Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf

NOTES
INTRODUCTION: COMMUNIST HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE YOUTH
1. Tim Davenport, "Young Communist International (1919-1943) Organizational History," in Early American Marxism: A
Repository of Source Material, 1864-1964 Online Archive . Although
Young Communist Leagues existed in South Africa, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Abyssinia and Rhodesia, the primary
drive for communist movements in Africa came during the anti-colonial movements of the post-WWII period. During the
time of the Comintern, three International Bureaus existed covering the Americas, Europe and Asia. Where Communist
Parties and YCLs existed in colonial nations outside of these areas, the movements were overseen by the parties of the Imperial
nation that had dominion over that particular colony. See Geoffrey Stern, Atlas of Communism (New York: Macmillan
Publishing Co., 1991), 78-79.
2. See Richard Cornell, Revolutionary Vanguard: The Early Years of the Communist Youth International, 1914-1924 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1982).
3. Ibid., viii.
4. At the Second Congress of the Communist International, Willie Münzenberg insisted that the question of youth was the
most significant question facing the Comintern. Münzenberg urged for the widest possible discussion of the position of
youth before the entire Comintern Congress. Münzenberg's proposals for discussion were postponed by Grigory Zinoviev
in order to allow sufficient time for debate with the British delegation over communist parliamentary tactics. At its Third
World Congress, the Comintern thoroughly discussed the question of youth and adopted a series of resolutions to define
the "correct relationship" between adults and the youth. See "Minutes of the Second Congress of the Communist International:
Thirteenth Session, August 6, 1920," in The History of the Communist International Internet Archive
.
5. YCLGB, A Short History of the Young Communist International (London: Dorrit Press, 1927), 14.
6. For commentary on the Comintern initiatives to create a "Leninist Generation" of youth see Gidon Cohen and Kevin Morgan,
"Stalin's Sausage Machine: British Students at the International Lenin School, 1926-37," Twentieth Century British
History 13, no.4 (November, 2002): 327-355.
7. In a 1938 editorial on political radicalism, Harvey Zorbaugh commented on the inter-war youth stating, "Observers were
mindful of the upheavals that have taken place in one part of the world after another, and of the role that youth had played
in those upheavals – China, where youth had become the incarnation of aggressive nationalism; Russia, where youth had
been the backbone of communism; Italy, where youth had been the vanguard of fascism; Germany, where youth was the
spearhead of Hitlerism. The question began to be asked: Which way America's youth" Harvey W. Zorbaugh, "Which
Way America's Youth," Journal of Educational Sociology: The Challenge of Youth 11, no.6, (Feb., 1938): 322-334. For
commentary on other youth movements, including fascist youth movements, of the interwar period see John R. Gillis,
"Conformity and Rebellion: Contrasting Styles of English and German Youth, 1900-33," History of Education Quarterly
13, no.3 (Autumn, 1973): 249-260; H.W. Koch, The Hitler Youth: Origins and Development 1922-1945 (New York: Stein
and Day, 2000); Walter Lacquer, Young Germany: A History of the German Youth Movement (New York: Transaction,
1984); David I. Macleod, Building Character In The American Boy: The Boy Scouts, The YMCA, And Their Forerunners,
1870-1920 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983).
8. For the US see Paul Mishler, Raising Reds: The Young Pioneers, Radical Summer Camps, and Communist Political Culture
in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); Judy Kaplan and Linn Shapiro, ed., Red Diapers:
Growing Up in the Communist Left (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998). For Britain see Phil Cohen, Children of
the Revolution: Communist Childhood in Cold War Britain (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1997).
9. For the US see Robert Cohen, When the Old Left Was Young: Student Radicals and America's First Mass Student Movement,
1929-1941 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Eileen Eagan, Class, Culture, and the Classroom: The Student
Peace Movement of the 1930's (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981); Hal Draper, "The Student Movement
of the Thirties: A Political History," in As We Saw the Thirties: Essays on Social and Political Movements of a Decade,
ed. Rita James Simon (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1967), 151-189. For the case of Britain see James Springhall,
Youth, Empire and Society: British Youth Movements 1883-1940 (London: Croom Helm, 1977); James Hinton, Protests
and Visions: Peace Politics in 20 th Century Britain (London: Hutchinson Press, 1989); Arthur Marwick, "Youth in Britain,
1920-60: Detachment and Commitment," Journal of Contemporary History 5, no.1 (1970): 37-51.
10. For a discussion of the impact of the "totalitarian" model on Cold War historiography see Alfred G. Meyer, "Coming to
Terms With the Past… and With One's Older Colleagues," Russian Review 45, no.4 (October, 1986): 401-408.
11. By its very nature, totalitarian theory has been extremely contentious and used in a variety of contexts. Though the term
originated prior to WWII, Hannah Arendt popularized its usage with her 1951 publication The Origins of Totalitarianism.
Generally speaking, totalitarianism refers to a political state ruled by a single party that utilizes propaganda, state regulations,
education and terror to control and guide all facets of public and private life. Critics of totalitarian theory have contended
that the concept blurs the important divergences in ideology, practices and motivations that existed between the
communist and fascist movements, denouncing publications like The Black Book of Communism that contend the Nazi
Reich and Soviet Union were "totalitarian twins." Many social scientists and historians have argued that such analysis is
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