Poking Russia with a Stick? NATO Approves Military "Spearhead" for Eastern Europe

[The Magistrate]

36. The CPUSA Paper, Ma'am

Official organ. It was quite entertaining, if one had a grim sense of humor.

One of the difficulties of being on the left in the Cold War period was maintaining some distance from being effectively in support of Soviet, and later of Maoist, Communism. A great deal of damage was done to the left, world-wide and in the United States, by the capture of much left language, and the appropriation and betrayal of many left ideals, by totalitarians in Soviet Russia and Red China. They had supporters here on the left, both genuine adherents and people who were taken in by the manichean world-view they presented. Much of what is said here today in defense of Russia and Putin in Ukraine could be taken nearly word for word from tracts written then against NATO and arming Germany, against the maintenance of U.S. bases abroad, and particularly on the origins of the Cold War itself, which in such circles was presented as a necessary response by the Soviet Union to U.S. and English provocations and aggressions. After all, the Soviet Union loved peace, and harbored no aggressive intentions towards anyone, and it was the genuine will of the people in Poland and Hungary and Romania and Czechoslovakia and the rest to form Communist governments and ally with the Soviet Union against NATO aggression. It was tiresome and destructive then, and it has not improved with age. It is a good portion of the reasons 'why we can't have nice things' like a national health program and strong unions and a more equitable and less violent society, because people who followed that line made it possible for right reactionaries to plausibly present the left as an anti-patriot and subversive element in our society and politics.