

²⁴ Quoted in Tsen yor sotsyalistisher arbet p. 20; Ed., “A zay-gezunt tsu Gen. Abramovitsh,” Der veker, 25 April 1925, 1.

²⁵ Bolshevik Terror against Socialists: Documents and Facts Collected by Authority of the Socialist Labor International [sic] (New York: Committee for Political Prisoners [sic], 1925). Abramovitch is not identified as the author, perhaps out of concern that the booklet's objectivity would be called into question if the author's name were to become known. As the title indicates, the booklet was originally published (in German) by the Labor and Socialist International, identified incorrectly in the title as the Socialist Labor International.

²⁶ On this debate, see Theodore Draper, “American Communism Revisited,” New York Review of Books, 9 May 1985, 32–37 and Draper, “The Popular Front Revisited,” NYRB, 30 May 1985, 44–50. Bryan D. Palmer, “Rethinking the Historiography of United States Communism,” American Communist History, 2, No. 2 (2003), 139–174. See rejoinders, 175–214.

²⁷ Simon Solomon, “Derinerungen fun der yidisher arbeter bavegung in Shikago un Los Andzheles fun 1922 biz 1930,” Part II, 141. (Simon Solomon Folder, Box 56, Manuscripts Collection, RG 108, YIVO.)

²⁸ Jacquelin Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History 91, No. 4 (March 2005); Robbie Lieberman, The Strangest Dream: Communism, Anticommunism, and the U. S. Peace Movement, 1945--1963 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000). Also see articles included in Shelton Stromquist, ed., Labor's Cold War: Local Politics in a Global Context (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008).

²⁹ Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 81

³⁰ Eric Arnesen, “Civil Rights and the Cold War at Home: Postwar Activism, Anticommunism, and the Decline of the Left,” American Communist History 11, No. 1 (2012): 5–44; Jennifer A. Delton, Rethinking the 1950s: How Anticommunism and the Cold War Made America Liberal (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Jennifer Luff, Commonsense Anticommunism: Labor and Civil Liberties between the World Wars (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2012); Richard Gid Powers, Not Without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism (New York: The New Press, 1995); Kenyon Zimmer, “Premature Anti-Communists? American Anarchism, the Russian Revolution, and Left-Wing Libertarian Anticommunism, 1917-1939.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 6, No. 2 (2009): 45–71.

³¹ See, for instance, James R. Barrett, “The History of American Communism and Our Understanding of Stalinism,” American Communist History 2, No. 2 (2003): 175–182; Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), xxiii--xiv; Randi Storch, Red Chicago: American Communism at Its Grassroots, 1928-1935 (University of Illinois, 2008), 1–8.

³² C. E. Ruthenberg, “Capitalism Mobilizes Against the Social Revolution,” The Workers Monthly (November 1925), 5–6.

³³ Ed., “Di vokh,” Der veker, 24 January 1925, 1. Abramovitch to Cahan, 26 November 1923 (YIVO).