A Better World: Stalinism and the American Intellectuals

by William L. O'Neill

A concise review of the relationship between Americans sympathetic to Stalinism and their opposition.

Genres: Politics, American

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

William L. O'Neill was an historian specializing in 20th century America. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan and his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. He taught at the universities of Pittsburgh, Colorado and Wisconsin before accepting a position at Rutgers University in 1971, where he taught until his retirement in 2006.

Reviews

[Spencer Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A window into the intellectual life of a large segment of the left, through the 40's and 50's. The conclusions are pretty dismal.

[Kirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is brilliant at what it covers, and I share its slant. The second edition was published about 35 years ago, but I haven't found a book that covers the subject better.

I give it 4 stars instead of 5 because of three major gaps.

First, it's largely limited to New York and Hollywood, where many New Yorkers worked temporarily or part-time. For instance, it tracks the liberal anti-Stalinist New Leader in detail, but barely mentions the Atlantic (Boston) and the Progressive (Madison).

Most important, it almost totally neglects anti-Stalinist black intellectuals. For that matter, it also neglects Stalinist, fellow traveler, and progressive black intellectuals besides Paul Robeson, and it discusses Robeson only as a pro-Soviet speaker, ignoring his civil rights work. It also pays no attention to intellectuals in the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s, apparently because they rarely published in New Republic, the Nation, New Leader, or Commentary and played no major role in cultural congresses.

Finally, Henry Wallace in the late 1940s deserves all the criticism O'Neill makes, or rather reproduces from polemics at the time. But he leaves readers baffled as to why Wallace was so popular as Secretary of Agriculture, why he was one FDR's most trusted administrators, and what became of him after 1950, politically and as a businessman. I find him a much more sympathetic figure than O'Neill lets on.

On the whole, though, I strongly recommend this book.

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow...Highly detailed and well sourced. First time a read a liberal book that criticizes progressives. I never knew that many of those progressives from the late 19th - early 20th that we are all taught did so much for our country, later became Communist supporters, Party Members, and worst of all lied about Stalin's atrocities to forward there socialist agenda.