Customer Reviews

Red Diapers: GROWING UP IN THE COMMUNIST LEFT

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This highly orginal book did not get the press it deserved when it was first published. It is a collection of brief, yet moving reminiscences written by "red diaper babies" whose parents had a connection -- some more than others -- with the "Movement". It is a definite "must read" for anyone who grew up in the fifties -- whether or not he or she wore red, pink or any other shade of diaper! -- whose parents did not share the prevailing political opinions of the times.

-- the story of his life. I grew up small-town in the 50's when communists had horns. These people's childhoods were, compared to mine, like something from another planet. I didn't meet a socialist until I went to college. Looking back:
1. the risk of internal communist subversion causing an American communist revolution was equal to today's risk of America becoming a moslem state under sharia -- nil. However the USSR was a threat and terrorism is a threat.
2. the Communist Party USA allowed itself to become merely an arm of Soviet policy
3. the people in this book and their parents suffered from thuggish and illegal harassment from the US government
4. but I am very relieved that their political philosophy lost.

Being idealogs, they avoided any disconfirmatory facts. They were shocked in 1956 when Khrushchev told them that Stalin was a Bad Guy.

Most of the narrators look back with pride and wistfulness. Missing is any apology for supporting a system that caused mass murder, mass starvation, and Gulags.

If I had read nothing but the introduction I would have been more than rewarded. For one who belongs to this select group it answered many questions I have had about some of my strange, interesting and frustrating characteristics, not too late in the 78 years of my life. I am grateful to the authors and wish i had discovered it sooner.

This is a unique anthology of memoirs of kids who grew up in the 40's and 50's, in the "pink" shadow of the American Communist Party. Most of the nearly fifty contributors of this book are children of Eastern Jewish immigrants. Here are their fascinating memories: Joyous ones of Pioneer Camp, The Daily Worker, public rallies in support of women, workers, minorities, and disarmament. Fearful recollections of the Rosenberg executions, McCartyism, clandestine CP meetings, FBI surveillance, and the dreaded knock on the door in the middle of the night. Disillusioned remembrances of Khrushchev's denouncement of Stalin and the devastating revelation that "Uncle Joe" and the "Workers' Paradise" of the USSR were not what American Communists naively believed. Few of these writers still belong to the CP. A small number speak resentfully of parents who put the Party before family, exposing their children to bigotry and violence or to the anxiety and deprivation of a life "underground". The Party's over. But the great majority of these writers proudly retain their strong leftist values and ideals, and continue to practice the social activism instilled during childhood. This book gives a human and humane dimension to a misled but often wrongfully vilified American political movement.

I was assigned this book by an admittedly socialist professor. Perhaps she hoped it would open my eyes to "the people's glorious revolution." In fact, it confirmed in my mind that communists are seriously deluded people. The writers in this book lament their rejection by middle class Americans, seemingly oblivious to the fact that one of the major tenants of communism is the violent destruction of the middle class (I say "violent" because I doubt the middle class would simply relinquish its status when "the glorious revolution occurs). They also bemoan that their first ammendment rights were ignored. The first ammendment was wirtten to allow speech to improve the system. No nation has ever or will ever tolerate speech advocating the destruction of itself and the massacre of its citizens. They should get used to it anyway, as whenever a communist regime takes hold the first thing it does is eliminate free speech. Overall, this book is a worthless collection of narcissistic, revolutionary ramblings, myopic pseudo-history and whining, with no real educational merit at all.