In Denial

In this brilliant and impassioned work, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr document how, beginning in the late 1960s, the study of American communism was taken over by "revisionist" historians who attempted to portray the United States as the aggressor in the Cold War and saw the American Communist Party (CPUSA) as an admirable force for promoting democratic values. Today, more than a decade after the death of communism, revisionists remain dismissive of Stalin's crimes and seriously understate the degree to which the CPUSA apologized for Stalinism and gave assistance to Soviet espionage. Under their influence, the leading historical journals persist in teaching that America's rejection of the Communist Party was a tragic error, that American Communists were actually unsung heroes working for democratic ideals, and that those anticommunist liberals and conservatives who fought against the CPUSA in the 1950s were contemptible.