American Ways Red Scare or Red Menace?: American Communism and Anticommunism in the Cold War Era, (Paperback)

Publishers Weekly,According to Haynes, manuscript historian at the Library of Congress, the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA)���whose membership purportedly never exceeded 70,000���was a definite threat to American security. Newly opened Russian archives reveal, for instance, that the CPUSA worked directly with Soviet intelligence officer Vasily Zubilin, who supervised the theft of atomic bomb secrets, and that the CPUSA, which was financed by Moscow, also provided recruits for Soviet intelligence agencies engaged in espionage against the U.S. Outlining reasons for the party's decline after its peak in the 1940s, Haynes cites the failure of Henry Wallace's Progressive Party presidential campaign in 1948, Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin and the massive FBI penetration of the CPUSA. Controversially, Haynes concludes that, despite its excesses during the McCarthy era, the anticommunism of the '40s and '50s was not entirely irrational, given the links between the CPUSA and Soviet espionage. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved