More Darcyite than Darcy?

Sam Darcy was a leading member of the U.S. Communist Party until his expulsion in 1944 (he was a "hard liner" expelled by the "moderates" around Earl Browder). In 1937, Darcy had penned several pamphlets in defense of the Moscow show trials. "What's happening in the USSR" is shorter than "An Eye Witness at the Wreckers' Trial", but it's better written. For instance, Darcy spends more time painting the (purported) international context for the show trials, including Nazi German espionage and subversion against other European nations. He also explicitly connects the (supposed) Trotskyist subversion of the Soviet Union exposed at the trials with Trotskyist opposition to the People's Fronts of Spain and France, their "slanders" of the Soviet Union, etc. He also claims that the successes of the Soviet five year plans have provoked the outrageous wrecking operations of the "Trotskyites".

Darcy apparently attended the 1937 frame-up trial against Piatakov and Radek, and gives us some of his impressions. Says the author: "I am not exactly new to trials or new to the spectacle of Trotskyist crimes. Yet I must say it took my breath away to see the utter cynicism with which those criminals recounted their experiences at the Piatakov-Radek trials. Take Radek for example. Calmly, as if it meant nothing to him at all, while stirring his glass of tea and lemon on the witness stand, he said: `It's childish to murder one Party leader or government official at a time. We must embark on a campaign of mass murder to create a panic`"

Poor comrade Darcy, having to endure such a thing!

The pamphlet ends with a call to support "the People's Front for peace" and Western liberal democracy (sic) against the Nazis, but also with a call to "eliminate" the Trotskyists. The Soviet secret police was, of course, already busy doing exactly that. Unfortunately for Darcy, Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler in 1939, mooting the entire People's Front for peace. Until 1941, when the strategy became operative again, after the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union. It takes some guts (or gall) to be write pamphlets for the CPUSA!

After his subsequent expulsion from the party, Darcy seems to have become some kind of "more Stalinist than Stalin" kind of Communist. A Darcyite? I'm not sure if that counts for progress, though.