The Communist Party in Maryland, 1919-57.

By Vernon L. Pedersen. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, c. 2001. Pp. [xii], 253. $29.95, ISBN 0-252-02321-8.)

This minutely detailed volume, by an American historian who teaches in Bulgaria, is one of only three state studies of the U.S. Communist Party ever published. It narrates the history of communism in Maryland from shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution to the virtual collapse of the party during the early Cold War era. A brief epilogue covers the last decades of the twentieth century to the mid-1990s, when less than a hundred party loyalists remained.

Pedersen utilizes a remarkable array of sources, including Russian archives, FBI files, Catholic Church manuscripts, and interviews with party members. He lauds Maryland Communists for supporting African American equality and the legitimate demands of American workers. He calls some party leaders "the best and the brightest that the United States had to offer" (p. 193). But he views the Communists as corrupted by their rigid ideology, torn by internecine conflicts, and always subservient to Soviet foreign policy objectives. In sum, their party was more detrimental to American society than beneficial. Pedersen thus joins the mainstream of American scholars, most notably John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, in their negative evaluation of the Communist experience in this country.

Pedersen's book is particularly important because the Maryland Communist Party was a microcosm of the national one. This was clearly true on the question of race. The Maryland party, as he indicates, strove diligently to recruit blacks, placed several of them in leadership positions, and ran them for state and local offices. At one point during the 1930s, perhaps half the party's members were African Americans. But the party was never popular in the black community. Only a very small number of Maryland blacks voted for Communists, and many party blacks did not remain members for long. The main reason for this, according to Pedersen, was that African Americans "refused to view class as more important than race" (p. 6). Therefore, party ideology was not attractive to them. As for organized labor, Pedersen notes the significant Communist influence in the Maryland maritime industry and, to a lesser extent, among textile, electrical, steel, and auto workers. Communists made genuine contributions to improve the lives of these people. But Pedersen also discloses the duplicity of the Communists, who constantly followed their party agenda, used undemocratic methods, and considered the unions primarily "political tools to promote the Party line and support the Soviet Union" (p. 8).

Pedersen is careful throughout to embed his coverage of Maryland communism within the wider political history of the state and nation. His wholly admirable study, therefore, is worth the attention even of nonspecialists.

MYRON I. SCHOLNICK
Towson University