So is this a pro-communist movie?

How can it possibly be the "land of the free" and "home of the brave" when you speak of a time where America was segregated and people were jailed for holding contrary ideologies? Seems to me that you and your ilk are better at playing victim in one hand while being judge and jury with the other. The only symphony such hands can ever conduct are ones that lead to a crescendo of tyranny.

You haven't provided any evidence for your claim that there were "lots of communists in important government positions." There never was any evidence supporting this paranoid delusion, and many decent lives were ruined because of the ambitions and insecurity of some people in power who had this same axe to grind. Of course there were some Soviet spies in the US - as there are spies all over the world - but that doesn't at all amount to evidence for the conclusion there were were "lots" of Communists in important government positions.

As for celebrities who voiced support for Stalin and other dictators, they were few and far between - and they most often changed their mind when they learned of the atrocities committed by these people. You fail to acknowledge that most of the blacklisted people had no affinity for Stalin or the Soviet Union.

You also fail to account for the perspective of many people at the time, when poverty was rampant and many people turned to "socialism" or "communism" for their political ideologies without having any good idea what they were talking about - much like people today throw around ideas and political labels, thereby confusing the meanings of the concepts so much that they come to have little concrete meaning.

The Communism of the Soviet leaders never bore any resemblance to the processes of Socialism and Communism described by Marx, anyway. Those people took the vague descriptions of the processes of social change described by Marx in his theories and adopted them for use as helpful propaganda to serve their own purposes.

My real name is Jeff

vinicius-
Oh a screenwriter said he did that. Could he be bragging? He was a writer, protected by the 1st Amendment, and smart enough not to be shut up when "blacklisted"

Ladies and Gentlemen take my advice
Pull down your pants and slide on the ice.

Bravo! Here, here!

In our entire history we have never been the land of the free nor the home of the brave. That is something we aspire to. Only an idiot would spout such an absurd platitude.

Many people who had nothing to do with the Soviet Union were persecuted for their constitutionally protected personal beliefs. McCarthy & HUAC were mainly using the hysteria as a convenient vehicle to increase their own power.


"Boy that was really exciting. I bet you're a big Lee Marvin fan aren't ya."

"Gotta wonder about people like Trumbo & others in H'wood that slavishly kissed the feet of Stalin (and other guys like Hoxha & Mengistu: not to worry, I have many in my own family too) knowing full well what a brute he was. They probably deserve a serious dose of Karma."

You couldn't be more wrong.

The evidence of the full extent of and overwhelming numbers of people who died and were imprisoned in the purges did not begin to become public knowledge until after Stalin's death in 1953. This was confirmed and denounced by Khrushchev after he took power and delivered his famous speech. Below I've included parts of an article written by Howard Fast, author of "Spartacus" and a devoted communist. who relates his experiences after realizing what few knew, the horrors of Stalin's regime.

"THE "secret" Khrushchev speech, admitting and detailing to the Soviets' Twentieth Party Congress the terrors of Stalin's rule, was published in The New York Times on June 5, 1956.
The next day the staff of the Daily Worker met. We had all read the speech. The somber terror of it was in our eyes and on our faces, and now the discussion was whether or not to print it in the Worker. In the course of that discussion, something happened that will remain with me until I die. It could only have happened then, at that time, for the truth we saw was brutal, cold, and terrible beyond description. Few of us were any longer young. Most of our adult lives had been given to this movement. All of us had made great sacrifices. Here were brilliant careers given up, success and wealth bypassed by some, respect and honor abandoned by others, all of us together in a tiny minority group that had been hounded and persecuted for a decade, all of us driven by and wedded to the splendid dream of brotherhood and justice, all of us knowing each other so well and so long. And in this group, compelled by an idea and realization that had fastened upon me, I rose in the course of the discussion and said,
"I wonder if there is any comrade here who can say now, out of what we know and have seen, that if our own Party leaders had the power of execution he or she would be alive today?"
They all looked at me, but no one broke the silence. We had come to the end of a road. and we knew by what grace we were alive. We knew it - and oh, what a terrible knowledge that was. Each one according to his talent and ability had given his life to the cause of mankind, the brotherhood of man - and we knew that for this the reward was death."

Fast was one of those like Dalton Trumbo who joined the Communist party during the war, 1943 to be exact, when the USA and Russia were allies and there were numerous charity efforts and public relations extolling the American people to support Russia, who truly bore the brunt of the Nazi onslaught and is more responsible for defeating them than any of the other allies. (no thanks to the insane Stalin though, who murdered so many millions among them the creme of the officer core in his army and navy).

At the time when they joined up, it was a patriotic thing to support Russia and why not if at the time they felt that the principals of Communism were what they believed in that they should not like any other American who wishes to join a political party join this one?

The change in policy towards Russia coincided with the end of WW2, but more importantly the death of FDR, who had he lived may have avoided all the cold war nonsense. FDR was a master politician who may have believed in the philosophy of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. FDR had a good rapport with Stalin and would have eased the man's paranoia and could have kept him in check as he did prior to his death. FDR, knew that like himself, Stalin would not be around forever and FDR hoped to cultivate a better relationship with not just Stalin, but the Russian people.

The fact that almost overnight, Truman severely altered FDR's policies and now played hardball with Stalin, only served to encourage Stalin's paranoia and so it went.

How these men and women were to suddenly interpret the change in policy was not so easy and neither was it at the time apparent what Stalin was actually doing in his own country. The fact is that the evil of Stalin's regime did not become public knowledge until 13 years after Trumbo joined the Communist party. Had this been known of then, they would not have supported that maniac.