Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf

COMMUNIST HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE YOUTH
understand Cold War political tensions. Initial scholarly research was highly influenced
by the concept of totalitarianism, as made popular by scholars like Hannah Arendt. 10
Totalitarian theory linked the Soviet experience with the Nazi Third Reich as "enemies of
Western democracy." 11 Scholars in turn applied totalitarian concepts in their analysis of
national parties, focussing upon the monolithic and authoritarian nature of the communist
movement, dismissing many trends of evolution and change.
Early Cold War scholarship focussed primarily on evaluating the relationship between
national parties and the Soviet state. Western historiography became split between
traditionalist scholars who emphasized Soviet connections and revisionists who distanced
their national narratives from Moscow. 12 Another historiographical camp of this period
praised national parties for their association with the early Soviet state while condemning
their later approval of the Stalin state. Much of this scholarship originated out of the
dissident communist movement embodied in Leon Trotsky's critiques of Stalinism. 13
Trotskyist scholarship emphasised the corrupting role of "Stalinism" on national parties,
focussing their narrative almost exclusively upon the degenerative influence of the Soviet
leadership upon the Comintern. 14 Other texts, though not written by Trotskyists, were
informed by a similar approach. Such texts focussed upon the manipulative influence
that Moscow had upon the development of national radical traditions.
These methodologies were almost all ideologically motivated, attempting to either
discredit or rehabilitate Western communist legitimacy. 15 Early scholars presented a
skewed analysis of communism by not addressing that it was both a national and international
phenomenon that evolved in significant and sometimes independent ways during
the inter-war period.
The divergent Cold War experiences of Britain and the United States fostered distinct
differences in historical scholarship concerning Western communism. In the post-WWII
era, the Labour Party and the Welfare State made socialism a central feature of British
political culture. 16 Communists were politically marginalized by the Labour Party, but
continued to exert significant influence in the trade unions, universities and British public
life. 17 In the United States anti-communist hysteria dominated public and political life
almost immediately at the end of WWII. American politics were defined by a fear of
international communism and domestic campaigns which sought to expose "disloyal"
communist elements functioning in the United States. 18 Willie Thompson has noted that
while "discrimination and attacks" upon the CPGB were serious, they lacked "the fury of
the United States witch hunt" and were "not savage enough to cripple it as an organisation
as happened to the CPUSA." 19 Anti-communism became the prevalent discourse of
American public life while socialism became an accepted and integral part of British
culture.
As a result, British communist history has been written primarily by scholars rooted in
the socialist movement, but with wide disagreement as to how to view the role of Moscow.
Three such examples are the works of Henry Pelling, James Klugmann and Walter
3