American Communist History

American Communist History, the non-partisan journal of the Historians of American Communism, makes available objective scholarship about the history of the Communist Party in the United States and its social, political, economic and cultural impact on its members, its opponents, and the public at large. While rooted in the United States, the journal welcomes contributions which are transnational or international in scope.

Seeking the broadest possible perspective the journal seeks submissions not only from academic historians but from other scholars, journalists, and activists who can objectively contribute to a complex, intriguing, and important history. Research articles, notes and documents, interpretive essays, and short memoirs are welcome. The journal is committed to media reviews.
What American Communist History publishes is limited only by the curiosity of potential contributors and the need for quality.  All research articles published in the journal have undergone rigorous peer review, based on initial editor screening and anonymized refereeing by at least two anonymous referees.

 

American Communist History encourages authors to submit material on:

• the validity of the Soviet archives dealing with American Communists the ’homintern’
• Communist infiltration of the mass media in the 1930s
• the dismissal of Jay Lovestone as an American Communist Leader
• the role of splinter groups in the American Communist Party’s history
• the true role of the Communist Party in Hollywood
• the splintering of the Party as a result of the 1956 Kruschev revelations about Stalin’s reign of terror
• the attitude of the Communist Party’s leadership towards women
• anti-Semitism in the American Communist Party
• the role of ’Proletarian Literature’ then and now
• what really happened to Earl Browder
• the Communists and black literature
• the relationship between the Catholic church and the Communist Party
• the impact of the FBI on the membership of the Party in the 1950s
• the validity of the trials of the secondary leaders in the 1950s
• the appropriate response to legislative investigation on the state and federal level
• the fear underlying Red Scares
• the education of ’Red-diaper babies’
• the defection of writers from the Party in 1939 and 1956