Communism in the United States
From the 1920s into the 1950s, the Communist Party USA (CP) was the most dynamic sector of the American left, and Jewish women made up an exceptionally large portion of the party and its affiliated organizations. Yiddish-speaking immigrants were especially active in the 1920s, when the party fostered revolutionary yiddishkeit. In the 1930s and 1940s, U.S.-born daughters of immigrants took center stage, carrying the party’s revolutionary version of Americanism into community organizations, labor unions, student movements, and cultural projects. In the 1950s and 1960s, when the domestic “red scare” and international Cold War shattered the party’s vitality, Jewish women formerly active in the CP or its affiliates turned to new movements and carried revolutionary traditions into rising struggles against racism, sexism, and imperialism.
In the forty years following the Russian Revolution of October 1917, communism was the most dynamic force in American left-wing politics and a primary mobilizer of radical Jewish women. At the center of this movement lay the American Communist Party, which grew out of various radical factions inspired by the October Revolution. In December 1921, most of these groups came together as the Workers Party, renamed the Communist Party USA (CP) in 1930.
Revolutionary Yiddishkeit
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The Communist Party’s Heyday
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The Red Scare and Beyond
Ethel Rosenberg’s Jewish identity was forged not by any ties to traditional Judaism but by her political radicalism. Indeed, when she and her husband, Julius, were charged with espionage, attempts were made by their fellow "leftists" to link their prosecution with antisemitism. But the established Jewish community, fearing any association with Jewish radicalism, rejected this charge. The couple was convicted on March 29, 1951, and sentenced to death, the only two American civilians to be executed for espionage-related activity during the Cold War.
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