Abstract
The era of the Popular Front saw Tresca emerge as one of the most aggressive critics of Stalinism and the Soviet Union. The communist parties of Europe and the United States, together with numerous front and auxiliary organizations under their influence, had come to dominate the Left by the mid-1930s. Tresca, who had been in a minority position by virtue of his cooperation with communists in the 1920s, would once again find himself in a minority position as an anti-Stalinist leftist in the mid-1930s. Although relatively few in number compared to the communists, their broad array of sympathizers, and their socialist allies under the Popular Front, leftists in America who shared Tresca’s anti-Stalinist views constituted an impressive group of intellectuals and political activists, such as Edmund Wilson, James T. Farrell, Sidney Hook, Irving Howe, Dwight MacDonald, Hebert Solow, Philip Rahv, Max Eastman, James Rorty, Eliot Cohen, and others.1 Operating with few allies did not deter Tresca from attacking the Stalinists as fiercely as he did the Fascists. For in his mind, the time when there was any significant difference between them had long since passed.
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Notes
See Alan M. Wald, The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1960? (Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press, 1987).
See Sam Dolgoff, ed., The Anarchist Collective? ( New York: Free Life Editions, 1974 ).
Vernon Richard, Lessons of the Spanish Revolution (1936–1939? ( London: Freedom Press, 1953 ), 22–30.
Quoted in Brenan, The Spanish Labyrint? ( London: Cambridge University Press, 1974 ), 328
and Felix Morrow, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spai? ( New York: Pioneer Publishers, 1938 ), 67.
Burnett Bolletin, The Spanish Civil Wa? (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 133–134, 219–221 et passim
Pierre Broué and Emile Témine, The Revolution and the Civil War in Spai? (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1970), 229;
Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil Wa?, revised ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 323, 340, 434, 705
Isaac Deutscher, Stalin: A Political Biograph? (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 423–425.
For Berneri, see also Memoria antologica saggi scritti e appunti biografici in ricordo di Camillo Berneri nel cinquantesimo della mort? (Pistoia: Archivio Famiglia Berneri, 1986); Antonio Zambonelli, “Camillo Berneri,” in Andreucci and Datti, eds., Il movimento operaio italiano italiano: dizionario biografic?, 1, 254–258.
Ibid., March 7, 14, 1938. For Mink, see also Benjamin Gitlow, The Whole of Their Live? (New York: Scribners, 1948 ), 343
Whittaker Chambers, Witnes? ( New York: Random House, 1952 ), 302–303.
Herbert L. Matthews, Half of Spain Died: A Reappraisal of the Spanish Civil Wa? ( New York: Schribner’s, 1973 ), 120–121.
John Dos Passos, The Theme Is Freedo? (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1956), 116–118.
See Not Guilty: Report of the Commission of Inquiry Into The Charges Made Against Leon Trotsky In The Moscow Trial? (New York: 1938); Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky: 1929–194? (New York: Vintage Books, 1963), 371–382; “Report on the Work of the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky,” submitted by the secretary (n.d.); Executive Committee “Report to the Members on the Work of the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky (ca. April 1938),”
and John Dewey, Truth Is On The March: Reports and Remarks on the Trotsky Hearings in Mexic? (New York: New York, 1936 ). The last three items are among the Margaret De Silver Papers held by Burnham and Claire De Silver.
See also Alan Wald, “Herbert Solow: Portrait of a New York Intellectual,” Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studie? No. 3 (1977): 440–443.
Max Shachtman, “Radicalism in the Thirties: The Trotskyist View,” in Rita James Simon, ed., As We Saw the Thirties: Essays on Social and Political Movements of a Decad? (Urbana, Il: University of Illinois Press, 1967), 40; interview with Nancy MacDonald, New York, May 12, 1974.
Theodore Draper, The Roots ofAmerican Communis? ( NewYork: Viking Press, 1957 ), 193.
Ibid., Gitlow, The Whole of Their Live?, 331–334; Carlo Tresca, “Where Is Juliet Stuart Poyntz?” The Modern Monthl? (March 1938): 12
Herbert Solow, “Missing A Year: Where is Juliet Poyntz?;” New Leade?, June 30, 1938;
Alan Weinstein, Perjury: The Hiss-Chamber Cas? ( New York: Knopf, 1978 ), 310.
Harvey Klehr, “Juliet Stuart Poyntz;” in Bernard K. Johnpoll and Harvey Klehr, eds., The Biographical Dictionary of the American Lef? ( Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1986 ), 317–318.
Pietro Allegra, Il suicidio morale di Carlo Tresc? (New York: n.p., 1938), 3.
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© 2005 Nunzio Pernicone
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Pernicone, N. (2005). Taking on the Stalinists. In: Carlo Tresca. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981097_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981097_21
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