Being Young & Idealistic Has Its Consequences...Amongst the Ruins of the 1930s

 “We were only a part of our time, it was our illusion that we were the most important part, but most Americans knew that we were not, and they were right” Murray Kempton

Part of Our Time

Some Ruins and Monuments of the Thirties

Review by James Romano

Hello 1000 Bookies!!  Our latest stop on the 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die is 1930s America for a nonfiction book entitled, Part of Our Time: Some Ruins and Monuments of the Thirties, by Murray Kempton.  This book is a collection of essays about American Members of the Communist Party during the 1930s. Murray Kempton was a journalist and a social & political commentator.  Mr. Kempton started his career as a copy boy for the great H.L. Menken at the Baltimore Sun.  Kempton's career would eventually take him to the New York Post (twice), the New York Herald Tribune, the New Republic and the National Review.  He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985 for political and social commentary. 

Part of Our Time is a collection of essays dealing with the role of communists in the 1930s.  With the Great Depression, the disillusionment after World War 1, and the perceived advancement of Soviet Russia without the benefit of a true or clear picture, communism was embraced in the 1930s by a group of intellectuals and trade union members.  Kempton tells multiple stories of idealists embracing the ideology and utopian vision only to have it crash down with the Red Scare of the late 1940s and 1950s.  A couple of points I feel the desire to make clear— I have never embraced nor thought of embracing the Communist ideology of Marx and Lenin.  I never understood its appeal.  Nor I am not really a philosopher and I do not glorify the proletariat.  Second, a person can believe in communism and still be a good citizen.  Finally, in my view, embracing a communist ideology is much different than being a Soviet Spy.  You did not have to be one to be the other—although many did sell out their country. 

The phrase we are all young once comes to mind.  I was young and stupid once, now I am just old and stupid. In the 1930s Murray Kempton embraced Communism as a philosophy.  He fought for his country, believed in the first amendment and quickly renounced his embrace.  Kempton chronicles communism in different areas of American life in the 1930s with the series of essays.  I need to be candid; I would not have picked up this book except for the fact that it was on the list of the 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die.  I cannot even recommend it unless you have a hankering to read about an overlooked section of the time period.  To me the 1930s symbolizes the Great Depression, the Rise of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the New Deal and the March to War.  However, there was a small minority of people who embraced the idealistic pillars of communism, thinking it the wave of the future—and from their vantage point it might have been the future.  As Germany embraced National Socialism and Adolf Hitler, the search for an alternative to the system that was not working for them in some way should not shock us.  The shock to me is that more didn’t embrace the Communist Party in such a dark time.  

The essays were all very interesting.  The first dealt with Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers.  Their story in the 1930s was fascinating.  In the late 1940s their story would rivet the nation, send Hiss to prison for perjury, and push Richard Nixon to the Presidency.  Hiss was for all intents and purposes a communist but also a Soviet Spy. The US Department of Agriculture seems to have been the hotbed of communism in the 1930s.  Hiss was to transfer to the US Department of State.  He would be at Yalta and serve as the Acting UN General Secretary at the first meeting in San Francisco.  Eventually Chambers would turn on Hiss and the rest as they say is history. 

To me there were several essays I found most intriguing.  The first was the essay on Communism and the African American community which was especially fascinating to me.  It tells the story through several important men of the time period—Paul Robeson, Marcus Garvey, A. Philip Randolph and Thomas Patterson. Paul Robeson was the most fascinating to me. Compared to other African Americans of the time, Paul Robeson had an advanced life including college and law school. Robeson attended Rutgers College where he was Phi Beta Kappa, and Cap and Skull.  He was a star athlete and played for the Akron Pros, a team in the infant National Football League.  Robeson went to Columbia Law School (so did FDR) and he became a singer and a performing star.  He portrayed Othello on Broadway as well as starred in the stage and film version of the musical Showboat.  Because of the racial prejudice he faced in the racist society of the 1900s America, Robeson embraced communism because of its supposed lack of racial discrimination.  Robeson became an advocate for the Spanish Republicans (backed by the Communists) in the Spanish Civil War and embraced Communism in general. Robeson was even an ex-patriot, living in England for a time.  With the level of prejudice and discrimination in the United States, who could blame him.  Returning to the United States during the war, He would be eventually blacklisted during the McCarthy era. 

Thomas Patterson was a Pullman employee.  Pullman was the sleeping train car company.  Thomas Patterson worked for the Pullman Company and was a member of the union founded by A. Philip Randolph, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.  Patterson was too busy and worked too hard to “become a communist”.  He was involved with the union which was infiltrated by communists.  But Kempton discusses that African Americans were distrustful of the Communist movement in the 1930s and beyond.  According to Kempton, “And to them, the Communist was only another white man, less offensive than many, no more to be trusted than most”  

Another essay I found interesting was the essay, Rebel Girl, featured about women in the Communist movement.  Kempton writes with certain contempt for women in the movement—he portrays them as coming to the Communist movement looking for love and finding a man.  He discusses two women in particular Elizabeth Bentley and Anna Moos.  Elizabeth Bentley joined the movement after she left Vassar.  She was alone and her family was deceased.  So, she came to the movement looking for something or someone. She eventually meets Jacob Goos, a pioneer American Communist, whom she called Yasha.  He was also a member of the Soviet Secret police.  The quote from Kempton on this was funny and almost misogynistic: “He told her too how much he loved her and that he could even be happy if it were not for the shadow that lay before them.  Elizabeth Bentley was, of course, roughly as well equipped to understand this piece of total wisdom as Louisa May Alcott would have been in some similar involvement with Feodor Dostoevski.”

Anna Moose was a young radical because her mother was a communist. At the time young liberals and communists in the 1930s rallied for the cause of the Spanish Republicans in the Civil War which raged there.  General Franco was backed by the Germans and Italians and eventually would win and rule until the 1970s.  However, the young idealists idolized the Republicans backed by the Communists and the Soviets.  Anna met William Remington at a American Student Union meeting at Dartmouth.  They were both radicals.  They believed in the Spanish Republicans. They married. they divorced and they recanted.  However, William Remington worked for the Department of Commerce.  As the 30s moved to the 40s and 50s, and the Cold War started, the search for Communists and Former Communists was in full swing.  Much like the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon were seeing Communists everywhere.  If you were a former communist, the safest way to go was to expose former colleagues and that is what happened.  The women (Elizabeth and Anna) eventually testified that William Remington was a communist. He was eventually convicted of perjury and was killed in prison.  Reading this essay, I couldn’t help but think of Katie and Hubble in the movie The Way We Were.  Katie is an idealistic communist much like Anna Moos.  Hubble, the good looking, athlete at school like William Remington.  Kempton almost blames the blabbering of the women for Remington’s fall and not Remington’s perjury

Part of Our Time was interesting read but unless you have an interest in that time period in American history, I would take a pass. I am glad I read the essays though. James Mustich has a kind point of view of the novel, "A reader's interest in the era and its issues may be nil at the start, but Part of Our Time mines the past to explore not historical truths but human verities. It does so with such startling sagacity that you'll close the book with an enlarged understanding of the guilt and glory that abide--whatever the politics of the moment--in what the author calls 'the pilgrim soul of men'".

 Keep Reading My Friends!!!