Duggan, Robert D.

Biography

The Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) was organized in 1919 by the left wing of the Socialist Party and other groups; internecine struggles persisted, with the Workers Party of America predominant by 1922, which changed its name to the Communist Party, USA in 1929; under the new communist international strategy of the united front, American Communists began to work through labor and other groups to spread the Party's influence; by the late 1930s, the party reached 65,000 members, providing leadership in many organizations and serving as the radical wedge of the New Deal; the Hitler-Stalin pact forced the party into an anti-war stance, and the Cold War after 1945 further weakened its influence, as did McCarthyism, the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Revolution, and the revelation of Stalin's crimes in 1956; as the Cold War eased and third world liberation struggles began, a new radical movement took shape in the 1960s, but the New Left groups rather than the Communist Party were the dominant forces; the continued inflexibility of the Party as well as the repression of Czechoslovakia in 1968 led to the resignation of West Coast leader Dorothy Healey in 1973 and the diffusion of many Party activists into other left groups.

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