In 1935, the Communist International, known as the Comintern, issued a statement urging Communists around the world to postpone their revolutionary goals and work instead toward the eradication of fascism. Fascism, Moscow said, must be recognized as a distinct and serious threat, one that must be overcome before the broader struggle against bourgeois hegemony could continue. Communists were instructed to join forces with socialists and others on the left in a “Popular Front” and to refrain from such anti-Socialist and antiliberal rhetoric as calling Franklin D. RoosEVELT and other liberals “social fascists.”
Support for the new policy was most widespread among communists in France and Spain, and Popular Front coalitions gained control of the governments in both countries. French communists supported socialist Leon Blum, who was elected to head a Popular Front government in 1936. In Spain, a series of Popular Front governments ruled from 1936 to 1939, throughout the Spanish civil war between loyalist supporters of the government on the one hand and Francisco Franco and his Nationalist Party on the other. Although Popular Front candidates did not gain control of the government in Great Britain, they garnered support among substantial segments of the population.
The Popular Front was unable to acquire such influence in the United States, primarily because of the minor role traditionally played by the far left in American politics. In addition, the Popular Front initiative met with serious resistance from Socialist Party leaders. The Comintern instructed the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) to concentrate its efforts on building a new political party, the Farmer-Labor Party, which would function as an American Popular Front organization. When the Socialists refused to participate in a Farmer-Labor campaign for the presidency in 1936, the CPUSA, led by Earl Browder, petitioned the Comintern for permission to adapt the directive to the unique circumstances faced by communists in the United States. Moscow agreed that a new tactic was needed, and proposed that the CPUSA support Roosevelt’s bid for reelection. This plan was also abandoned, when it was recognized that an endorsement by communists would likely hurt Roosevelt’s campaign more than it would help. In the end, the CPUSA ran its own ticket headed by Browder, who railed against the Republican Party but avoided criticizing Roosevelt or his New Deal policies. He received just 80,000 votes—a scant two-tenths of 1 percent of the popular vote.
After the election of 1936, the CPUSA continued to work toward the creation of a strong Farmer-Labor Party. To attract prospective members and broaden its influence, the CPUSA stepped up its efforts on behalf of organized labor. Party members sometimes played important roles in helping establish the fledgling Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and held important positions in some CIO unions. The CPUSA criticized the Roosevelt Administration for applying the Neutrality Acts to the Spanish civil war and was instrumental in forming the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, comprised of several thousand American volunteers who went to fight against Franco in Spain.
Throughout the Popular Front period, Browder also tried to “Americanize” communism. His 1936 campaign slogan claimed that “Communism is Twentieth-Century Americanism,” and CPUSA rallies of the time placed Washington and Lincoln on the same pedestal with Lenin and Marx. While the CPUSA’s foray into coalition building never convinced many workers to become communists, it did win for communism more American support than it had ever had before. In the years between 1935 and 1939, CPUSA membership grew considerably and reached its highest number ever, with estimates ranging as high as 100,000. The CPUSA also sponsored or infiltrated peace, youth, and religious groups in an effort to expand its influence.
In the fall of 1939, following the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in August, the Communist Party leadership in Moscow announced that the Popular Front strategy was to be abandoned. Many people, including some top CPUSA leaders, were shocked and angered by the reversal in policy. This sense of betrayal, together with the CPUSA’s renewed criticism of Roosevelt and the Democratic Party, reduced party membership and increased anticommunist sentiment. In the next two years, the CPUSA sided with isolationists in opposing a foreign policy that was increasingly anti-Axis.
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Communist Party again sounded the call for antifascist unity. The Soviet people’s bravery and sacrifice while fighting the Nazis, together with the formation of the Grand Alliance after U. S. entry into the war, helped to partially rehabilitate communism’s image. This second “Popular Front” also proved to be short-lived, however, for the end of World War II brought the beginning of the cold war and the escalation of anticommunism in American politics.
Further reading: Harvey Klehr, The Heyday of American Communism: The Depression Decade (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
—Pamela J. Lauer
World History
