The Red Decade: The Stalinist Penetration of America

by Eugene Lyons

The classic work on Communism in America duting the thirties.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, American History, 20th Century, American

423 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1941

About the author

American Anticommunist.

In his younger years Lyons was a member of the Young People’s Socialist League the youth section of the Socialist Party USA.

He became critical of the Soviet Union after working there as a correspondent of United Press International.

During the early 1940s and the Second Red Scare which followed World War II, Lyons was a frequent contributor to the popular press on anti-Communist themes, targeting liberals if Lyons deemed them inadequate in their denunciations of the Soviet regime.

Lyons also wrote a biography of President Herbert Hoover.

Reviews

[Peter Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

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The Red Decade by Eugene Lyons

The publication of this book happened at a historically fascinating time. The book was published in 1941, shortly after Hitler's surprise attack on Communist Russia caused yet another reversal of Russian Communist policy and, consequently, American Communist policy. The net result is that the American Communist dalliance with Nazis and "America First" is fresh in author Eugene Lyon's mind, and, so, we get to see it without the shading of the subsequent alliance of the democracies and Stalin.

Eugene Lyon was a leftwing journalist assigned to Moscow from approximately 1930 to 1935. He seems to have been initially been well-disposed to Communism, but while in Russia he found that he could not ignore the cruelty and oppression that Communists were inflicting on Russia as well as other American journalists. When he returned to America, he wrote "Assignment in Utopia," revealing the problems of Communism and earning himself the title of "redbaiter. He looked down on his fellow journalists who continued to act as Communism's public relation agents.

This is a lengthy book that follows the back and forth of the many persons who associated themselves with Communism. The significance of a lot of this name-dropping is lost to time, but some names stand out. For example, Dashiel Hammett, Paul Robeson, Dorothy Parker and some other members of the Algonquin Round Table show up repeatedly as reliable fronts for Communist petitions. I was personally interested in seeing Will Geer - Grandpa Walton - being outed as a Communist.

The thesis of the book is that the policies and leadership of the American Communist Party were determined in Moscow to comply with the perceived needs of Russian Communism at any particular moment. The result is that American Communists went through totally incoherent policy changes that were antithetical to the interests of American Communism. Lyons traces American Communism from the founding of the Comintern in 1919 through the "Red Decade" of the 1930s through five periods.

The first period involved the traditional imagery of Communists as radicals, complete with contempt for capitalism and wealth, and the wearing of leather jackets, etc. ("This was the First Period of the Comintern-shrilly revolutionary, conspiratorial and glorying in outlawry, appealing in all countries to genuine social rebels and to bold romantics.")

The Second period involved a movement toward legality. According to Lyons: "This was the Second Period in the career of the Comintern and hence of its every extension abroad, roughly from 1921 to 1928. Wherever possible the Communist Parties retreated from plotting to mild propaganda within the laws of their respective countries. In many countries, among them the United States, the parties climbed out of romantic subcellars to the prosaic sidewalks of legality."

The Third Period began in 1928 with Stalin's complete usurpation of power. The American Communist Party returned to talking about immediate revolution and a revolutionary ethos. "Such was the distemper of the fabulous Third Period. Its propaganda bristled with mouth-filling and soul-stirring talk of “ideological subjugation,” “opportunist deviations,” “chauvinistic demagogery,” “true Bolshevik intolerance,” “Leninist firmness,” “renegade theatricalism,” “social fascist betrayal.” The comrades wore caps and leather jackets and unshaven faces. The girls in the movement disdained lipstick and cut their hair short and lived demonstratively with Negroes."

Along with this was anti-Americanism and Pro-Sovietism:

"But after a fine start the Councils began to lose strength. Droves of the unemployed were scared off by the Third Period slogans foisted on them: “Down with Yankee imperialism! Defend the Soviet Union! For a Soviet America!” At the same time a rival organization began to make great strides. It was the Workers Alliance, sponsored by the Socialist Party and liberal elements, and headed by a young, vigorous and capable socialist, David Lasser. The communists realized that their salvation lay in a merger. They were convinced, and rightly so, that once an amalgamation was achieved, they would control it. Besides, the Third Period was drawing to a close—symptoms of Moscow’s abandonment of the “revolutionary upsurge” were multiplying."

This period gave way to the American period where American Communists attempted to persuade Americans that Communism was as American as apple pie. Communist publications feature Lincoln and Lenin. This period was the period of the "popular front," where Communists tried to appease the democracies in the interest of finding "collective security" against the threat of Hitler. As Lyons observes:

"Only when Hitler rejected the “very good relations,” preferring to set himself up temporarily as Europe’s policeman against Bolshevism, did Moscow veer gloomily to its “democratic” anti-fascist line of recent memory. The epoch of People’s Fronts, Popular Fronts, collective security and elaborate pseudo-democratic mummery, the Fourth Period, was thus virtually forced upon the Communist International by the German Führer."

The Fifth Period was eventuated by Stalin's pact with Hitler. Overnight the Communists went from advocating attacking Hitler to advocating that the democracies stay home and leave Hitler alone.

"The Fourth Period came to an abrupt end in August, 1939, with the Soviet-Nazi Pact. Its sudden death, like its slow birth, had nothing to do with conditions in America or any other non-Soviet country. On the contrary, the world was never riper for a real democratic united front than at the moment when that front was kicked over by a Russian boot. The whole fantastic tale makes sense only in relation to the national interests of Russia. The history of Bolshevism in America makes sense only as a shifting shadow thrown on the screen of American life by a far-off dictatorship.
The Fifth Period, after the pact, unfolded smoothly enough for twenty-two months—until it was smashed on June 22, 1941, by the treachery of the Berlin partner. While it lasted, the Comintern swung back to world revolutionary pretensions and slogans, utilized primarily in the service of the very forces it had presumably been fighting against in the preceding period."

A lot of attention has been spent on American conservatives and Republicans who were isolationists and "American Firsters," but between September 1939 and June 1941, but consigned to the memory hole is the fact that the American Communists were leading isolationists:

"Not until two weeks later did the few writers and the mass of pseudo-writers who took part in this ill-fated congress realize that history was playing a nasty practical joke on them. Ignoring the “capitalistic lies” about Comrade Hitler’s aggressive intentions against Führer Stalin, the muddled literati went all-out in support of Moscow’s “peace” policy for the U.S.A. They passed resolutions condemning our “war mongering” aid to Hitler’s victims, supporting outlaw strikers in our defense plants and glorifying Stalin’s genius in keeping out of the unsavory imperialist squabble. They indicated their adherence to the “peace vigil” picket line maintained by the American Peace Mobilization around the White House. An entire session was given over to the memory of Randolph Bourne, who opposed American participation in the first World War and Theodore Dreiser was honored with a Randolph Bourne citation as the current embodiment of Left isolationism."

All that changed precisely on June 22, 1941:

"The national organization especially created to promote the strictest isolationism and non-intervention, the American Peace Mobilization, called off its “peace vigil” at the White House and announced its support of aid to Britain. The whole communist “peace front”—until the night of June 22 so loud and busy and crowded—was soon silent and deserted, except for the faint wailing of honest pacifists trampled in the ignominious retreat of the comrades from fake-isolationism."

Lyons also documents the "Red Terror" whereby the Communists would blacklist any writer who fell outside the pale:

"It was the price men of talent paid for refusal to play the Stalinist game. The price could not deter a Farrell or a Dos Passos. It did keep scores of lesser literati in line. The one word “GREATNESS” headed a review of a book by John Dos Passos in August, 1936. His skill, his social-mindedness and human qualities were constantly extolled in the communist and liberal press. Then Dos Passos, too, went to Spain. He was horrified by the operations of the Stalinist camarilla in and behind the Loyalist lines, and he said so. The much-reiterated verdict on him was thereupon reversed. Comrade Gold was the trigger man in a column denouncing not merely Dos Passos’ politics but his art."

Of course, it wasn't just Dos Passos, it was every writer or public intellectual who moved in Leftwing circles:

"The same ugly labels were plastered on Sam Baron, a well-known socialist who returned from Loyalist Spain critical of the dictatorial ruthlessness of the communists. A veteran of the Russian adventure in Spain sat in my office. He was distressed nearly to hysteria. “If I come out and tell what I really think about the Spanish affair,” he said, “I’ll be called a traitor, a fascist, a spy. I’ll be shunned by my friends and avoided even by some members of my own family.” At that time he was still making speeches for a Spanish aid committee under Muscovite control."

Likewise, as is the case today, trendy people embraced trendy causes. "To merge yourself with Stalinism, therefore, was decidedly not a form of self-abnegation. It was a species of social climbing. In California at that time it meant the inside track in local cocktail society as well as government, labor, the New Deal. The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League claimed 4,000 members."

This is a good primary historical source. The special utility of texts written at the time is that they haven't been subjected to the process of revision to fit the conventional wisdom that arises after the fact. Consequently, the information is often fresher and more reliable than the books written long after the fact.

[G.S. Richter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lyons, in tone and wit, is like an American Solzhenitsyn. I adore his acid tongue. With equal parts humor and contempt, he chronicles the fabulous blunders and exasperating successes of Stalin's puppet within American borders: The Communist Party.

The long and short of it is that Stalin stuck it in, broke it off--and almost a century later, the disease is still alive in us.

Lyons finished this masterpiece in the early nineteen forties, hoping that the "red decade" was almost over. If he could see us now, he might have to ask: Did it ever end?

[Rhonda Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review was published with links at:
http://www.examiner.com/review/red-de....

The other day at a charitable club luncheon, during a conversation criticizing the current administration, a frail old lady said she was usually afraid to express her critical opinions, even though in the club and in the community she’s generally surrounded by other like-minded old ladies. Reassuringly, the three other ladies of age at her table said, "No! You have to say what you believe!"

How could this be so? Red Decade: The Stalinist Penetration of America, published in 1941 by Eugene Lyons, suggests that the great ideological conflict of the last century has survived in somewhat different guise in this one.

Lyons, an American journalist, spent a lot of time in Russia and wrote about it, but Red Decade is about the influence of the Communist International on American culture in the 1930s.

American communists — not only party members but “fellow travelers” etc. — organized, wrote, spoke, and acted on direction from Moscow. But two major events caused confusion among the ranks: the horrendous famine engineered by Stalin, which killed millions (Stalin was responsible for many more deaths than Hitler), and the 1939 Soviet-Nazi pact.

At first the Comintern was an ally of Nazi Germany, and promoted

“defeatism to the French, immediate negotiated peace to the British, anti-Yankee sentiments to the Latin Americans, rigid isolationism to the people of the United States … indistinguishable from the Nazi line: non-intervention in European affairs, promotion of strikes in defense industries, class and group hatreds.”

That is, no war with Germany. When the Soviets formed a pact with Germany, and later broke ties, loyal party members and apologists were stunned. It wasn’t just that they had to consider another new political maneuver. If they had any sense of what was going on in Nazi Germany, they’d had to dance around it as they had done with Stalin’s mass starvation and purges. Some did, but some began to reconsider, at their own political cost. But they had to switch from being allies of the National Socialist regime to being enemies, and it was hard to keep track.

Journalists like Walter Duranty weren’t just reluctant to criticize Stalinist Russia, they denied the mass murders, in Duranty’s case in the pages of The New York Times . Some people actually defended the famine and purges. Lyons named names. Some people, however, began to rethink their party loyalties, and Lyons was one of them. But the dual poison of rationalizing evil, and attacking those who did not toe the party line (and where do you think that expression came from, as well as "politically correct"?) rather quickly seeped into the culture at large, until even the average non-political American hesitated to question popular opinion. Alongside the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s, anti-Communist opinion quickly became an object of derision and insult: ad hominem accusations of witch hunts (though there were witches in government positions) and red-baiting eclipsed discussion of ideas or even facts.

“Whenever the communists are under fire, it [being called a red-baiter] has served to divert attention from the subject matter to futile discussion of personal motives, the critic’s private life and other deliberate tricks of befuddlement.”

Sound familiar? Our current leadership is Alinsky-bred. Another technique is to compare any criticism of the foreign tyranny with some flaw in the United States, however far-fetched the analogy:

“When they mention millions of corpses in a Ukranian famine, they are told off neatly with a scathing reference to the Okies in California.”

These rhetorical tricks preclude honest discussion because emotional commitment to the imaginary future communist Utopia doesn’t admit to a reasonable or moral consideration of imaginary ends and real-life means.

“During the Red Decade we are confronted, in the main, with a horde of part-time pseudo-rebels who have neither courage nor convictions, but only a muddy emotionalism and a mental fog which made them an easy prey for the arbiters of a political racket.”

It wouldn’t matter so much, except for those millions of dead bodies.

“The fact is that the complex communist United Front tinctured every department of American life while it lasted and has left its color indelibly on the mind and moral attitudes of the country. Our labor movement, politics, art, culture and vocabulary still carry its imprint.”

Just because the Red Decade ended three-quarters of a century ago, that doesn’t mean it is ancient history. What, for instance, was the reason for giving the Nobel Prize to a newly elected president who hadn’t accomplished anything noteworthy? Why was the same prize given to a Marxist named Rigoberta Menchu for a fictitious “autobiography”? Fiction can transmit truth, but why call it fact?

As for art, it is no accident that Obama’s iconic campaign poster looks like the famous college dorm room poster recommending that Che Guevara viva, or perhaps suggesting that he does live on. In our hearts and minds. Guevara was a killer too. He didn’t achieve Stalin’s millions, but his heart was in it, and leftists either ignore that fact or rationalize it. All for the greater good.

During the first Obama campaign, a student from Africa asked in an NKU class why Republicans are reluctant to say they are Republican. The short answer is they’re afraid of being called racist (and that includes conservative black Americans, who are subject to racial insults). The long answer requires understanding the legacy of the Red Decade.

But isn’t communism dead? The Soviet Union is no more, and China is adopting capitalism, if not democracy. Red Decade is instructive because it details the mechanisms of so-called “revolutionary” activity that persists here and everywhere, to suit the ambitions of various politicians. The late Hugo Chavez is a good example. A former “innocent” or “useful idiot” named Brandon Darby had his eyes opened after a harrowing month in Venezuela in 2006. The painting of Chavez at the Darby link, by the way, imitates Chinese People’s Republic propaganda art.

Young idealists are easily seduced by the leftist dream of an economic paradise that will eliminate poverty. Older ideologues become attached to that dream, and are more entrenched in their social and professional allegiances.

Even the erstwhile “Liberation Theology” Christians ignored Christ’s words that “the poor you will always have with you.” The Red Decade is what happens when people grasp at simple shiny ideas they think are new and ignore an ancient history of experience and wisdom.

(By the way, although this book is over 400 pages long, it's very readable. Lyons is clear and has a light touch for such a heavy subject. Each chapter is fairly short and you don't have to read them all in order.)

[Random User · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eugene Lyons' The Red Decade reads less like conventional history and more like an epidemiological report on the spread of ideological contagion. This isn't merely journalism or social commentary—it's a political confession wrapped in the urgency of a warning, documenting how communist influence spread through American institutions during the 1930s like what Lyons himself might call a "germ infestation of the arteries."

The book's strength lies precisely in Lyons' unique position as both insider and apostate. Having once sympathised with the Soviet experiment himself, he brings the fervour of the converted to his exposé. His polemic style—which he openly acknowledges—might initially seem overwrought. Still, the tedious detail with which he names names and traces organisational connections transforms what could be mere rhetoric into documented fact. From the First Comintern to the Fifth, Lyons maps the evolution of communist influence from a centralised elite that understood its cause to a sprawling network where many foot soldiers remained unaware that they ultimately served Stalin.

Lyons' treatment of American intellectuals and artists who fell under the influence of the Soviet Union is particularly complex. He doesn't simply condemn them; instead, he diagnoses them as susceptible to infection, just like any other group exposed to the "red disease." His frustration mirrors that reserved for visitors to Bolshevik Russia who refused to look behind the curtain at the brutality inflicted upon ordinary citizens. Here, we acknowledge the natural excitement youth feel toward new ideas while warning of how this enthusiasm creates vulnerability to infiltration. The parallel he draws to New Deal institutions is telling—not that communists created them, but that their reach into academia made them predisposed to subversion.

The feverish, moralistic tone that characterises Lyons' prose might strike modern readers as dated, yet something is refreshing about its lack of formulaic professionalism. This isn't a writer posing as a non-partisan observer; Lyons has genuine stakes in the matter, which paradoxically makes the book more valuable as a primary source. His stimulating style, free from the constraints of academic detachment, enables readers to engage directly with both his arguments and his biases.

What makes The Red Decade particularly relevant today is Lyons' observation about how ideological capture works through deliberate vagueness. He notes how groups like the League of Dancers demanded arbitrary reforms to make the theatre "more progressive" without concrete goals—a strategy that ensures reform can never go far enough, that the revolution is always incomplete. This isn't just historical observation; it's an anatomy of how group strategy succeeds through institutional capture.

Lyons' conclusion is stark and unsettling. Once ideological zeal seeps into institutions of art, education, and journalism, it becomes nearly impossible to uproot. His perspective challenges comfortable liberal assumptions about society's resilience. As he sees it, society's elite—those with the most power and influence—remain the crucial battleground. The book demonstrates how traditional Hegelian concepts of institutional life (Sittlichkeit) cannot survive in a post-Westphalian system, where states engage in ideological warfare from within, creating a Hobbesian state of war of all against all, where totalitarianism perpetually threatens.

The ultimate lesson of The Red Decade transcends its historical moment. Lyons reveals that the "free marketplace of ideas" operates not on merit but on contagion—success belongs not to the best ideas but to those most capable of infecting the largest possible audience. This isn't pessimism so much as brutal realism about how ideology actually spreads through modern society.
Reading Lyons today, one cannot help but recognise contemporary parallels in how ideological movements capture institutions through strategic ambiguity, moral certainty, and the exploitation of good intentions. The book serves as both a historical document and a timeless warning: that liberal democracy's openness, particularly among its educated classes, creates vulnerabilities that determined ideological movements will always seek to exploit.

The Red Decade doesn't offer easy antidotes to this infection—perhaps because Lyons understood there aren't any. Instead, it provides something more valuable: a clear-eyed diagnosis of how ideological capture actually works, stripped of romantic notions about the power of truth or the inevitable triumph of good ideas. In our own era of ideological ferment and institutional contestation, Lyons' unflinching examination of how a previous generation's certainties led to complicity remains disturbingly instructive.

[N Perrin · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his timely account of American partisan collusion with the Russians, Eugene Lyons offers a tour-de-force account of how Moscow has so assiduously exerted its influence in the American political ecosystem.

You Mueller report doubters out there should check this book out. Lyons lays to rest your fears about the Russians tinkering with American democracy. All those fears are true and more. Lyons has spent decades working on Russia, and in this book he provides hundreds of names of demagogues, writers, politicians, etc. who have either signed their name to condone Stalin's actions or swear fealty to Moscow in trying to convert America to a communist state.

I'll admit, I was horrified that our First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt herself could so flagrantly sidle up to Russia and betray American interests, but it does reinforce my deepest conviction that we need to move forward with this impeachment and get FDR out of office as soon as possible.

The Resistance cannot wait any longer for justice.

[Frederick Widdowson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Filled with the verifiable names and events that a student of the Cold War needs. This former communist sympathizer became very critical of Stalin's Russia. He lays out how the Soviet Union infiltrated the government and culture of the 1930s and laid the groundwork for the massive influence communists had on U.S. policy and the government during WW2 after the events described here. He lists professors, authors, entertainers, politicians, and businessmen who pushed the communist line on America. There is a lot here to unpack and I hope to follow names to see who these people influenced. America's past is certainly not what we are taught it is. Read this to get a foundational understanding of what was happening in America AFTER World War Two by understanding what happened BEFORE World War Two, during the 1930s, The Red Decade.

[Nico Bruin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great in depth look at the racket that was 1930's American communism. The red decade lays bare the level of infiltration the movement achieved, it's utter loyalty to Stalin, and the downright religious fervour with which it worshipped the "Russian experiment".
It's incredible to read what level of self-deception, apologism and denial people will engage in to hold on to their faith.
For modern audiences The red decade is probably somewhat overwritten. More examples of communist infiltrated organisations were explored than were necessary to make the point.