Pete Seeger and the Communist Party
I fully accept Pete Seeger's explanation that his involvement with the Communist Party was an expression of his belief in American values. But my impression is that his involvement began very early and continued beyond "around 1948" when he said he quit. I have a record, "Songs of the Lincoln Brigade," which was recorded during the Spanish Civil War, featuring Pete Seeger during what must have been his teen-age years, and the film shows Pete campaigning for Henry Wallace in 1948. The Wallace campaign was deeply infiltrated by Communists. (I was there.) My recollection is that Seeger continued to be an apologist for the USSR for some years thereafter. Saying so doesn't mean I approve of his persecution by the House Un-American Activities Committee or of the blacklist that prevented him from appearing on the radio or playing to large audiences for 17 years. The McCarthy era played a central part in forming my own political views, which were left of center but anti-Communist. My sense was always that Pete was on the far left but totally sincere. However, he was also politically naive. By the time he quit the Communist Party, the Moscow Show Trials had taken place, Stalin had signed his notorious pact with Hitler to divide Polish territory, and Russia had taken over Eastern Europe. Most people who'd joined the Communist Party in the 1930's had resigned long since, even though the United States (and Britain) treated the USSR as an ally during World War II after Hitler attacked Russia. Does anyone share my impression that Seeger remained a Communist or at least a Communist sympathizer long after he claims to have quit the party? I repeat -- I'm not accusing him of lying about his patriotic motives. I knew a lot of people who joined the Communist Party in the 1930's. But all my acquaintances dropped out at the time of the Hitler-Stalin Pact and most were militantly anti-Communist by the time that the Cold War began. I knew a few people my own age who joined the American Youth for Democracy, a Communist front organization in the late 1940's, and many were actively supporting Henry Wallace against Harry Truman believing that the U.S. was chiefly responsible for the Cold War. Luckily, Truman won that election and the Communist empire eventually collapsed after murdering approximately 20 million of its own people.
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