The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) was established on this day in 1919. CPUSA provided legal aid to the Scottsboro Boys, helped poor Southern farmers form sharecropper unions, and promoted communist ideas within the U.S.
The party was established after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revolution, and initially operated underground due to the Palmer Raids, a series of anti-immigrant, anti-labor, and anti-communist raids conducted by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer.
CPUSA was an early opponent of segregation and racial discrimination, giving legal aid to the Scottsboro Boys and helping poor black farmers in the South organize sharecropper unions. Because of this, the party had a strong presence in Alabama in the 1930s. This history is detailed in “Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression” by historian Robin D.G. Kelley.
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Theory:
Trying to come up with the most contrarian take about the USSR, the best I got so far is “I agree with Bukharin, Stalin was a neo-Trotskyite”
Stalin’s totalitarian policies made him a fascist, and that’s a good thing.
My favorite leader of the USSR was Brezhnev.
My favorite bolshevik is Yezhov
For this place in particular: Khrushchev was right about everything except sending tanks into Eastern Europe.
If you just want to be weird: Yeah I agree with Kerensky, the bolsheviks were a bunch of reactionaries.
I have a bit I like to do when somebody calls me a tankie: “Actually, my politics are that I agree with literally every single thing the Soviets did except for sending tanks into Hungary, therefore I’m not a tankie.”
It’s not the best bit but it makes me smile at least.