I CONFESS—Benjiamin Gitlow—Dutton ($3.75).
Red letter day in the Red career of big, soft, heavy-eyed. 48-year-old Benjamin Gitlow came on May 14, 1929. The scene was Moscow's regal Red Hall. The occasion: a full meeting of the Praesidium of the Communist International. Purpose: to whip the recalcitrant U. S. delegation (Gitlow, chairman) into line behind Boss Stalin. In charge was Stalin himself. It was 4:00 a. m. Leaden-eyed, grey-faced with weariness and capitulation, the world's top Communists had heard Stalin denounce the U. S. comrades as Right Wingers, "rotten" diplomats, Hooverites, Babbitts, bourgeois opportunists.
Then Comrade Ben Gitlow rose to speak. He knew he was licked. But he knew U. S. workers were not quite ready for a Bolshevik revolution. Again he pleaded that Stalin not completely hogtie U. S. Communists with Russian foreign policy. Concluded Gitlow: "Not only do I vote against the decision, but when I return to the United States, I will fight against it!" Followed a moment of heavy silence; then a low whewing whistle of collective shock.
Stalin bounded to the platform. Gone in a flash was his Little Red Father pose. This time he really let the U. S. comrades have it. Snarled Stalin: The U. S. comrades can go home right away, and "the only ones who will follow you will be your sweethearts and wives."
Forthwith Comrade Ben Gitlow was expelled from the Executive Committees of the Communist International and Pro-fintern (Red International of Trade Unions), replaced by William Foster as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the U. S. A. Back in the U. S. a month later, he refused the CPU's offer of a job in Latin America to keep his mouth shut, was kicked out altogether.
To recall the background of that historic tangle with Stalin, Ben Gitlow, highest placed and most articulate U. S. Communist yet to spill the beans, last week published a 611-page confession of his Party life. It is a lively and extraordinary history. Unlike most ex-Communists, Author Gitlow does not try to prove that his brand of Communism was right, that of the Stalinites wrong. Given Marx and Lenin, concludes Author Gitlow, Stalinism is inevitable; Fascism also. As for his own role in the Party, Author Gitlow confesses he was no better than the next one —though naturally he credits himself with better brains, if not better morals, than most of his comrades.
The U. S. Communists of Gitlow's memoirs are in dead earnest about the "proletarian revolution"; their activities frequently have serious consequences for their followers and U. S. labor. But they figure nevertheless in scene after scene of political opera bouffe which even the most gifted satirist would be proud to have invented. Typical scenes:
>The "underground" Communist convention of 1922 (Gitlow, chairman), convened in deep woods near the village of Bridgman, Mich., with night sessions by torchlight to ape Old Bolsheviks under the Tsar. Between sessions the comrades played poker, told dirty stories, went swimming, romanced with female delegates, played practical jokes on the three Russian observers from Moscow (Comintern "Reps"), threw a shoe at one who kept them awake while he wooed Comrade Rose Pastor Stokes. Every bush concealed a caucus.