Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf

YOUTH AGAINST FASCISM
in their narrative. 46 This being said, the primary emphasis of these texts was still upon
the Communist Party, leaving a continued historical void on communist youth.
The opening up of Soviet Comintern archives in 1991 reinvigorated debates over
Moscow domination, Western "autonomy" and the highly contentious issue of espionage.
47 British and American scholars took highly divergent approaches to the use of
these previously inaccessible documents. Andrew Thorpe published the first work on the
CPGB and the Comintern utilizing these sources. 48 Thorpe characterized the "control
mechanisms" between the CPGB and the Comintern as ambiguous, allowing sufficient
room for ideological deviation and autonomous political manoeuvring; a relationship
where results and "competence often mattered more than strict obedience." 49 Thorpe's
treatment of his sources highlights instances of successful "dissent" and "deviation,"
characterizing them as reflections of a consistent negotiation of power between the party
and the Comintern. 50 Other historians have criticized Thorpe's interpretations, asserting
the same documents also show that in the end, despite dissent, the Comintern line prevailed,
reflecting a Stalinist culture of submission to authority. 51 Whatever its shortcomings,
Thorpe's analysis represented a self proclaimed "post-revisionist" attempt to analyze
the relations of national parties to the Comintern. 52
Other scholars studying the Comintern archives came to very divergent conclusions on
the CPUSA's relationship to Moscow. In 1995 John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr
produced The Secret World of American Communism followed by a second volume in
1998 entitled The Soviet World of American Communism, reprinting selective Comintern
documents. 53 These two volumes attempt to expose "the party's clandestine activities,"
emphasizing that "the CPUSA was never an independent political organization" by
highlighting Comintern dictates and Soviet funding. 54 Haynes and Klehr followed up
these publications in 1999 with a lengthy narrative depicting the role of the CPUSA in
Soviet espionage. 55 Revisionist scholars immediately attacked Haynes and Klehr,
contending their approach was biased and intended to justify McCarthyism. 56 Haynes
and Klehr rebutted these critiques by publishing vicious personal attacks against revisionists,
labelling many of them as "Stalinists" and "elitists," denouncing them as "equally
repugnant" as Holocaust deniers. 57 Instead of spurning healthy historical debate about
Comintern documents, the Haynes-Klehr thesis has predominately led to "petty slanders"
on both sides of the revisionist and traditionalist rift, causing many historians to simply
"entrench" themselves in their previous scholarly assumptions. Both schools neglect the
diversity of both clandestine and public experiences of communists during the inter-war
era, particularly neglecting to highlight the role of youth.
Thesis and Methodology
This research on the young communist movement is informed by existing historiography,
but attempts to supersede the conflicts between revisionists and traditionalists by adopt-
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