I´ve known far stranger ones

A review of Bertram D Wolfe´s book "Strange Communists I have known".

Bertram D. Wolfe was a Communist before turning anti-Communist during the Cold War. He was active in both the Mexican and the American Communist movement in various important positions, and visited Moscow on several occasions. In 1929, Wolfe and other supporters of Nikolai Bukharin (who had been defrocked by Stalin) were summarily expelled from the Communist Party USA. They formed a competing organization, Communist Party (Opposition), better known as the Lovestoneites, after their leader Jay Lovestone. (See my review of Robert Alexander's book "The Right Opposition".) The Lovestone group eventually became democratic socialists, and then dissolved itself, with many of the former members becoming Cold Warriors. Wolfe became a fellow of the Hoover Institution. Lovestone, I think, worked for the CIA!

"Strange Communists I have known" was first published in 1965, and consists to some extent of edited versions of essays previously published elsewhere. I admit that I bought a used copy of the book mostly because of its funny title. I don't think the book is more interesting than average, but it could perhaps be devoured as light bedtime reading. A certain foreknowledge of socialist and Communist history is necessary to really digest it, however.

The book is divided into ten chapters, five of which deal with people Wolfe actually did know personally: John Reed, Jim Larkin, Samuel Putnam, Angelica Balabanoff and Yusuf Meherally. However, Meherally and (arguably) Larkin were never Communists, making the title "Strange Communists I have known" something of a misnomer. The remaining five chapters are of somewhat varied character and quality, dealing with Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin's mistress Inessa Armand, the Czarist spy Roman Malinovsky, Trotsky's book "The History of the Russian Revolution" and the strange case of Litvinov's forged diary (Litvinov was a prominent Soviet diplomat under Stalin).

Wolfe does say a few interesting things here and there. Personally, I found the chapters on Inessa Armand, Malinovsky and Litvinov's diary to be relatively interesting. Likewise the chapter on Angelica Balabanoff, who for a short period actually co-operated with expelled Swedish Communist Zäta Höglund (not mentioned in the book, however).

The book also contain a few humorous or bizarre anecdotes, although much fewer than I expected. Wolfe, apparently, wasn't much for gossip. Thus, when Wolfe discusses the "filthy" and strange habits of Georgy Chicherin, he priggishly never mentions Chicherin's homosexuality, but instead cracks a story about how the Bolshevik commissar would insist on seeing visitors at strange hours - Wolfe himself had to meet him at 2 AM! Nor does he *explicitly* call Inessa Armand "Lenin's mistress", and this in a chapter devoted to proving that Ms. Armand was, indeed, Lenin's lover. But OK, the book was published in 1965, before the sexual revolution.

In the chapter on Litvinov's forged diary, Wolfe implies that the forgeries of various Soviet documents circulating in Europe might actually have been KGB provocations, since they exonerate Stalin from direct responsibility for the crimes of the Soviet era, and constantly attacks the Jews. Maybe. However, another possibility is that they were penned by Russian right-wing extremist émigrés, who admired "the real Russian" Stalin for nationalist reasons. Of course, KGB collusion cannot be ruled out. The fall of the Soviet Union revealed that a large sector of the old nomenklatura was, indeed, fascist. Red-Brown blocs, anyone?

An annoying trait of Wolfe's book is his constant attacks on the amorality and immorality of Communism, while ignoring U.S. support for a whole cluster of brutal butchers during the Cold War, and even earlier. Perhaps it's redundant to critique a Cold Warrior for actually supporting the Cold War, but it would have looked better had Wolfe been a democratic socialist á la Norman Thomas or Michael Harrington or even a revolutionary-democratic socialist á la Hal Draper. I suppose Mr. Wolfe was a "state department socialist" instead...

As already indicated, "Strange Communists I have known" isn't an indispensable book on Communist history, but it might have some fleeting interest for readers who are already relatively familiar with the historical contexts of the persons and events described. BTW, I met far stranger Communists than Bertie. But that's another story, which will never be published by the Hoover Institute.