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User:Elvrum/McCarthyism

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1917

The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 led to the overthrow of the Russian Provisional Government, the Russian Civil War, and the creation of the Soviet Union. In the United States, it marked the beginning of the first Red Scare, and with the foundation of the American Communist Party in 1919 promptly following a series of bombing attempts on prominent capitalists and politicians, including Alexander Mitchell Palmer, resulted in the controversial Palmer Raids. Anticommunism steadily decreased, particularly with the Communists joining the Allied camp during World War II, but reared its head once again with a series of events that triggered the second Red Scare.

1919

1933

1935

The Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an independent international Communist organization founded in March 1919 by Vladmir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik), which intended to fight "by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State." The Comintern represented a split from the Second International in response to the latter's failure to form a unified coalition against the First World War, which the founders of the Third Internationalists regarded as a bourgeois imperialist war.

The Comintern held seven World Congresses, the first in March 1919 and the last in 1935, until it was "officially" dissolved in 1943. Groups coming from the tradition of Left Communism today recognize only the first two congresses, and groups coming out of the Trotskyist movement recognize the decisions of the first four only. Communist Parties of the Stalinist or Maoist persuasion recognize all seven congresses.

A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists who are united by opposition to another group (most often fascist or far-right groups). Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal (or "bourgeois") forces as well as socialist and communist ("working-class") groups. Popular fronts are larger in scope than united fronts, which contain only working-class groups.

In addition to the general definition, the term "popular front" also has a specific meaning in the history of Europe during the 1930s, and term "national front", similar in name but describing different form of ruling was used in Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War.

In response to the growing threat of fascism in the 1930s, the Communist parties that were members of the Comintern (largely under the control of Joseph Stalin) adopted a policy of forming broad alliances with almost any political party willing to oppose the fascists. These were called "popular fronts". Some popular fronts won elections and formed governments, as in France (Front Populaire), the Second Spanish Republic, and Chile. Others never quite got off the ground (there were attempts in the United Kingdom to found a Popular Front against the National Government's appeasement of Nazi Germany, between the Labour Party, the Liberal Party, the Independent Labour Party, the Communist Party, and even rebellious elements of the Conservative Party under Winston Churchill, but they failed due to opposition from within the Labour Party).

Leon Trotsky and his supporters criticised this strategy, claiming that only united fronts could ultimately be progressive, and that popular fronts were useless because they included non-working class bourgeois forces such as liberals. Trotsky also argued that in popular fronts, working class demands are reduced to their bare minimum, and the ability of the working class to put forward its own independent set of politics is compromised. This view is now common to most Trotskyist groups. Left communist groups also oppose popular fronts, but they came to oppose united fronts as well.

After World War II, most Central and Eastern European countries became de facto one-party states, but in theory they were ruled by coalitions between several different political parties who voluntarily chose to work together. For example, East Germany was ruled by a "National Front" of all anti-fascist parties and movements within parliament (Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Liberal Party, Peasants' Party, youth movement, trade unions, etc).

1936

1936-38

The Moscow Trials were a series of trials of political opponents of Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge. They are widely considered to have been show trials in which the verdicts were predetermined. The defendants were accused of conspiring with the western powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, dismember the Soviet Union and restore capitalism, according to Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code).

1938

  • August: House Un-American Activities Committee established.

1939

August 24: Nazi-Soviet Pact creates Soviet alignment with Germany until 1941. September 1: World War II begins in Europe.

1940

June 28: Smith Act prohibits teaching or advocating the overthrow of the government.

1941

June 22: Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union returns Communist part to Allied camp. December 7: Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.

1944

May 20: American Communist party becomes Communist Political Association under Earl Browder.

1945

  • February: At Yalta Conference, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin negotiate postwar settlement for Europe.
  • April: Duclos Letter criticizes American Communists; forces reorganization of American Communist party.
  • April 12: Roosevelt dies; Harry Truman becomes president.
  • May 8: Germany surrenders.
  • June 6: Amerasia case begins with arrest of six journalists and government employees for leaking classified documents.
  • July: American Communist party reorganized; General Secretary Earl Browder expelled. Potsdam Conference settles postwar boundaries of Poland and divides Germany into four Allied zones.
  • August 6: United States drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
  • August 13: Japan surrenders.
  • September: Igor Gouzenko defects in Canada; reveals Soviet espionage in North America.
  • October 11: Louis Budenz quits Communist party.
  • November: Elizabeth Bentley tells FBI about espionage ring.

1946

1947

1948

  • January: University of Washington fires three professors.
  • February: Communists take over Czechoslovakia.
  • June: Berlin blockade begins.
  • July 20: Eugene Dennis and 11 other Communist leaders arrested under Smith Act.
  • August: Hiss-Chambers hearings begin HUAC’s pursuit of Communists in government.
  • November: Truman wins reelection.
  • November 17: Chambers reveals stolen government documents.
  • December 2: Chambers gives “Pumpkin Papers” to HUAC.
  • December 15: Alger Hiss indicted for perjury.

1949

January 17-October 21: Dennis trial; first Smith Act trial of party leaders results in guilty verdict. January 22: University of Washington regents dismiss three professors for alleged Communist connections. March 4: Judith Coplon arrested on espionage charges. June 12: University of California regents impose loyalty oath on faculty. July: First Hiss trial end in hung jury. Summer: Chinese Communists take over China. August: State Department issues white paper on China. August: Soviet Union detonates atomic bomb. November: CIO convention expels left-led unions.

1950

January 21: Hiss convicted of perjury in second trial. February 2: Klaus Fuchs arrested for atomic espionage. February 9:

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