Commie Groups Thrived in 30's

What's wrong with Harvard? Something is the matter. Numerous letters from alarmed alumni pour into the President's office every day, asking if Socialism and anarchy are on the rampage among undergraduates. When faculty members speak in the Midwest, someone always rises to ask if Harvard is really the hot-bed of hair-brained Radicalism that newspapers allege. Old grads shake their heads mournfully and agree the place is going to the dogs. Harvard is more restless, more turbulent, more individual in its thoughts than ever before.

from an essay by John Reed '10, written in 1912

There is only one thing to distinguish the above quote from scores of similar opinions written about the University in the last thirty years; its author is the ony American buried in Red Square, Moscow. John Reed, movie biographer of the Russian Revolution, was the patron saint of the John Reed Club, oldest Communist student organization at the College. The swarm of Red and Red-front groups that followed it, and the militancy of their activities from the beginning of the Depression to the end of the post-war honeymoon with Russia spawned the Red Legend the University still cannot shake off.

Legend has far outlived the historic facts. The last Communist group in the University, the American Youth for Democracy, sputtered and died four years ago. The thirties were their heyday, and if any Red cells do meet secretly today, they must surely gaze wistfully back to that era.

Born in Leverett House

It was back in the days when American intellectuals were growing increasingly glum about the hope of capitalism. Seven million youths of college age were unemployed, and to many, the Soviet system seemed the only solution to their troubles. At the height of the depression, in 1932, a small group of students met in Leverett House D-41 and formed the John Reed Club. Devoted to the study of "scientific Marxism" and to education, the Reed Club was strictly intellectual and comparatively tame. In fact, it might never have attracted attention had it not immortalized by Norman Mailer '37 in one of his flashbacks in "The Naked and the Dead."

Formed soon after and infinitely more militant was the Young Communist League. Perhaps its most influential activity was its magazine, The Harvard Communist, issued monthly from an anonymous post office box in Boston.

No one knew who wrote for The Communist. Articles were signed simply "by Max" or "by John". Letters, also unsigned, were addressed "Dear Comrade." Besides purveying the party line on national and world events, the Communist took active interest in the underdog at the University. It first drew attention to the plight of the commuters, who at the time are their lunches in a crowded, dirty room in Phillips Brooks House. In an exhaustive appraisal of every course and every instructor in the English department, the magazine concluded the staff's main trouble was that it didn't criticize "class literature."

In action, the Young Communist League caused even more of a rumpus than on paper. It was the instigator of the series of anti-war demonstrations that produced yearly riots at the University. As long as the party line of the period preached peace over all, peace crusades were the chief activity of Communist groups. They held mass meetings, parades, soap-box harrangues, and released doves of peace from the steps of Widener.

Right vs. Left

Since large and active right-wing groups also flourished during the period, the Commie-inspired peace shows met strong opposition. There was, for instance, the 1934 "peace strike." To further the cause of peace, the Young Communists and some other left-wing groups urged students to cut their eleven o'clock classes on April 13, 1934, and attend a mammoth anti-war meeting on the steps of Widener Library. But on the same day, the editors of the conservative CRIMSON called an extraordinary meeting of the Michael Mullins Chowder and Marching Society of Upper Plympton Street for the same time and place. Warned of the coming battle between the Communists and the Mullins men, the entire student body of 3,000 poured into the Yard.

One of the slick formats of the anonymous Harvard Communist. It's motto was "Truth is Revolutionary."

Three hundred strong, the Mullius society marched into the ranks of the peace strikers. Their banner urged bigger and better imperialist wars, Jingoism, and increased armament. The three leaders of the society were dressed as Hitler, Karl Marx, and a boyscout. Quickly the leaders strike tried to beat the drum for peace, but in vain. The Mullius men had turned the strike into a farce. Heckled incessantly, the YCL leaders were showered with eggs, onions, and pennies by the crowd.

Come the Socialists

The strike fiasco of 1934 ended the life of the YCL. But other groups took up the slack. The Harvard Socialist League, part of the Greater Boston Student Committee for Peace and Freedom, organized a large anti-war demonstration on Boston Common on Armistice day, 1935. The League was also successful in banishing arch-conservative William Randolph Hearst's battle-filled Metrotone Movie News from the University Theatre.

Hearst-baiting, in fact, became a major occupation for the leftist groups in the middle thirties, when the Ethopian and Spanish conflicts drove deeper the wedge between right and left in the United States. The Socialist League's organ. The Student Herald, bitterly attacked Hearsts Record American for its 1935 pinkwash of the University's govern-department. One of the Student Herald's favorite gimmicks was a small advertisement in the CRIMSON, which read:

IF you read the New York Times,

IF you think there is a need for an intelligent student paper in Greater Boston, buy the Student Herald.

ON THE OTHER HAND,

IF you read the Boston American,

IF you therefore think shoes are the only requisites for civilization,

IF you think there is adequate coverage to student thought and action in present Boston Newspapers,

CALL Geneva 9271 (Boston Home for Incurables.)

But tirades against war and war mongers could not occupy leftist groups forever. When war clouds in Europe spread over Russia as well, the Communists turned a somersault and urged cooperation with the Allies against Germany.

The Soviet admirers who organized at the University after the war were few and their activities time. But anti-Russian feeling was soon so high that their every move drew nation-wide publicity and student contempt. When 26 students received, in 1948, a charter for the American Youth for Democracy, papers headlined the fact that "Harvard OK's Red-Front Student Unit." AYD members were mugged by students when distributing literature in Wigglesworth Hall.

A battery of police had to be assigned to its every meeting to protect the speakers from heckling and attack. Under these pressures, the AYD folded, and the last openly Communist organization at Harvard was gone.

Men who were students in the thirties remember the Communists as the most energetic men in the University. Few in numbers, they spread their doctrines in every meeting and under every door possible. Although they gave the University a reputation hard to live down, they were a vital part of the intense political life of Harvard of the thirties.