Overview

This book shows that press-orientated agitation and propaganda efforts, delivered through newspapers such as the The Daily Worker, played a key role in the political strategy of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) as they rose to unprecedented cultural prominence and political influence. On the eve of the Cold War, when The Daily Worker could be found on newsstands throughout the country and could boast sales of nearly 50,000, the party regarded the paper as the ‘central organ’ of their political movement. Arguing that this strategy closely aligned with the desires of their Soviet superiors in the Communist International (Comitern), who regularly intervened in the paper’s affairs, Prown shows how it maintained a stringently pro-Soviet line, and its editors became not dupes or naifs, but willing Stalinist collaborators. Delving into the editorial policies and practices of The Daily Worker in those trying times, Communist Propaganda in Pre-Cold War America provides insights into the forgotten world of American Bolshevism and the murky history of political propaganda.

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9781350575295

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Reviews

""A sobering account of how a generation of left-wing Americans were deceived. Throughout the great depression of the 1930s the Daily Worker -- official newspaper of the Communist Party of the USA - worked to stir up public opinion in the United States. It drew both funds and editorial direction from the Soviet Union. In this first scholarly history of its output, Henry Prown shows how the paper exaggerated hardship in 1930s America while denying famine in Ukraine; supported show trials in Moscow; concealed mistreatment of American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War and towed Stalin's line following his shocking pact with Hitler in 1939. This is a valuable volume for anyone interested in the history of propaganda and timely reading at a time when issues of disinformation are once again at the heart of American political life."" --Professor Nicholas J. Cull, University of Southern California, USA ""Henry Prown's groundbreaking study of the CPUSA newspaper THE DAILY WORKER gives scholars and readers of 20th century American culture a much deeper understanding of the role that publication played in the leftist movements of the mid century and of its function in the small but vibrant ecosystem of Communist publications in the US. Drawing on heretofore unexamined archives, Prown shows how the WORKER attempted to maintain a fiction of independence even as readers, journalists, and party officials all knew that it conveyed the official party line. What comes across most strongly in Prown's compelling and comprehensive study is how ideological loyalty curdles into unquestioning support for a deeply immoral cause: the Soviet Union under Stalin."" --Greg Barnhisel, Professor of English, Duquesne University, USA

Author Information

Henry H. Prown is the 2022-25 Temerty Postdoctoral Fellow in Holodomor Studies and an instructor in the History, Classics, and Religion Department at University of Alberta, Canada. He is a specialist on the transnational history of Communism and the relationship between Stalinism and the American media in the mid-20th Century.

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