Reds: A Revolutionary Timeline

Source Material

Note: I (Ⓐaron) didn’t write this. I will be contributing to it in the future however.



I’ve cleaned up the occasional grammar mistake or unclear sentence but other than that this is lifted directly from the canonical posts in the source material above. Out-of-character commentary is usually omitted, however.



Fool’s Gold’s discussion thread for this timeline is located

I (Ⓐaron) didn’t write this. I will be contributing to it in the future however.I’ve cleaned up the occasional grammar mistake or unclear sentence but other than that this is lifted directly from the canonical posts in the source material above. Out-of-character commentary is usually omitted, however.Fool’s Gold’s discussion thread for this timeline is located here

Table of Contents

Sections in bold are part of the timeline reboot. Everything afterwards is as originally posted and most likely contains substantial inconsistencies with the retconned material. The timeline before revisions can be read here

Introduction

The Central Committee’s Staff

So begins another day at the Committee’s Office. With all of the activity in the lobby this morning, it is easy to forget that this is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the seat of the All-Union Central Committee for the Union of American Socialist Republics, and not a busy subway terminal. Amidst the hustle and bustle of the early morning activity, a stately man, advanced in age, walks briskly past the security guards at the entrance. He moves quickly through the lobby, weaving past a busy clerical worker as he walks towards the receptionist’s office.



As he passes the receptionist terminal, the attendant says “Nice morning, Comrade McGarry.”



“We’ll take care of that in a hurry, won’t we, Mike?” the man replies with dry sarcasm.



“Yes sir,” the attendant chuckles.



The man continues his brisk pace into the inner workings of the west wing of the old Pennsylvania House. He is Leo McGarry, the Chief of Staff to the Central Committee, and a personal friend of the First Secretary.



He quickly pushes through a set of white double doors, into the inner office. A woman runs past him quickly, pausing only momentarily to exclaim, “Don’t kill the messenger, Leo.”



“Oh, why the Hell not, Bonnie?” he replies as he grabs the morning’s memos. He passes quickly through the press office, making his routine morning acquaintances before calling out for his deputy. “Josh!” he yells.



Josh’s blond assistant responds instead. “Morning, Leo,” she says.



“Hey Donna,” Leo responds. “Is he in yet?”



She pauses from stirring her coffee, looking up at him coyly. “Yeah...”



“Can you get him for me?” he replies, clearly irritated.



She turns around in her seat and yells “Josh!”



“Thanks...” he sighs.



“I heard it’s broken,” she says, abruptly changing the subject.



“You heard wrong,” he replies, barely pausing from reading the memo.



“I heard it’s–”



“It’s a mild sprain,” he interrupts; “he’ll be back later today.” Anticipating her next question, he continues explaining as he walks towards Josh’s office: “He was swerving to avoid a tree and he was unsuccessful.”



Leo walks though Josh’s open door just as Josh finishes his phone conversation. “How many Cubans exactly have crammed themselves into these fishing boats?”



Josh responds as he busily jots down a note, “Well, it’s important to understand, Leo, that by and large, these aren’t exactly fishing boats. You hear ‘fishing boats’, you conjure an image of, well, a boat, first of all. What the Cubans are on would charitably be described as rafts. Okay? They’re making the hop from Havana to Miami in fruit baskets, basically. Let’s just be clear on that. Donna’s desk, if it could float, would look good to them right now.”



“I get it. How many are there?”



“We don’t know.”



“What time exactly did they leave?”



“We don’t know.”



“Do we know when they get here?”



“No.”



“True or false: If I were to stand on high ground in Key West with a good pair of binoculars, I’d be as informed as I am right now.”



“That’s true...”



“That’s the Foreign Office’s money well spent.”



“Well, having any sort of diplomatic relations with the exile regime occupying Cuba, we might have a better idea.”



“You look like Hell, by the way,” Leo sighs as he begins the walk toward his office.



“Yes, I do. Listen, Leo, did he say anything about it?” Josh asks timidly as he follows Leo.



“Did he say anything?!” Leo cries. “The First Secretary is pissed as hell at you Josh, and so am I.”



“I know,” he protests.



“We’ve gotta work with these people, and how the Hell do you get off strutting your—”



“I know.”



“Al Caldwell is a good man,” Leo scolds.



“Al Caldwell wasn’t there!”



“I’m saying you take everyone on the Christian Left, dump them into one big basket and label them stupid! We need these people.”



“We do not need these people...”



“Josh, if this minority government can’t get at least some votes from the Left Democrats, then we can’t govern. You know we have a whole lot better chance dealing with them than the Socialists or the SEU.”

The West Wing, but with red flags, in case you didn’t catch the reference.

1 . Basically, but with red flags, in case you didn’t catch the reference.

Excerpts from Sean Hannity, A History of the Workers’ Vanguard in America, 1876-1946, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999)











1 . This is the first major divergence in the new revision of this timeline. 2 . IOTL, this is the major issue that ultimately caused the split in the Socialist Labor Party. That rift is patched over and the split averted ITTL. 3 . Other than the OTL’s Social Democrats and SLP’s vote totals combined, there is no real change in the election outcome.

Originally Posted by Red American So I was just reading through The Daily Worker today when I found a very interesting article. Apparently, when a family in Detroit, Michigan SR were digging through their attic looking at old family heirlooms, they stumbled upon the diary of their great-great-grandfather, a son of Polish immigrants named Leon Czolgosz.



Apparently, Leon’s diary had confessed that he had attempted to assassinate the President of the old United States in early September 1901. He made his first attempt on September 5th, but was unable to get close to the old imperialist. He was going to try to catch him on the next day of the exposition, but he was arrested that night by a racist Buffalo cop who had a grudge against Poles and other immigrants.



So what would our world look like today if Leon had managed to assassinate that bourgeois dog?

Originally Posted by SeriousSam Well, that’s interesting. If I remember correctly, McKinley’s VP at the time was a noted progressive... I forget his name though. Anyway, he’s not a very important person in history, so I don’t think you’ll find too much on Wiki about him.

Originally Posted by LeninsBeard I think his name was Theodore Roosevelt... *wikis*



Yup, Theodore Roosevelt. Apparently, he was a politician of some progressive sympathies at the time, and McKinley picked him for his deputy because it would help him fight off the influence of the populists and the unions. The corporatist establishment kind of marginalized him afterwards, and he faded into relative obscurity.



If McKinley were assassinated, then Roosevelt would become president, which would definitely give a boost to the progressive movement. While it might lead to short-term gains for the working classes, ultimately it might butterfly away the Red May revolution in ’33. It was the complete defeat of the progressive wings within the Republican and Democratic Parties that ultimately gave the Socialists the long-term support base they needed.

1 . This was the POD from the draft version of the TL. While the divergence still occurs, it is no longer the specific POD.

The Socialist Labor Party as a national party

National Platform

Socialist Labor Party of America

Adopted by the Eleventh National Convention, Chicago, May 1904

And approved by a general vote of the party’s membership.

Important Events of Interest, 1897

1 . This is the new POD: with a slightly greater turn-out of industrial unionists at the Social Democracy of America’s opening meeting, it adopts policies more in line with the SLP, and soon falls into its orbit.

Important Events of Interest, 1898

Important Events of Interest, 1899



1 . This is included more for my own amusement than anything. The idea of militantly socialist newspaper boys just tickles me.

Important Events of Interest, 1900

Important Events of Interest, 1901

Important Events of Interest, 1902

Important Events of Interest, 1903

1 . This event, IOTL, had dramatic consequences for great power relations. Ultimately, if completed, it would give Germany access to developing Turkish oil supplies, and ensure that the threat of a naval blockade on Germany couldn’t force her capitulation. This is one of the many factors that led to the First World War.

Important Events of Interest, 1904



1 . The case went 5-4 the other way IOTL, validating the break up of the Northern Securities Company. The dissent, written by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and joined by Fuller, White and Peckham, held that the act was unconstitutional.

The 1904 U.S. Presidential Election

Candidate Popular Vote Electoral Vote Charles W. Fairbanks (Republican) 7,415,312 336 Alton B. Barker (Democratic) 4,987,123 140 Eugene V. Debs (Socialist Labor) 705,235 0 Silas Comfort Swallow (Prohibition) 248,482 0







1 . Results unlikely to accurately reflect vote counts, due to widespread voting fraud by dominant regional parties 2 . Prior to OTL’s 17th Amendment, the U.S. Senate elections were determined by the state government. In most states, the state legislature elected Senators. A few western states and those with stronger progressive groups had added some form of popular electoral component, though few provided for true direct elections.

Some Notable Events, 1905

Some Notable Events, 1906



1 . Errata: The previous updates about U.S. Steel were incorrect. I misread my source; U.S. Steel itself wasn’t formed until the merger of National Steel and the Tennessee Iron and Coal Company. My apologies, and consider this a retroactive fix for the previous update.

Congressional Results, 1906

House of Representatives Party Seats Change Republican Party 260 +9 Democratic Party 123 -12 Social Democratic Party 2 +2 Socialist Labor Party 1 +1

U.S. Senate Party Seats Change Republican Party 58 0 Democratic Party 30 -2 Social Democratic Party1 2 +2



1 . SDP Senators elected on fusion tickets with state Progressive Republican groups in Wisconsin and Washington.

Some Notable Events, 1907

Some Notable Events, 1908



1 . Yeah, this little literary flourish is sadly not my own. Thank whichever British subject who decided to code the telegram IOTL. For reference, the Psalm excerpt reads “That he may bring out of the Earth, oil, and with it to make a cheerful countenance”

General election, 1908

U.S. President Candidate Party Popular Vote Percentage Electoral Count William H. Taft Republican Party 6,032,171 42.59% 321 Alton B. Parker Democratic Party 4,987,123 35.21% 140 Eugene Debs Socialist Labor Party 1,632,400 11.52% 0 William Jennings Bryan Populist Democratic 1,512,011 10.68% 0

House of Representatives Party Seats Change1 Republican Party 206 -54 Democratic Party 165 +37 Socialist Labor Party2 20 +17

U.S. Senate Party Seats Change Republican Party 50 -8 Democratic Party 40 +10 Socialist Labor Party 2 0





1 . Change total is positive, due to the admission of Oklahoma as a State. 2 . Socialist Labor Party and Social Democratic Party joint candidates

Some Notable Events, 1909



President: William Howard Taft (R-OH)

Vice President: James S. Sherman (R-NY)

First Secretary: Woodrow Wilson (D-NJ)

Secretary of State: Phillander C. Cox (R-PA)

Secretary of War: Newton D. Baker (D-OH)

Secretary of the Treasury: William G. McAdoo (D-CA)

Secretary of Commerce & Labor: Champ Clark (D-MO)

Attorney-General: Alexander M. Palmer (D-PA)

Secretary of the Navy: Theodore Roosevelt (SD-NY)

Secretary of the Interior: John Sharp Williams (D-MS)

1 . The Taft-Wilson Administration:President: William Howard Taft (R-OH)Vice President: James S. Sherman (R-NY)First Secretary: Woodrow Wilson (D-NJ)Secretary of State: Phillander C. Cox (R-PA)Secretary of War: Newton D. Baker (D-OH)Secretary of the Treasury: William G. McAdoo (D-CA)Secretary of Commerce & Labor: Champ Clark (D-MO)Attorney-General: Alexander M. Palmer (D-PA)Secretary of the Navy: Theodore Roosevelt (SD-NY)Secretary of the Interior: John Sharp Williams (D-MS)

Some Notable Events, 1910

Some Notable Events, 1911

Some Notable Events, 1912

General Election, 1912

U.S. President Candidate Party Popular Vote Percentage Electoral Count William H. Taft Republican Party 6,801,565 48.45% 277 Alton B. Parker Democratic Party 4,122,721 29.37% 254 Eugene V. Debs Socialist Labor Party 3,115,015 22.19% 0

House of Representatives Party Seats Change Republican Party 235 +29 Democratic Party 160 -5 Socialist Labor Party 40 +20

U.S. Senate Party Seats Change Republican Party 49 +5 Democratic Party 44 -1 Socialist Labor Party 3 0

The Liberal Tradition, argued a form of American exceptionalism that, in his opinion, made socialist values antithetical to the American political tradition. ITTL, he has come to the exact opposite conclusion.

1 . IOTL, Louis Hartz was a political scientist, and his book,, argued a form of American exceptionalism that, in his opinion, made socialist values antithetical to the American political tradition. ITTL, he has come to the exact opposite conclusion.

Excerpts from Sean Hannity, A History of the Workers’ Vanguard in America, 1876-1946, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999)

“...it follows that the portion of living labour, unpaid and congealed in surplus-value, must also be continually on the decrease compared to the amount of value represented by the invested total capital. Since the ratio of the mass of surplus-value to the value of the invested total capital forms the rate of profit, this rate must constantly fall.”

The Socialist Labor Party as a national party: Primary Documents, circa 1912

National Platform

Socialist Labor Party of America

Adopted by the Thirteenth National Convention, Toledo, June 1912

And approved by a general vote of the party’s membership.

*





The Internationale

Refrain:

’Tis the final conflict

Let each stand in his place

The Internationale

Shall be the human race.

’Tis the final conflict

Let each stand in his place

The Internationale

Shall be the human race.

Refrain

Refrain

Refrain

Some Things Never Change

A People’s History of America, the counterpart in this timeline to his real A People’s History of the United States, and Eric Hobshawn’s The Age of Extremes: The Short 20th Century. Very good books, by the way.



that George Patton.

1 . Captain Zinn’s, the counterpart in this timeline to his real, and Eric Hobshawn’s. Very good books, by the way. 2 . Yes,George Patton.

Like the Snows of Yesteryear…







1 . Prior to the Cold War, many American treaties were passed in closed Senate sessions. Any records kept of the debate is classified and not a part of the normal Congressional record. While the result of any such vote is a matter of public record, there is no roll call vote, so it is impossible to determine who supported and opposed the measure. 2 . Basically, exactly like reality, except that the U.S. is officially part of the Allies in late 1914. The deployment of troops will not come until 1915.

...unlike their European comrades in the Second International, the American socialists alone remained resolute in opposition to the imperial war brewing in Europe. However, their paltry influence in the halls of the bourgeois state were not enough, even with the help of defectors from the Democrats joining them in opposition. However, in spite of the enormous momentum towards plunging headlong into an age drowned in blood, the Socialist Party was able to maintain unity on this critical issue. Progressives like LaFollete Sr. stuck with the party and voted en bloc.



...A general agreement had been reached to leave the issue of mobilization until after the November Congressional elections. In spite of the bourgeois literature on the subject during the ’20s and ’30s, the American populace faced the thought of fighting and dying for their country with great fear. The general sense of foreboding was very clear at the polls in November. Voter turnout averaged 8.1% higher than would be expected in an off-year election of that era. Clearly the American state was facing a similar “excess of democracy” that President Wood decried in the mid-1920s. That excess would soon be remedied by the Espionage Acts.



...Eugene Debs remarked that “regardless of which faction of the capitalist party triumphs in the election, major American involvement in the European war is inevitable. J.P. Morgan and the other Robber Barons have already loaned huge sums to the British and French governments, and they will want it repaid in full.” Had Grandfather Debs known the full scale of the loan scheme, I’m sure he would have had a stroke. In 1919 dollars, J.P. Morgan & Co. alone lent over one billion dollars to the Allies during the war. Other financial trusts lent comparable amounts. The First World War was big business before the first American soldier set foot in France.



...The midterm election left the Democrats with a weakened grip over the House of Representatives. By this campaign, northern Democrats had abandoned attempts to exploit class conflict to gain votes. While they retained the incumbents’ advantage in many districts, the eclipse of the Democratic Party had begun. Forced to play second fiddle on the national stage, the party increasingly devoted itself to Southern sectionalism and the cultural conservatism that benefited the Southern landed gentry. Its brief flirtations with populism and liberalism were largely over with by the 1914 election. Democratic campaign literature largely focused upon national strength and cultural conservation, portraying the Republicans as dangerously individualistic, tearing apart American culture. In practice, they began behaving in much the same way as the Old Right in Europe, the monarchism replaced with a curious brand of Roman-style republicanism.



...1914, on the eve of the greatest bloodletting yet seen in history, was also the climax of the old American Left.2 Made up disproportionately of immigrant workers and, with the exception of Oklahoma, tied strongly to industrial cities in the east, the old Left would soon be in its twilight. While the First World War put the old Left to the sword across the world, at least in America the trials of war provided the necessary conditions for the birth of a new Left in the ’20s and ’30s, a Left unaffected by the split riven within European social democracy.







1 . In reality, Albert E. Kahn was a journalist aligned to the Stalinist CPUSA until the deStalinization crisis in 1956. In this timeline, the extent of his journalism career is the opinion editorials that are syndicated in many American papers from the 40s to the 60s. By profession, he is a social historian. 2 . In this timeline, “Old Left” is primarily used to describe workers’ movements before WWI, and those parties after WWI that were unaffiliated with the Comintern. “New Left”, by contrast, refers to parties and movements affiliated with the Comintern. Old Leftists accuse New Leftists of being authoritarian and often ambivalent to democracy (often true) while New Leftists accuse Old Leftists of being baby sitters to the problems of the national bourgeoisie and ineffective reformists (again, often true).

1914 Congressional Election

U.S. House of Representatives Party Elected Change Democratic Party 200 -74 Republican Party 177 +36 Progressive/Socialist Party 57 +39 Independent 1 -1

U.S. Senate1 Party Elected Change Democratic Party 46 -5 Republican Party 46 +3 Progressive/Socialist Party 4 +2



1 . U.S. Senators are still selected primarily by state legislatures, though a few western states have adopted elections for their Senators.

Excerpt from Days in Red: A Memoir, by James P. Cannon, Haymarket Books, Chicago, Illi., 1969.

...The vote on [President] Taft’s mobilization bill was scheduled for the second day of new Congressional term. Fresh from his party’s election victory, he expected [House Speaker] Champ Clark to comply with his bill with no debate and at all due haste. Of course, we had other plans. Solidarity’s Central Committee voted unanimously to call for a nationwide general strike of all of the affiliates the week before the opening of the new Congress. I can still remember being on the picket lines in front of the steel mills that day.



...The working class unity was amazing. For the first time that I could recall, black and white, native and foreigner agreed to put aside all differences, if only for this one moment in time. Even though the horrors of the First World War had yet to be revealed to anyone so far from the fronts, the great fear of another major war, begun for seemingly no reason other than to ensure that bankers would get a return on their loans, quickly turned into anger and, for the moment, a galvanized resolve to oppose the war.



...We got exactly what we wanted; we gave them pause for debate. However, the general strike turned out to be a sword that cut both ways. Until now, the political classes had been apathetic about the rise of industrial unionism and the Socialist Party. It was all too easy to give ground and let the radicals recruit another worker than to deal with them in any concerted fashion either through terror or appeasement. Our united front had unwittingly unleashed the largest domestic terror and propaganda war by any State extant in the world at the time.

Excerpts from Patton’s War Diaries, 1915-1919, by Martin Bluemenson, Ed. Washington State University Press, 1972.

August 3, 1914



Was ecstatic today to learn that we [America] would go to war against Kaiser Billy soon. It would be a great tragedy to miss out on the great War of this generation. And to be doing it for such a noble cause1 should be the dream of every Christian soldier to fight and die for. It will be some time before we actually can ship out, and I do feel anxious about leaving my young wife so soon, but I have talked to her about it and she feels filled with pride that her husband has such devotion to duty. An acquaintance at the officer’s club informed me that such a sentiment is unlikely to last, and since he is many years my senior I am inclined to trust him on the matter. But her heart is in the right place.



I read this morning that the damned Socialist leader Debs had pledged to do everything in his power to stop the war. Such a prominent firebrand of a leader speaking such things on the eve of war ought to be put up against a wall. But I am told that only the savage nations permit such practices, and I will leave the matter at that...



December 2, 1914



...Also informed of possible promotion today. The President had earned his mandate in the election, and I am told that a major expansion of the Army is now under way. Still, would have rather learned that promotion had come because of merit rather than a sudden urgent need for more First Lieutenants.



April 5, 1915



Currently aboard ship headed for France. The A.E.F.2, I am told, will be deploying on the line somewhere, though for obvious reasons I still do not know where. One of the more cynical lieutenants remarked that the whole A.E.F. was nothing more than a propaganda ploy. Suspect him of being a Socialist subversive, though I am wondering if he is how he made it through West Point. He carries the air of the professional, educated soldier, though I wonder if it is indeed just cynicism on his part.



June 4, 1915



Haven’t written for several days. Still trying to make sense of it all. Our first action began on the 28th of May. We just arrived on the line to reinforce French push at Artois. We began the campaign with much enthusiasm; the news had told us the French were nearing a breakthrough and we were eager to push through the breach...On the front, the sound of the shelling was everywhere. I had never imagined warfare quite like this. My battalion would lead the charge. We went over the wall that morning, running through the fog over the broken earth. We covered no-man’s-land quickly, and encountered minimal resistance from the Huns. We neutralized their remaining machine gunners with minimal causalities and took their first trench with little difficulty. No sooner had we prepared to advance further than we came under bombardment. First thought the Frogs had fouled up the operation. But we were soon under massive attack from the Germans. No sooner had the bombardment lifted we saw waves of gray-uniformed German soldiers charging at us. We fought them off as long as possible, but they had the advantage of numbers and terrain. We were forced to retreat, abandoning all the ground we had gained, leaving behind many of our brothers....The Germans pressed us until the 1st on the line before the skirmishes stopped. Only just now beginning to make sense of it. We went over the wall with 1,120 men, exactly, as the Mstr. Sgt. informed me. By the time fighting died down, we had just over five hundred battle ready men. At least two hundred were killed in the initial engagement, and the remaining wounded, missing and dead accumulating over the next four days.



June 30, 1915



In the battalion infirmary today. The doctors tell me that I suffered “mild exposure” to “chlorine gas” during the fighting. I suppose that means they think I should feel more gracious about my fortune. Ashamed to say that I too retreated from the yellow gas clouds. A week ago, I had no knowledge of any such horrifying weapon. It came on the winds, and wafted into our trenches, and rather than stay and suffocate we all ran. Retreat could have turned into a route, but the winds reversed just in time, and we rallied to a secondary trench. Still, had to be carried off the lines on a stretcher, in spite of my insistence that I could still walk. Breathing has been more difficult than I’ve ever known, like being perpetually at a run. My lungs still burn some. I suppose it’s Christ’s Providence that it wasn’t worse. The man in the bed next to me suffocated in the night. Still feel shame over retreating without orders. But men can be fought with bullets and steel, this gas cannot.



August 9th, 1915



The horrors of this war do not cease. We marched through a ruined French village today, finally leaving the line. What I saw I’ll never forget. The little French girl, in torn rags, crushed under the collapsed house, sinking in the mud; must have been killed by artillery bombardment. I can’t stop thinking about my little daughters, young Beatrice, and Ruth, whom I have not even been able to see, or to hold yet. What if my daughters, or my wife, or any of my family were killed, an innocent “casualty of war"? I left for France with so much resolve, but my experiences here have given me doubts about our purpose...



...Met a young lieutenant today, a one David Dwight Eisenhower. In our spare time we took to talking of things we missed back home. He tells me to call him by his boyhood nickname, Ike. I suppose it’s easier than picking him out of the many Davids in the world. He’s five years my junior, and unmarried, but he’s bright and a welcome confidant. Apparently he shares my growing doubts about the war, doubts which we wisely keep to ourselves lest it affect the men’s morale. Still, I am sure that our cause is just, even if the outcomes have been unsavory so far. Our road is not an easy one, and we must push onward.







1 . Patton refers here to the violation of Belgian neutrality by the German military. Allied propaganda heavily played up alleged German atrocities in Belgium, many of them completely fabricated. 2 . American Expeditionary Force; a division sized unit deployed to the front ahead of the main American army, still being conscripted and trained at the time, in order to bolster sagging Allied morale.

Some Notable Events, 1915

Excerpt from Salt of the Earth, by Henry A. Wallace, Pathfinder Press, Nashville, Tenn., 1963

The war, I think, changed everything. I am candidly certain that had not over one million young American boys bled the soil of France red, then life as we know it today would be radically different. I’m sure it is the peculiar navel-gazing of old men and historians to ask what would have happened if some important event were to have been undone, but I cannot help to succumb to the temptation. One thing I do know for sure is that my own part in the war changed my life forever. The deaths of my comrades in the trenches of France and the militarization of society at home are an irrevocable part of me, and without them, I do believe I would have remained a simple farmer, happy with the smell of good tilled earth.1 I’m sure I would have been happier for it.



...During the 1916 Red Scare, President Taft and all of the kings of mine, rail and factory declared that the Army deployed in France was becoming a “boot camp for communist, socialist and anarchist subversion”. I do not know much of other regiments, but that was certainly true of mine. My fellow enlisted men were my teachers in the great school of Socialism, and much of what I am today I learned there. When the “dangerous subversives” and “bomb-throwers” are the only men decrying the insanity of attacking machine guns with the chests of men, of sending men to dark and bloodied battlefields for the purpose of conquest and plunder, of killing our brothers so that the Imperialist scramble can continue unhindered; then we all come to find that perhaps we who went along with the bloodshed were the insane ones, not those who denounced it.



...The events of today give me trouble. When I see Foreign Secretary James Burnham’s dangerous game of cat and mouse with Nikita Khrushchev over which direction the Comintern will sway; or when watching the nervous tension in the news broadcasters and official government spokesman as they tried to calmly explain to us that the missile deployments in Ireland2 have brought us two minutes away from midnight, I sense that we are in an age that is every bit as pivotal as the First World War.







1 . This, my friends, is called irony. In this timeline, Wallace is a political leader, somewhat parallel to reality. 2 . Wallace refers here to what would later be called The Irish Missile Crisis, a gambit by First Secretary Nixon to counter attempts by the Anglo-French Union to prevent some, shall we say, interesting political developments in a certain British Commonwealth country.

June 25, 1941: Today’s front page of The Daily Worker confirmed my suspicions. America is engaged in a worldwide conflict for the second time in my life, this time ostensibly on the side of righteousness. In thinking of this issue, I can’t help but think about how horrible the coming days may be. The war in my youth ended before I was of fighting age, but even at home we felt the effects. Even in the relatively affluent district of New York that I was raised in, we still felt the effects of wartime scarcity and rationing.



The wage and price controls enforced by InCor2 and the rationing were making life miserable. It wasn’t uncommon to see the local bootblacks hauled off by the police, with the pretext of violating wartime rationing. Everything was scarce. I remember one of my more important chores was to go and stand in the breadlines every afternoon just to make sure that we got our bread. If I dallied even a little, there was a chance that there wouldn’t be any left. I fear that the rationing of my youth will come back in full force to support the global fight against fascism.







1 . While the work is fictional, the editor is an actual Oppenheimer biographer. 2 . Slang term for the Department of Industrial Coordination. If it sounds Orwellian, that’s because Orwell derived a lot of Newspeak from a certain abbreviation trend within left-wing circles.

Some Notable Events, 1916









3. 1 . Rank structure as follows: Ensign, Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Lieutenant Commander, Commander, Rear Ardian, Vice Ardian*, Ardian*, Air Marshall* (* denotes ranks planned, but never commissioned during the duration of the First World War) 2 . Major capital ship losses at Jutland. Britain: armored cruisers Black Prince, Warrior, Defence, and Minotaur; battlecruisers Invincible, Indefatigable, Lion, and Valiant; battleships Hercules and Neptune. United States: battleships Michigan and Utah. Germany: cruisers Frauenlob, Elbing, Rostock, and Wiesbaden; battlecruisers Seydlitz and Moltke; battleships Th�ringen, Nassau, Kronprinzand Pommern.

Precise Results of the 1916 General Election

Candidate Popular Vote Electoral Vote Woodrow Wilson (D) 6,000,125 277 William H. Taft (R) 7,121,896 254 Alan L. Benson (S) 2,706,894 0

U.S. House of Representatives Party Seats Change Republican Party 199 +22 Democratic Party 161 -39 Progressive Socialist Party 75 +18 Independent 0 -1

U.S. Senate Party Seats Change Republican Party 48 +2 Democratic Party 44 -2 Progressive Socialist Party 4 +0

Excerpt from “Party Government in Crisis” by E.E. Schattschneider, in American Political Science Review, Vol. 32, No. 1, February 1938.

Predictably, the rise of the Progressive Socialist Party as a third force in American party politics created dramatic consequences for party-government in the Congress. The work of previous theorists of the party in government demonstrated the effects of certain facets of the revolution in party politics more than adequately. Notably, the work of Fenwick et al. have theorized the enormous upheavals that the existence of three parties in Congress (particularly the House) have caused in the American constitutional system. Demonstrably, the existence of a sharply defined separation of powers within the government was a system that reflected the strongly non-partisan preferences of Founders such as Washington and Madison, and has adapted poorly to a regime of two powerful political organizations competing for control of the apparatus of government.



...Presidential government, while hindered by the existence of political organizations independent of the formal positions and councils of government, nonetheless could still function even with the consequences of divided party authority and potential divided government. As Representative Clark noted, while the government could still function being pulled in two separate directions, the addition of a third independent force made such functions impossible.



...However, the resulting crisis in party government between 1912 and 1918 could not be explained solely in terms of constitutional factors of separation of powers. As we must understand, in seeming paradox, party government does not just form within the councils and halls of government. The party is larger than its members within the government, and as will be demonstrated with reference to the specific cases of the 1917 New York City Mayoral election, the characteristics of the party and the form its membership takes can have drastic consequences upon the performance of the party in government.



...1917 saw the first eclipse of the Tammany Hall machine in New York politics. As was demonstrated, the Progressive Socialists’ ties to both organized labor and a large pool of enrolled members to the party eroded traditional dominance of the political machine’s system of organized legal corruption. The Socialists and the unions provided the same services to their members that the machines did; they offered opportunities for gainful employment, helped cover rent shortfalls for party workers, offered legal services to members and medical care to injured workers. But more importantly, the party’s membership rolls enabled it to mobilize its electorate in much the same way as the Tammany Hall machine. However, it did so without resort to the totality of legal corruption of the machine, and the egalitarian drives of its leaders created effective political organizations more of the vein of a fraternal order than of a cloistered, highly stratified secret society. Morris Hilquit’s move into the mayor’s mansion on January 1st, 1918, was the first blow in the final death knell of machine politics in the former United States.

Excerpt: Proposed text of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

� One: The executive power shall be vested in the President of the United States; and in the Cabinet of the United States, consisting of the various Secretaries in charge of the executive departments and the First Secretary.

The First Secretary and Secretaries of the Cabinet shall be elected by the House of Representatives without debate on the proposal of the President. The person who receives the majority vote of the House of Representatives shall be appointed by the President.

Members of the Cabinet may serve concurrently as members of the House of Representatives.



� Two: The House of Representatives may express its lack of confidence in the Cabinet only by electing successors by majority vote of the members and requesting the President to dismiss the Cabinet. The President must comply with this request and appoint the successors.

If a motion of the First Secretary for a vote of confidence is not supported by a majority of members of the House of Representatives, the President may dissolve the House of Representatives, and order new elections to occur within twenty one days of dissolution.



� Three: Save the following provisions, the House of Representatives shall be elected for four years. Its term shall end when a new House convenes. New elections shall be held no sooner than forty-six months and no later than forty-eight months after the electoral term begins. If the House be dissolved, new elections shall be held within sixty days.

The House of Representatives shall convene no later than thirty days following election.

1917: The Year of Disasters

1. President Wilson’s cabinet (* denotes office added on October 2nd)

First Secretary*: James Mann (R-IL)

Secretary of State: Robert Lansing (D-NY)

Secretary of Treasury: Joseoph Fordney (R-MI)

Secretary of War: Leonard Wood (R-MA)

Attorney General: Thomas W. Gregory (D-TX)

Postmaster General: Albert S. Burelson (D-TX)

Secretary of the Navy: Theodore Roosevelt (R-NY)

Secretary of the Interior: Knute Nelson (R-MN)

Secretary of Agriculture: Gilbert N. Haugen (R-IA)

Secretary of Commerce: Joshua W. Alexander (D-MO)

Secretary of Industrial Coordination: William S. Vare (R-PA)





(* denotes office added on October 2nd)James Mann (R-IL)Robert Lansing (D-NY)Joseoph Fordney (R-MI)Leonard Wood (R-MA)Thomas W. Gregory (D-TX)Albert S. Burelson (D-TX)Theodore Roosevelt (R-NY)Knute Nelson (R-MN)Gilbert N. Haugen (R-IA)Joshua W. Alexander (D-MO)William S. Vare (R-PA) 2 . Dating confusion: Russia still operated under the Julian calendar, and thus dates were 13 days behind the Gregorian Calendar date used in the rest of Europe. Thus, the February Revolution actually happened in March, and the October Revolution actually happened in November.

1918: Things Fall Apart

Congressional Election 1918

U.S. House of Representatives Party Seats Change Republican Party 179 -20 Progressive Socialist Party 150 +75 Democratic Party 100 -61 Independent 6 +6

U.S. Senate Party Seats Change Republican Party 45 -3 Democratic Party 37 -7 Progressive Socialist Party 14 +10

Ten Days That Shook the World

Demographics

The 1920 U.S. Presidential Election

Candidate Popular Vote Electoral Vote Leonard Wood (R) 12,234,123 339 Woodrow Wilson (D) 7,336,100 127 Eugene V. Debs (S) 8,913,154 65

The 1920 U.S. General Election

House of Representatives Party Seats Change Republican Majority Government Republican Party 214 +35 Independent 4 -2 Opposition Progressive Socialist Party 132 -18 Democratic Party 85 -15

U.S. Senate Party Seats Change Republican Party 52 +7 Democratic Party 31 -6 Progressive Socialist Party 13 -1

President Wood’s Cabinet, 1921-1925

Vice President: Calvin Coolidge (R-MA)

First Secretary: James Mann (R-IL)

Secretary of State: Charles Evan Hughes (R-NY)

Secretary of the Treasury: Joseph Fordney (R-MI)

Secretary of War: John W. Meeks (R-MA)

Attorney General: Harry M. Daughtery (R-OH)

Postmaster General: Hubert Work (R-PA)

Secretary of the Navy: Edwin Denby (R-MI)

Secretary of the Interior: Knute Nelson (R-MN)

Secretary of Agriculture: Gilbert N. Haugen (R-IA)

Secretary of Commerce: Herbert Hoover (R-NY)

Secretary of Industrial Coordination: William S. Vare (R-PA)

Excerpt from Storming the Gates of Heaven: A History of the Comintern, by Albert E. Kahn, Progress Publishers, Cambridge, Mass., 1962.

The Second World Congress of the Comintern laid out the basic doctrine of the international communist movement from early July to late August of 1920. To the modern eye, the decisions made at the Second Congress seem frightfully premature. While Lenin sent his 21 Conditions for approval by the Congress, he and his comrades were still bitterly engaged in the Rossiyan Civil War. Yet the delegates prefaced their speeches with talk of the imminent world revolution, while all of the major capitalist powers had encircled Rossiya with bayonets, and threatened to strangle that very revolution in the cradle. Still, the deputies at the Congress maintained sufficient foresight to at least tackle the issues of the future of the movement.



...The severity of the 21 Conditions would prove too much for most delegations. The inability to compromise on certain areas of doctrine, such as the strict adoption of democratic centralism, or the requirement for the complete expulsion of members deemed to be reformist, would deepen the already disastrous rift in the international Left. This hardline of the First Period policies would be made all the more disastrous with the Third Period policy of denouncing moderates as “Social Fascists”, but for now, it served to create two competing Workers’ Parties in nearly every advanced capitalist nation. And in the new Communist parties it molded, it created insidious weapons for internal witch-hunts and factional squabbles.



...The American delegation to the Comintern faced the same unenviable choice as the French Section. While the use of state terror had destroyed much of the Progressive Socialist Party’s moderate faction, either by pushing them to the Left or out of the movement altogether, even many on the Left were hesitant to completely endorse the 21 Conditions. While many conditions were rather agreeable, the second, seventh and seventeenth conditions proved particularly worrisome. The party was simply in no shape for the internal purge necessary to put “tested communists” in every important decision. Similarly, a drastic restyling of the party was most unsavory at a time when the existing party name was finally gaining strength among the proletariat.



...In the end, the American delegation gave their unanimous recommendation to adopt the 21 Conditions and join the Comintern as a full member. However, that decision would ultimately be put to the test at the Progressive Socialist Party National Convention, to be held in the Chicago Commune in January of 1921. The debate would be heated, and threatened to split the party in two. The rump of the reformist faction, severely depleted of delegates and speakers, clustered around president of the former Typographical Union Max S. Hayes, and vehemently opposed joining the Comintern. The moderate Left, committed to revolutionary socialism in spirit, but facing many reservations with the 21 Conditions, also criticized the proposal. They centered around the leadership of famed academician Walter Lippmann, and the hero of the Manhattan Commune, Morris Hilquit. The hard Left, represented by the party leadership, fought back with just as much tenacity.



...In the course of the debate, Debs, in ill health, cast aside his traditional role as unifying leader figure, and gave his endorsement, with reservations, to the 21 Conditions. Comrade Reed, the boyish face of the future, personally presented Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin’s personal remarks to the American proletariat, offering their reasons in favor of the Comintern and the conditions it imposed. He ended his speech with his own reflections of his time in Rossiya during the revolution, and the decisive moment the question of whether to strike in Petrograd was considered. “This decision,” he argued, “will be no less momentous than that fateful decision by the workers of the Pulitov Plant, in Petrograd, to consider their shivering and starving children’s plight, throw caution to the winds and a spanner in the Pulitov works. That one decision [...] set off the chain of events that toppled an Emperor, ended a war, and established the first worker’s republic the world has ever seen. Fortune favors the bold, my comrades.”



...It was Lippmann who spoke after Big Bill Haywood. While he congratulated the stout Wobbly on his work organizing the industrial unions and fighting against the imperialist game of the First World War, he offered his own annotations to the late German communist Karl Liebknecht’s criticism of the excesses of the Bolsheviks, relating them directly to the matter of the Comintern’s conditions. The specter of a “red bureaucracy” just as sinister as the old, he argued, lay within this focus on doctrinal pieties and democratic centralism: “If Rosa Luxemburg, the fiery and defiant leader of the German Communist Party and seasoned revolutionary, finds herself deposed and purged from the very party she helped forge because the central committee felt her politics deviated from the program established by the Comintern, then how safe are any of we from internal bloodletting?” Indeed, his words would prove all to true over the next two decades. The purge would become the favored weapon of communist organizations the world over until the beginning of the Popular Front.



...Ultimately, what stole the show and sealed the decision was a speech by the most unlikely of party members. Former Senator LaFollette arrived at the convention fashionably late, excusably so. Recently pardoned by President Wood for conviction under the Sedition Act, the former Republican and moderate fellow traveller of socialism came to the convention a broken man. Freshly divorced, penniless, and emaciated from his stay in federal prison, LaFollette proved to be another strange convert to the Left. He spoke of how his trust in the American dream had been shattered by the events of the last six years, half-cursing the naivete of his past. As a pariah now, he accepted his fate handed down from on high, but did not shrink from fighting against. Shocking everyone, he spoke in favor of the Comintern and endorsed the 21 Conditions. In the end, the Left prevailed. The moderate Left agreed to ratify the conditions, though they urged solidarity and fairness in their application. And the majority of the Right, though they voted against acceptance of the 21 Conditions, agreed to abide by them and to not quit the party. On February 15th, 1921, newly rechristened Workers’ Party of America formally joined the Communist International.

KGB World Factbook

Of one thing there is no doubt, and that is the simple fact that George Patton lived an extraordinary life. Born into an aristocratic conservative family in California on November 11, 1885, Patton would go on to serve with distinction in the First World War, advancing to the rank of Colonel in the American Expeditionary Force. While serving, he helped pioneer the use of armoured warfare, innovating tactics and strategies would later become staples in the American military. Facing the hardships and horrors of life in the trenches, Patton, like so many others of his generation, came home a changed man. He soon renounced his birthright, became estranged with his wife and family, and joined the Workers’ Party of America, all within a few short months of returning from France in 1919. Patton, along with his close comrade David Eisenhower, had set the pattern for so many World War veterans. They went off to war committed to their nation’s cause, and came home subversives.



...The sheer number of career military officers in the United States Army who professed belief in Socialism after the Great War is simply astounding. While no reliable figures can be found to establish the exact percentage, estimates range from fifteen percent to as high as twenty-eight percent! Whatever the rate, it is clear just how much the American polity and her military were rotting by 1920. Patton was hardly alone in his beliefs in the army, and as his letter’s show, he formed a discussion club among trusted comrades from the army to correspond on politics.



...In one such letter, Patton writes to Eisenhower, confessing about his experiences in the Great War. “Dear Ike,” he writes: It was at Chemin-de-Dames that it hit me with the force of revelation. Our Mk. IVs had bogged down in the German auxillary trench, and the Jerries soon came down on us with artillery, followed by an infantry attack. We soon ran out of ammunition for our tank’s machine guns, and we had to fend off the last of their assault hand to hand, with knives and bayonets. The kids we bayonetted, they couldn’t have been older than sixteen or seventeen. I felt old, and worn out. And as relief came, and we finally had a moment of peace, I suddenly realized I had no idea why I was here, or why I was butchering young German boys, or why they were doing the same to us. I didn’t know whether I could believe in my country anymore, or even believe in God. While the exact details of Patton’s conversion from Christian soldier to atheist communist remain to the imagination, the documentary evidence suggests that it occurred shortly after the end of the Chemin-de-Dames campaign, while Patton was on a three-day pass in Paris.2 Patton’s letters, and own recollections preserved on archival film suggest that during that time, Patton met up with a French socialist group. One of the few details that are known is that the group was composed of some number of dissident intellectuals, as well as a number of veterans of the French army, discharged as amputees. Patton, now semi-fluent in French, conversed with this group about the political issues of the war and economics for from anywhere from a few hours to whole evening, depending on the account.



...The first self-reference of socialist belief would not come until a diary entry some three months later. He writes tepidly in favour of socialism and its “brotherhood of man,” and suggests at an imperial nature in the First World War, impugning the motives the national leaders of the Allies as well as the Central Powers. In perhaps the strongest language seen from this previously gentlemanly character, he calls the current president, Woodrow Wilson, a “pompous old jackass” and “a capitalist running-dog.” Where he picked up such an obviously German construction is impossible to tell.



...Like many radicals of his generation, it was the Bolshevik Revolution that ultimately steeled his convictions in socialism. His correspondence after the war contains many recollections and conversations about the aforementioned event. One such letter was written to John Reed, praising his work on Ten Days That Shook the World, and propositioning a collaborative history of the Rossiyan Civil War, a project that later became the infamous three volume history compendium, written with Reed and Leon Trotsky, the charismatic exile from the very regime he helped build. A History of the Soviet Union, from Birth to Betrayal is perhaps the most oft-cited history of the early Soviet period, and became one of Patton’s fixations from 1928 to its final publishing in late 1932, just before the American Revolution.







1 . One of the great things about writing in character is that you can explore the interactions of various points of view. In this case, the (fictional) writer, a British author with no sympathy for socialism or revolution, is mischaracterizing Patton, who was no proletarian by any stretch of the imagination. But hey, it’s a snappy title, likely to sell lots of copies among military buffs in the Anglo-French Union. 2 . The author here is being hyperbolic, and it will be important to keep that in mind.

Events of the Wood Presidency, 1921







1 . Basically the same as reality. Many things noted here that happened in some form in reality will be included in updates, simply because they’re historically important enough. 2 . Very similar to reality, except that Ireland is recognized as a Republic from the start.

Events of the Wood Presidency, 1922



1 . More precise results, for those of you who are wondering:

UK General Election, 1922 Party Seats Change Conservative Party 340 +10 Labour Party 146 +89 Liberal Party 68 +32 National Liberal Party 47 -80 Other 14 +1

Events of the Wood Presidency, 1923





Type: Lexington-class battlecruiser (similar to reality)

Displacement: 48,550 tons (empty)

Length: 270 meters

Beam: 32.1 meters

Draft: 9.2 meters

Propulsion: Turbo-electric, four shafts, total 180,000 shp

Speed: 33 knots

Armament: 8 x 406mm/50 cal (4x2)

16 x 152mm/53 cal

4 x 76mm/50 cal

Armor: 178mm belt, 130-230mm barbette, 305mm conning tower, 280mm turret, 152mm side, 76-152mm deck



Type: Odin-class battleship

Displacement: 58,200 tons (empty)

Length: 252 meters

Beam: 34 meters

Draft: 10 meters

Propulsion: Turbo-electric, four shafts, total 180,000 shp

Speed: 27 knots

Armament: 12 x 406mm/50 cal (4x3)

16 x 152mm/53 cal

12 x 76mm/50 cal

Armor: 380mm belt, 380 barbette, 406mm conning tower, 460mm turret, 152mm side, 203mm deck

1 . This will probably be the only time I do this, but I feel I must invoke “Rule of Cool” here. Naming battleships after states is rather lame, so I felt I had to put a stop to the U.S. Navy’s absurd naming conventions. Anyway, here are some vital stats for battleship aficionados to drool over in the meantime.-class battlecruiser (similar to reality)48,550 tons (empty)270 meters32.1 meters9.2 metersTurbo-electric, four shafts, total 180,000 shp33 knots8 x 406mm/50 cal (4x2)16 x 152mm/53 cal4 x 76mm/50 cal178mm belt, 130-230mm barbette, 305mm conning tower, 280mm turret, 152mm side, 76-152mm deck-class battleship58,200 tons (empty)252 meters34 meters10 metersTurbo-electric, four shafts, total 180,000 shp27 knots12 x 406mm/50 cal (4x3)16 x 152mm/53 cal12 x 76mm/50 cal380mm belt, 380 barbette, 406mm conning tower, 460mm turret, 152mm side, 203mm deck

Events of the Wood Presidency, 1924



1 . Basically, not all that different than reality. It’s amazing that something so big can start out so pathetic.

Events of the Wood Presidency, 1925

The 1924 U.S. Presidential Election

Candidate Popular Vote Electoral Vote Leonard Wood (R) 13,012,123 303 Upton Sinclair (W) 9,753,111 116 John W. Davis (D) 6,486,324 112

The 1924 U.S. Congressional Election

House of Representatives Party Seats Change Republican Minority Government Republican Party 200 -14 Independent 1 -3 Opposition Workers’ Party 158 +26 Democratic Party 76 -9

U.S. Senate Party Seats Change Republican Party 50 -2 Democratic Party 29 -2 Workers’ Party 17 +4

Excerpt from Storming the Gates of Heaven: A History of the Comintern, by Albert E. Kahn, Progress Publishers, Cambridge, Mass., 1962.

Lenin’s corpse was hardly even cold before the power struggle began in the USSR. The struggle for dominance between Leon Trotsky and Josef Stalin1, at first limited to the Soviet Politburo, would eventually come to be played out on a dramatic world stage, becoming one of the pre-eminent international ideological conflicts of the 20th Century.



...At the Sixth World Congress, held from July to August of 1925, the delegates agreed that a major restructuring of the International’s strategy was in order. The complete failure of revolutionary movements to spread socialism through central Europe had seriously affected the legitimacy of worker’s movements all accross the world. The unfortunate outcome, as might be guessed, was that this failure damaged the credibility of internationalists within the Soviet state, and ultimately gave Josef Stalin, the unscrupulous Rossiyan chauvinist and political manipulator that he was, just the leverage he needed to secure total mastery of the Soviet state.



It was at the Sixth Congress that Bukharin outlined Stalin’s thesis of “socialism in one country”. The programme laid out before the Congress by Zinoviev generally finalized the disastrous splits within the international left; Comintern parties would abandon their insurrectionary tactics and underground organizations to stand for parliamentary elections, but they would still offer only limited cooperation with socialist parties. In the United States, this resulted in the dissolution of the underground Communist Party apparatus into the mainstream Workers’ Party, and a general turnover of leadership within the party.



...John Reed reluctantly complied with Zinoviev’s order to resign his position as Executive Secretary and stand for a by-election to the U.S. House in Greenwich Village, a constituency he won and held until his eventual retirement from politics in 1945. A more pro-Moscow Troika would be placed in the party’s leadership, consisting of Reed’s successor, C.E. Ruthenberg, the inimitable Wobbly leader “Big Bill” Haywood, and Earl Browder. This move led directly to an internal conflict between the party’s organization apparatus and the parliamentary party, under the tenure of Opposition Leader Upton Sinclair and his whip, William Z. Foster.



That year’s national convention would dramatically illustrate this tension. The parliamentary faction, which generally favored increased party pluralism and syndicalism, quickly began to resent Moscow’s increasingly heavy hand in internal party politics. The pro-Moscow party organization fought to tighten standards of membership, and bring the parliamentary faction under Moscow’s directives. The central flashpoints that year were the choice of many syndicalist groups, many anarchist or left communist, to begin entry into the party, including the famous German émigré and self-professed anarcho-syndicalist Rudolf Rocker. The Muscovites generally opposed allowing such groups to join the party, decrying them as “infantile leftists”. The parliamentary faction, with the support of much of the union’s rank and file, was much in favor of a united left front.



The other was the question of parliamentary tactics, especially on the electoral front. Prior to this date, with the exception of a few of the most concentrated industrial regions, the Workers’ Party had generally avoided campaigning in the South for tactical reasons. The party’s limited resources would make a campaign in the South futile due to the combined weight of the completely dominant reactionary Democratic Party. Not even the national Republican Party, which commanded resources far more vast than than the Workers’ Party could hope to field, could successfully crack into the South. Campaigning among Negroes was similarly futile; though population of former slaves in both the North and South were incredibly receptive to socialism, throughout much of the South voting was an absolute impossibility, even in federal elections. Regrettably, even as these words are written the battle for full suffrage and equality for the American Negroe in the South is not yet fully won.



...The outcome of the convention was mixed, and neither faction came away with a clear victory. The Muscovites “Southern Strategy” had ultimately prevailed. The party would have a candidate standing in each and every one of the 435 House constituencies, and the unionization drives would now focus on organizing rural and urban Southern workers, both black and white. On the other hand, the Muscovites were forced to accept, against the Comintern’s directives, that syndicalists, left communists and even anarchists be counted among the “tested communists” the Comintern demanded be placed in the party’s offices.



1 . In the popular imagination in our world, the complexities of the post-Lenin power vacuum are most often reduced to a long conflict between Stalin and Trotsky. For whatever reason (Trotsky had been an opponent of Stalin since almost the very beginning, and was one of the last leaders to be co-opted or silenced), Trotsky became the poster boy for the dissident left. And as you can imagine, for a movement and eventually a state that attached itself to Trotsky, that enduring myth would color everyone’s perceptions, even an academic’s.

Events of the Wood/Hoover Presidencies, 1925

Events of the Hoover Presidency, 1926

Events of the Hoover Presidency, 1927

Events of the Hoover Presidency, 1928

Events of the First Hoover Presidency, 1929

1. The Great Gatsby. Under Red, White and Blue was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s preferred title in our timeline, but he arrived at it too late in publication to change the name of the book.







3. was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s preferred title in our timeline, but he arrived at it too late in publication to change the name of the book. 2 . I was surprised to learn this, but apparently the Roaring Twenties was a period of relative acceptance of homosexuality unmatched until the mid-to-late 1970s. I’d chalk it up to innocence rather than a progressive social attitude, but at any rate a major interview with an already openly gay individual seems like a decent point of departure for the development of different LBGT politics.

The 1928 U.S. Presidential Election

Candidate Popular Vote Electoral Vote Herbert Hoover (R) 19,345,891 337 Upton Sinclair (W) 12,125,054 130 John W. Davis (D) 6,521,324 64

The 1928 U.S. Congressional Election

House of Representatives Party Seats Change Republican Majority Government Republican Party 246 +46 Conservative Party 41 +41 Opposition Workers’ Party 112 -46 Democratic Party 36 -40 Independent 0 -1

U.S. Senate Party Seats Change Republican Party 49 -1 Democratic Party 21 -8 Conservative Party 8 +8 Workers’ Party 18 +1

Excerpts from “Review: Towards a Permanent Republican Majority” by George Catlin, in American Political Science Review, Vol. 24, No. 1, February 1930.

Nathan Fines’ recent study of American political trends gives us a bold prediction: as a direct consequence of political dynamics, demographic trends and most of all economic cycles, the American Republican Party will be uniquely situated to dominate American political life for the foreseeable future. Fines’ thesis is bold indeed, and while the Republican Party’s landslide general election victory and the political success of the Hoover-Longworth Administration’s1 political programme may seem to the pedestrian observer to be proof positive, we must be more cautious in evaluating the strength of such a profound claim. Nevertheless, Fines has come prepared, marshalling an impressive range of evidence with remarkable clarity.



...One of the strongest planks of Fines’ thesis is his analysis of the Republican Party’s successful strategy of co-opting both the political programmes and organization methods of their adversaries at the polls. Since the final midterm Congressional election in 1918, the Republican Party’s chief adversary has been the communist Workers’ Party. As Fines so eloquently put it, “the socialist opposition has been the most able and thorough schoolmaster in the art of mass politics in the entirety of the Grand Old Party’s existence.” Indeed, the Republicans have made able use of their education. The modern Republican Party, organizationally, is the mirror image of the mass-based membership Workers’ Party2. The Republicans’ impressive resources have allowed for the mobilization of an impressive membership group, and a powerful electoral apparatus to mobilize support for the party on Election Day.



The Republicans have done more than learn new organizational methods from the opposition, though. While many high-profile attempts at political realignment failed under the Wood presidency, the Republican Party has spent most of the ’20s experimenting with adopting facets of the Workers’ Party’s “Minimal Programme”. Hoover’s first term led to limited success on that front, adopting landmark workplace safety legislation; it was ultimately First Secretary Longworth’s decisive reorganization of the parliamentary Republican membership leading up to and after the 1928 election victory that have allowed the social democratic reforms of the past year. Hoover’s controversial election platform, which called for the nationalisation of the railroads and comprehensive federal disaster relief programmes, are, as Fines’ polling data demonstrates, a key factor to winning over many Midwestern and Southern farmers to the Republican Party. In spite of high profile opposition within the party, both measures passed under Longworth’s strong parliamentary leadership.



...However, there remain some problems with Fines’ thesis. A permanent Republican majority rests on extrapolating current economic and demographic trends. A dramatic increase in the rate of urbanisation, or a weakening of economic standard of living growth, could very easily upset the Republican Party’s prospects for the future. Similarly, Fines’ prediction of the total demise of the Democratic Party within the next decade is beset with reasonable doubts. Identification with the Democratic Party is still very strong in the American South, in spite of the success of both the Republican and Workers’ Parties’ penetration of the electorate in the last election. The Republicans’ Southern auxiliary, the Conservative Party, simply may not have the staying power to uproot such an enduring tradition.







1 . The new trend in this late period has become one of naming the President and the First Secretary together for a given administration. 2 . The author here omits the Solidarity labor union’s position within the Workers’ Party apparatus in the analysis, as he doesn’t find it an important distinction.

Turning and Turning in the Widening Gyre

“Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”

-Irving Fisher

The Opening Salvo: 1930 Senate Elections

U.S. Senate Party Seats Change Republican Party 36 -13 Workers’ Party 29 +11 Democratic Party 27 +6 Conservative Party 4 -4

’Tis the Final Conflict: The Workers’ (Communist) Party Convention

The 1932 U.S. Presidential Election

Candidate Popular Vote Electoral Vote Norman Thomas (W) 21,205,786 381 Herbert Hoover (R) 14,143,945 13 Huey Long (D) 7,652,125 137

The 1932 U.S. Congressional Election

House of Representatives Party Seats Change Workers’ Party Majority Government Workers’ Party 265 +143 Opposition Democratic Party 81 +45 Republican Party 80 -166 Conservative Party 9 -32

U.S. Senate Election Results Party Seats Change Workers’ Party 39 +10 Democratic Party 29 +2 Republican Party 24 -12 Conservative Party 4 +0

Revolution a-Knockin’ at the Door: The Ensuing Panic

A Spanner in the Works: The U.S. General Strike of 1933



1 . The five Burroughs of New York

Our Bullets Are for Our Own Generals: The Birth of the Red Army



1 . Euphemism for siege and artillery bombardment.

May Day: The Revolution Consummated

The Formation of the Provisional Government

1. Membership of the first Central Committee as of June, 1933 First Secretary: William Z. Foster

People’s Secretary for Foreign Affairs: John Reed

Attorney General: Crystal Eastman

People’s Secretary for Defense: Martin Abern

People’s Secretary for Labor: Emma Goldman

People’s Secretary for Finance: Earl Browder

People’s Secretary for Trade and Industry: Walter Lippmann

People’s Secretary for Agriculture: Henry A. Wallace

People’s Secretary for Education: John Dewey

People’s Secretary for Rail: James P. Cannon









2 . A brief explanation of the various styles used by states and municipalities. “Autonomous Socialist Republic” is a term currently unique to New York City, which refers to the federation set up the 5 Communes of New York with deliberate autonomy from the State government. “Socialist Republic” refers to state-level governments set up in opposition to the established government, which has most often suspended its constitution. By contrast, any state referred to by its OTL name, such as the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, means that the elected stage government has been seated and has chosen to side with the provisional government. “Commune” refers to any city-sized organization set up on a model echoing the classic Paris Commune. 3 . The Foster-Reed Doctrine is the eventual name for the official foreign policy of the UASR from 1933 to 1939. While often seen as an American restatement of the Stalinist position of “socialism in one country”, the doctrine is a deliberate compromise between “socialism in one country” and the Trotskyite position of permanent revolution. Realizing the upheaval caused by the Revolution, the doctrine seeks to make the containment of Fascism the primary goal of the Comintern. This policy is a deliberate act of appeasement to both the Western capitalist powers and the ever-more-estranged allies in the USSR. 4 . With Norman Thomas assassinated, Upton Sinclair, as Vice President-elect, would be the legitimate president of the United States as of March 4. However, this is the first indication that he intended to carry over that position to the Provisional Government. This and the deliberate makeup of the first Congress of People’s Deputies with members elected to the House in the ’32 election would establish a pattern of continuity between the old government and the new that would eventually be expanded and formalized in the 1934 Basic Law of the UASR.

The Reds Go Marching On: The Ongoing Civil War







1 . The provisional government has not had its ducks in a row sufficiently to begin handing out promotions yet, and with the nucleus of the Red Army formed by professional soldiers, no one is going to be taking titles for themselves, which is why someone who is technically a Lt. Colonel is in command of a Corps. 2 . Red Guards is a term stochastically adopted by National Guard units that sided with the provisional government and the Red Army instead of the military junta.

A Red Dawn Breaks

The Civil War Ends

The Constitutional Convention

Constitution of the Union of American Socialist Republics

Article I: Declaration of Human Rights

Article II: The People’s Assembly

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Basic Law of the Union of American Socialist Republics against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.

Representation of the Union in international relations, conclusion and ratification of treaties with other states; Questions of war and peace; Control over the observance of the Basic Law of the UASR and ensuring conformity of the Basic Law of the Union Republics with the Basic Law of the UASR; Organization of the defense of the UASR and direction of Revolutionary Defense Forces; Foreign trade on the basis of state monopoly; Safeguarding the security of the state; Establishment of the national economic plans of the UASR; Approval of the single state budget of the UASR as well as of the taxes and revenues which go to the all-Union, Republican and local budgets; Administration of the banks, industrial and agricultural establishments and enterprises and trading enterprises of all-Union importance; Administration of transport and communications; Direction of the monetary and credit system; Organization of state insurance; Raising and granting of loans; Establishment of the basic principles for the use of land as well as for the use of natural deposits, forests and waters; Establishment of the basic principles in the spheres of education and public health; Organization of a uniform system of national economic statistics; Establishment of the principles of labor legislation; Legislation on the judicial system and judicial procedure; criminal and civil codes; Laws on citizenship of the Union; laws on the rights of foreigners; Issuing of All-Union acts of amnesty; The impeachment of the President of the Union and all other public officers for official misconduct, high crimes or treason.

No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be made or enforced. No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any party to the Union. No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one Union Republic over those of another. No money shall be appropriated from the public trust except by provisions of law. Regular statements and accounts of all receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published regularly. No title of nobility shall be granted by the Union, and no person shall accept any office or title of any kind from any foreign state except upon the consent of the Congress of People’s Deputies.

To offer amendments to legislation on the floor of the Congress of People’s Deputies, subject to approval by a simple majority of the Congress of People’s Deputies; To delay the passage of any act or executive action by Congress of People’s Deputies for up to three months by a simple majority vote, up to six months by a two thirds vote, and to veto legislation by unanimous consent; To conduct official, independent inquiries and provide oversight over the All-Union and provincial governments. To oversee All-Union elections and to provide indictments for violation of election law; To act as the standing legislature in times when the Congress of People’s Deputies is not in session. All acts of the Council of the Union in such periods are subject to ratification by the Congress of People’s Deputies upon reconvening; Confirmation of alterations of boundaries between Union Republics; Confirmation of the formation of new territories and regions and also of new Autonomous Republics within Union Republics; Admission of new republics into the UASR.

Article III: The Judiciary

Article IV: Powers of the Parties to the Union

No province shall enter into any treaty, alliance or confederation. No province shall print or coin money. No bills of attainder nor any ex post facto laws shall be made. No province shall, without the consent of the Congress of People’s Deputies, lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports. The net produce of all such imposts and duties shall be for use in the public trust of the Union, and all such laws shall be subject to revision and control by the Congress of People’s Deputies. No province shall, without the consent of Congress, keep troops in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with other provinces or with foreign powers, or engage in war, unless actually invaded or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.

Article V: Amendment

Article VI: Ratification

1934 Special Election

Congress of People’s Deputies, single-member districts Party Seats Workers’ (Communist) 379 Left Democrats 38 Right Democrats 18 Republican Party 0

Congress of People’s Deputies, national list Party Votes Seats Workers’ (Communist) 31,453,112 268 Left Democrats 12,034,056 102 Right Democrats 4,720,342 40 Republican Party 3,010,568 25

Congress of People’s Deputies, total Party Seats Workers (Communist) 647 Left Democrats 140 Right Democrats 58 Republican Party 25

The First Cultural Revolution

We often never realize just how vastly different our own epoch is from past epochs. Events that we celebrate, cherish and immortalize become removed from the time and circumstances of their own epoch. Disconnected from their own circumstances, events of history become the free-floating ideological debris of our own age, constantly filtered and re-filtered through the discriminating lens of the historian. But as a result, our sense of history is impoverished. It becomes the burden of those of us who had borne witness, as well as those who consider themselves to be proper students of history, to cut back the veil of time and breathe life into the dead past so that we may fend off the cycle of historical tragedy and farce.



The great centers of learning in our Union must prepare the students of today to continue the battles of yesterday. And I’m sure they do not need an old man such as me to tell them this. But if I may offer my own experiences to help light the way, I am more than happy to my duty for the great human brotherhood. While it may depress the modern reader to learn that America has not always not been on the right side of the World Revolution, and has failed in her duty to her international comrades many times since her own revolution, it is patent absurdity even to entertain the conservative charge that to teach these truths is anti-American and counter-revolutionary. If that is indeed the case, then we have already lost.



In my own lifetime, I have seen world capitalism brought to its knees by a crisis of its own making. I have lived through the counter-revolutionary junta of the American master class, and manned the barricades during the revolution. I’ve watched fascism cover the whole of Europe in a terror never before seen in the world. I, like everyone else of my generation, took up arms to defend the country of my birth as well as the country of my mother’s birth. I saw firsthand the results of Stalin’s wanton betrayal of the revolutionary movement. I too gasped in awe and horror upon seeing the news reels of the harnessing of the power of the atom, and the liberation of Nazi death camps in Central Europe. Had these tragedies alone been our legacy as a species, we would have already had our share of blood spilt.



But new horrors would follow the Second World War. The world evermore divided itself into three bitterly opposed hostile camps. America and the Soviet Union both in turn betrayed the World Revolution in their rush to divide the world into zones of control. The last of the Imperialist powers, the Franco-British Union, recovered its strength and clutched onto its colonies ever tighter, while Dewey and Bulganin brought the world to the brink of thermonuclear war in their struggle to control the Comintern and the path that international communism would follow. The only way to go was down. Each passing year brought more warheads, more powerful nuclear weapons and deadlier means of delivery. Our collective race to suicide was sad and terrifying. The world over, we saw the end of the classical worker’s movement, its revolutionary potential negated by the march of history.



...At some point, we must ask, where did this all begin? We hear often of the good that came from the Revolution. Where did it come from? And how?



This is where Avrich’s book comes in. As his own words show (see Preface), Paul began writing this book seeking to answer exactly these questions for the high school history students of America. As with many of the great history texts, a commission from the People’s Secretariat for Education set the ball rolling, but hundreds, perhaps thousands of individuals devoted their time and effort to making this book possible. I am proud to have contributed in my own way to this project. As Karl Marx noted, “History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.”

Politics After the Revolution: An Overview

Policies of the Foster Government during the Cultural Revolution

People’s Secretariat for Foreign Affairs

People’s Secretariat for Justice

People’s Secretariat for Defense







1 . Stavka is a Russian loanword, appropriated expressly for this purpose. 2 . As you might guess, America has gone metric. The 7.62x64mm cartridge is the redesignation of the 30-06 Springfield cartridge.

People’s Secretariat for Labor

People’s Secretariat for Finance

People’s Secretariat for Foreign Trade

The People’s Secretariat for Agriculture



1 . This subject will be covered in more depth in later cultural updates. Rest assured, changes in eating and drinking habits will not be missed in cultural updates. I just do not want to clutter policy updates too much.

The People’s Secretariat for Education







1 . This will also be the subject of its own update(s). Religion during the Cultural Revolution will get its own full update, and the policies of major organizations, such as the Catholic Church will also be examined. 2 . This will probably be the first update after I’m finished with policy updates.

The People’s Secretariat for Public Safety

People’s Secretariat for Railways

People’s Secretariat for Communication



1 . Covered in more depth in a later update

People’s Secretariat for Maritime Transport

People’s Secretariat for Energy



1 . Basically, OTL’s TVA, only faster and on steroids.

People’s Secretariat for Heavy Industry

People’s Secretariat for Light Industry



1 . Also covered in later cultural updates.

People’s Secretariat for Construction and Housing

State Planning Commission

Academy of Arts and Sciences

Union Bank

Excerpts from Journeys in Red America, by George Orwell (London: Secker and Warburg, 1939)

In my travels through America, I’ve come to see that conventional narratives of American communism; from the Communist Party and the Labour militants on the left, or the reactionaries on the right, are both fundamentally and inescapably wrong. Since the reasons for rejecting the Tory official history on the subject are all too clear, I shall dismiss this right out of hand, and focus on the Left’s ideological shibboleths. It has not been because of the leaders of the Workers’ Communist Party1, nor because of their doctrinaire application of Marxism-Leninism, that socialism has been put into effect. Rather, it has been in spite of the best efforts of men like William Z. Foster or Earl Browder (ashamedly, the working class heroes of European Left) that this idea of libertarian communism was put into effect.



The transformation of the country has been amazing. Very quickly, much of the land in American South was collectively cultivated by the former tenant farmers themselves, without landlords, without bosses, and without instituting capitalist competition to spur production. The government’s collectivization programmes, for all their promises, have been most shameful. In the South, the old foremen and plantation owners have been reappointed as “managers” of the kibbutzim. Power inequalities, between black and white, between worker and manager, have been preserved, not eradicated.



The “genius” of the American planned economy relies less on the planners in their ivory towers, and far more on the initiative of the rank and file union members. In almost all the industries—factories, mills, workshops, transportation services, public services, and utilities—the rank and file workers, their revolutionary committees, and their syndicates reorganized and administered production, distribution, and public services without capitalists, or high salaried managers.



Even more: the various agrarian and industrial collectives immediately instituted economic equality in accordance with the essential principle of communism, ‘From each according to his ability and to each according to his needs.’ They coordinated their efforts through free association in whole regions, created new wealth, increased production (especially in agriculture), built more schools, and bettered public services. They instituted not bourgeois formal democracy but genuine grass roots functional libertarian democracy, where each individual participated directly in the revolutionary reorganization of social life. They replaced the war between men, ‘survival of the fittest,’ by the universal practice of mutual aid, and replaced rivalry by the principle of solidarity...



This experience, in which a nation of some one hundred twenty million directly or indirectly participated, opened a new way of life to those who sought an alternative to anti-social capitalism on the one hand, and totalitarian state bogus socialism on the other.



...When I had first arrived in America in October of 1936, I was confronted with the freshness of the revolutionary fervor. It was as if the revolution had happened yesterday. Only later did I realize that the revolutionary fervor was still high because it had not ended yet. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with the red and black flag of the revolution; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost every church had been closed. Churches here and there were being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen. Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal.



Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had disappeared. Nobody said ‘Mister’ or ‘Sir’; everyone called everyone else ‘Comrade’ or ‘Brother’. Tipping was now forbidden by law; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy. There were few private motor-cars, most had all been commandeered, and the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud. As throngs of people passed through the city’s busy arteries, the radios on the street corners and in the shops bellowed revolutionary songs and broadcasts of the public assembly’s meetings. And it was the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a city of millions in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no ‘well-dressed’ people at all. Practically everyone wore rough denim working-class clothes, or blue overalls or some variant of militia uniform. The greatly diminished number of women who still wore dresses or skirts were far less modest than before the revolution; ‘To save fabric’ one girl explained. ‘Freedom to be a woman and not be smothered by a blanket,’ explained another. All this was queer and moving. There was much in this that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for...so far as one could judge the people were contented and hopeful. There was no unemployment, and the price of living was still extremely low; you saw very few conspicuously destitute people, and no beggars except the gypsies. Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine.2





Homage to Catalonia by Orwell, with the hopes of capturing Orwell’s style.

1 . The party underwent another official renaming in 1935, removing the parentheses from around “Communist”. 2 . This was a rewrite of various passages fromby Orwell, with the hopes of capturing Orwell’s style.

Excerpts from Battle Scars of a History Professor: A Memoir, by Norman Thomas Washington (Chicago: Haymarket, 2010).

When I first started teaching modern American history at Columbia University in 1978, life was certainly exciting. Watching a momentous historical event in the making is a uniquely terrifying event for any historian, let alone one fresh out of grad school. Watching the political order that had endured literally my entire life suddenly and dramatically realign was an event of such importance that I don’t think we’ll experience another in my lifetime.



The June 1978 General Election was still fresh in everyone’s minds when classes began that fall. It was wonderful to see our youthful hopes vindicated, that national politics wasn’t the sport of old white men. The Social Ecology Union was the new dominant political party, and it promised to fulfill the ambitions of student movements and the Counterculture that had nurtured and supported its growth. America had her first African1 premier, and almost half of the Central Committee members were women.



Still, one of my students was a little jaded, even with all of this. She was a freshman political science major from Tennessee named Scarlett. I’ll never forget her question to me. She approached me after class one Friday early in the term and wondered if she could ask a question. Not paying too much attention, I hurriedly gathered up my papers and motioned for her to walk with me. “Sorry I’m in a hurry,” I said, “but I need to get home in time for the repairman. Go on.”



She was a bit old fashioned, and still had trouble calling me by my first name. Nevertheless, she managed. “Well, Norm...I guess I was just wondering why politics isn’t as, well, ‘awesome’ as it was during the Revolution. I mean... I look at the leaders we have now, and they just look bland compared to the men who led the Revolution. The speeches aren’t as exciting, the leaders are dull and uninteresting. Why are things so dull?”



I stopped to think for a minute. Truthfully, I didn’t have an answer then, and I apologized for it profusely. However, in retrospect, it’s all so obvious. Things aren’t as exciting in politics because the things that were revolutionary in 1933 are normal now.



In spite of all the kinks that needed to be worked out of the system, the people of my generation, and of succeeding generations, have all known nothing else but socialism. The stories of revolutions and revolutionaries that we tell our children, that fill our novels, are things of fantasy now. Our forefathers sought to build a utopia, and now we’re living in it. This is not to say that life is somehow perfect now, or that all heartaches have been conquered. The project of scientific socialism has never been about such religious absurdities as “perfecting existence”. It’s been about ensuring that man’s animal needs are all met, so that each individual can then find the best way to meet his human needs. “The free development of each is the condition for the free development of all,” as Marx would put it.



We’ve never known wage-slavery in our lives. We’ve never known the adversity that capitalism causes, and so we cannot know the struggle against it. Divorced from the real conditions of that struggle, our past struggles have become romantic folk stories, little different from the tales of knights of old slaying dragons and rescuing maidens. So if I were to answer her question now (though I doubt I’d have to, considering Scarlett is now a distinguished member of the political science faculty at MIT), I’d have to tell her that politics being more “boring” now is a good thing. There’s an old Chinese curse that goes something like “May you live in interesting times.”



The revolutionary fervor is gone because there is no need for it anymore. The goals of the revolution have been accomplished. Socialism, participatory democracy, egalitarianism; these are all accepted facets of life in America. The ’30s were a dangerous time, in America and in the rest of the world, and we should not kid ourselves about what came along with the revolutionary fervor. Atrocities were committed by revolutionaries and the state they created. Had things gone a little differently, it is very easy to see how America could have slid into dictatorship and totalitarianism.



1 . Racial terminology is significantly different than IOTL.

Excerpts from the AH.com discussion thread entitled “Did anyone see Public Enemies?”

Originally Posted by Ubermunch Hey guys, I just got back from the cinema, and as you can guess, I just watched the new historical drama Public Enemies. Now, I’m a Brit, so I’m not very well versed in American revolutionary history. There was like literally two paragraphs in my school textbook on the subject, so you’ll have to forgive my ignorance.



While I used to be one of those patriotic Brits who always thought “Better Dead than Red”, since I’ve been at university I’m a little bit less of a wanker about it. I’d like to keep this from turning into a transatlantic flame war (the Cold War is hot enough as it is ), so can we please just stick to the discussion of the historical facts. I really don’t care if you think the Revolution was the best thing since sliced bread, or if you think, like the average Brit, that it’s the most terrible thing to happen. Let’s just agree to disagree about politics.



First off, it’s a very well done film. I hate to admit it, but you Yanks know a thing or two about movie making. For those of you who haven’t seen it, it stars Adam Sandler as former NBI agent and reluctant revolutionary Melvin Purvis, and Johnny Depp as the suave, loyal party man and secret police Lieutenant John Dillinger as they’re assigned to lead a task force to infiltrate, disrupt and destroy the KKK in the South from 1933 to 1938. The casting was pretty good, and Sandler did a very good Dixie accent, at least to this Brit’s ear. Hard to believe his first acting roles were in comedies, actually. Johnny Depp plays the suave police officer to the hilt.



Anyway, the film is long, almost three hours, and it covers the drama of SecPubSafe’s campaigns against paramilitaries and terrorists. I admit, I was surprised at the balance of the portrayal. I was expecting them to treat the KKK as cartoonish villains and totally whitewash the secret police atrocities of the era, but it turned out pretty good. Like I said, I don’t know much about the history of the era, so how well did it do?

Originally Posted by DeOpressoLiber Hate to break it to you, bub, but the KKK were cartoonish villains. I know that your history textbooks like to portray the KKK as freedom fighters of sorts, but they were nothing more than racist, fascist thugs and murderers. Yeah, they were human beings too, and a lot of them might have even been sympathetic characters. Doesn’t make them any less of monsters.

Originally Posted by LeninsBeard The historical inaccuracies were forgivable in most cases. The chronology of a couple of events were dramatically shifted in a couple cases, and as far as we can tell, the scene where Purvis and Dillinger were arrested by Alabama State Troopers while undercover, and thrown in the same holding cell as Right Democrat strongman Strom Thurmond seems to be apocryphal.



Still, I agree, good show. Though, I’m from South Carolina, and I could tell that Sandler’s accent kept slipping in a number of scenes, especially when he had to raise his voice. I’m glad it didn’t pull its punches, because there were atrocities committed in the name of the revolution in this period, and we shouldn’t kid ourselves about that.

Originally Posted by SeriousSam I liked the “Western” feel they gave to it, in spite of being a serious law and order drama. The score was very good, reminded me a lot of Ennio Morricone. Still, looking back from 2009, I have a hard time believing that the main characters really had that much kinky sex. Sure, the thirties were a time of sexual liberation, but I really don’t think THAT MUCH occurred. The casual threesomes with the female lead seem just gratuitous. I can buy that sort of thing happening in the fifties, but not the thirties.

Excerpts from Paul Avrich, A Return to Eden: A Social History of the Cultural Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1984)

The shorter skirts of American women in the Cultural Revolution were clearly about more than just saving fabric. The Cultural Revolution had sparked its own sexual revolution, with millions, youth and adult alike, challenging existing social taboos about marriage, divorce, premarital sex, and sexuality. This revolution was not without controversy, and even many of the most committed revolutionaries of the era were taken back by this tide of sexual openness.



Like many of the great political upheavals of the Cultural Revolution, it was carried out primarily in the workers’ councils and public assemblies that had been the vanguard of the Revolution. In the spirited discussions of the era, there were no sacred cows left. Every tradition and taboo was up for review.



...The ball was rolling long before the Civil War was over. In the activist public assemblies of New York, the Working Women’s Federation began its campaign to legalize and promote the distribution of birth control in January of 1933. Within weeks, the small sparks had grown into a raging inferno. With many churches and religious doctrines under intense criticism for their support of the reactionaries, the general feeling became it was a revolutionary act to question any existing dogma.



And question they did. Condoms, once controversial, became tame now. The real question, as one party activist argued, was, “Is sex sinful?” In July of 1933, the consensus position was that sex within marriage was not sinful, even if done purely for pleasure. By January of 1934, that consensus position had shifted to “Sex between men and women is not sinful”.



...The Party, for its part, generally promoted this overturning of old traditions. The Law, throughout much of the UASR, would be mostly silent on the issues of sexuality. Cohabitation, homosexuality, premarital sex, and divorce were all legalized. The Young Pioneers distributed condoms to their members and gave them some rudiments of sexual education at their urban and rural camps. Sexual and health education in secondary schools became a required part of the curriculum. Nudity taboos were discouraged, and most communal living arrangements, public restrooms and baths, and locker rooms built in this period were not gender segregated. Dating and even sexual experimentation by teenagers was quietly promoted, though not without controversy.



Citizens who were taken aback by this new sexual openness largely flocked to the Left Democratic Party in this era, and the LDP changed its party platform accordingly. The party moved dramatically to the left economically, abandoning its earlier moderate socialist/social democratic platform in favor of a full endorsement of many of the economic policies of the Foster government. By shifting the focus to cultural issues, the LDP sought to capture the discontent of moderates left lost and confused by the Cultural Revolution.

Excerpts from the AH.com discussion thread entitled “WI: No Catholic Excommunication?”

Originally Posted by Tanks_A_Lot I think, without a shadow of a doubt, the biggest blunder the Catholic Church has ever made was the Church’s interference in the American Revolution. I know a lot of churches were hit hard during that time period, but arguably the Catholics were hit the hardest. So, let’s say Pope Pius XI doesn’t issue his bull excommunicating Catholic members of the Communist Party or the priests who continued to give them communion in 