Of Things Past

Of Things Past

American Communism in Crisis, 1943-1957, by Joseph Starobin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 331 pp.

For a certain number of persons Joseph Starobin’s book will hold an intense interest. It presents, with authoritative detail and a serious effort at objectivity, the story of the collapse of the American Stalinist movement beginning at the point when Earl Browder was removed as its leader and ending at the point when both the Cold War repressions and the ideological stupidities of the CP brought it to ruin.

For many years an intellectual spokesman for the CP, Starobin had developed grave disagreements by the early 1950s; a few years later he aligned himself with the “revisionist” wing headed b...