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Dewey Commission
The Dewey Commission (officially the "Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials") was initiated in March 1937 by the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky. It was named after its chairman, the philosopher John Dewey. Its other members were Carleton Beals, Otto Rühle, Benjamin Stolberg, and Secretary Suzanne La Follette, Alfred Rosmer, Wendelin Thomas, Edward A. Ross, John Chamberlain, Carlo Tresca, and . It was seen by some at the time, as Dewey feared it would be, as a Trotskyist front organization. Following months of investigation, the Dewey Commission made its findings public in New York on September 21, 1937. Sub-commission A sub-commission, comprising the first five commission members above, conducted thirteen hearings at Leon Trotsky's home in Coyoacan, Mexico, D.F., from April 10 to April 17, 1937. Trotsky was defended by the lawyer Albert Goldman. John Finerty acted as the commission's legal counsel. The commis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Committee For The Defense Of Leon Trotsky
The American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky was a pseudo-judicial process set up by American Trotskyists as a front organization following the first of the Moscow Trials. It had no powers of subpoena, nor official imprimatur from any government. It was composed of historians, sociologists, journalists, authors, and other notable figures, including Edmund Wilson, Suzanne La Follette, Louis Hacker, Norman Thomas, John Dos Passos, Reinhold Niebuhr, George Novack, Franz Boas, John Chamberlain and Sidney Hook. John Dewey, then seventy-eight years old, agreed to head its Commission of Inquiry. History In March 1937, The American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky initiated the so-called Dewey Commission (officially the "Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials"). The inquiry was named after its Chairman, John Dewey. Its other members were Carleton Beals, an authority on Latin-American affairs; Otto Rühle, biographer of Karl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frame-up
__NOTOC__ In the United States criminal law, a frame-up (frameup) or setup is the act of framing someone, that is, providing false evidence or false testimony in order to falsely prove someone guilty of a crime. While incriminating those who are innocent might be done out of sheer malice, framing is primarily used as a distraction. Generally, the person who is framing someone else is the actual perpetrator of the crime. In other cases it is an attempt by law enforcement to get around due process. Motives include getting rid of political dissidents or "correcting" what they see as the court's mistake. Some lawbreakers will try to claim they were framed as a defense strategy. Frameups in labor disputes sometimes swing public opinion one way or the other. In Massachusetts, during the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike, Massachusetts State Police officers acting on a tip discovered dynamite and blamed it on the Industrial Workers of the World union. National media echoed an anti-union ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler, (, ; ; hu, Kösztler Artúr; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler joined the Communist Party of Germany, but he resigned in 1938 after becoming disillusioned with Stalinism. Having moved to Britain in 1940, he published his novel ''Darkness at Noon'', an anti-totalitarian work that gained him international fame. Over the next 43 years, Koestler espoused many political causes and wrote novels, memoirs, biographies, and numerous essays. In 1949, Koestler began secretly working with a British Cold War anti-communist propaganda department known as the Information Research Department (IRD), which would republish and distribute many of his works, and also fund his activities. In 1968, he was awarded the Sonning Prize "for [his] outstanding contribution to European culture". In 1972 he was made a Order of the Briti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism. Orwell produced literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is known for the allegorical novella ''Animal Farm'' (1945) and the dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949). His non-fiction works, including ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and ''Homage to Catalonia'' (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture. Blair was born in India, and raised and educated in England. After school he became an Imperial policeman in Burma, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saturday Evening Post
''The Saturday Evening Post'' is an American magazine, currently published six times a year. It was issued weekly under this title from 1897 until 1963, then every two weeks until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely circulated and influential magazines within the American middle class, with fiction, non-fiction, cartoons and features that reached two million homes every week. The magazine declined in readership through the 1960s, and in 1969 ''The Saturday Evening Post'' folded for two years before being revived as a quarterly publication with an emphasis on medical articles in 1971. As of the late 2000s, ''The Saturday Evening Post'' is published six times a year by the Saturday Evening Post Society, which purchased the magazine in 1982. The magazine was redesigned in 2013. History Rise ''The Saturday Evening Post'' was first published in 1821 in the same printing shop at 53 Market Street in Philadelphia where the Benjamin Franklin-founded ''Pennsyl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bloc Of Soviet Oppositions
The Bloc of Oppositions, also known as Trotsky's bloc and called by the Soviet press the Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites, was a political alliance created by oppositionists in the USSR and Leon Trotsky by the end of 1932. Trotsky defined it as a conspiratorial bloc in order to fight Stalinist repression in the Soviet Union. Background The various open opposition groups that had tried to oppose Stalin in the Communist Party had failed, and their former members barely had any power. The former leader of the Left Opposition Leon Trotsky was deported from the Soviet Union, Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev were expelled from the party, and the rights were sidelined. With growing opposition to Joseph Stalin and his collectivization policies, some bolsheviks decided to form underground opposition groups against him and the party leadership. The bloc was a loose alliance between many of them. Formation and factions By the end of 1932, Leon Trotsky and his son Sedov were having contact ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Broué
Pierre Broué (8 May 1926 – 27 July 2005) was a French historian and Trotskyist revolutionary militant whose work covers the history of the Bolshevik Party, the Spanish Revolution and biographies of Leon Trotsky. Background Broué was born in Privas, Ardèche, around 1926. His father was a civil servant and mother a school teacher: they had "strong republican views". Career In 1936, Broué supported a French general strike as well as the Spanish Republic. By 1940, with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in a non-aggression pact, he helped organize a Communist Party cell at the Lycée Henri IV in Paris. The French Communist Party expelled the organizers and said that Broué suffered from Trotskyism. The accusation piqued his interest, and he began reading about Trotsky from the private library of the teacher Élie Reynier. With the party, he fought in the French Resistance against the German occupiers during the Second World War. When Joseph Stalin disbanded the Comintern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson Jr. (May 8, 1895 – June 12, 1972) was an American writer and literary critic who explored Freudian and Marxist themes. He influenced many American authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose unfinished work he edited for publication. His scheme for a Library of America series of national classic works came to fruition through the efforts of Jason Epstein after Wilson's death. Early life Wilson was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. His parents were Edmund Wilson Sr., a lawyer who served as New Jersey Attorney General, and Helen Mather (née Kimball). Wilson attended The Hill School, a college preparatory boarding school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, graduating in 1912. At Hill, Wilson served as the editor-in-chief of the school's literary magazine, ''The Record''. From 1912 to 1916, he was educated at Princeton University, where his friends included F. Scott Fitzgerald and war poet John Allan Wyeth. Wilson began his professional writing career as a reporter for th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Norman Thomas
Norman Mattoon Thomas (November 20, 1884 – December 19, 1968) was an American Presbyterian minister who achieved fame as a socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America. Early years Thomas was the oldest of six children, born November 20, 1884, in Marion, Ohio, to Emma Williams (née Mattoon) and Weddington Evans Thomas, a Presbyterian minister. Thomas had an uneventful Midwestern childhood and adolescence, helping to put himself through Marion High School as a paper carrier for Warren G. Harding's ''Marion Daily Star''. Like other paper carriers, he reported directly to Florence Kling Harding. "No pennies ever escaped her," said Thomas. The summer after he graduated from high school his father accepted a pastorate at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, which allowed Norman to attend Bucknell University. He left Bucknell after one year to attend Princeton University, the beneficiary of the largesse of a wealthy uncle by marriage. Thomas gradu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Novack
George Novack (August 5, 1905, Boston, Massachusetts – July 30, 1992, New York City) was an American Marxist theoretician, editor, and activist. Biography Novack attended Harvard University for five years, though without earning a degree, and was on a successful track in the publishing business when the beginning of the Great Depression radicalized him. He joined the Trotskyist movement ( Communist League of America) in 1933, along with his first wife Elinor Rice, and was an elected member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) from 1940 to 1973. In 1937-40, Novack served as the secretary of the American Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky. This body initiated the celebrated 1937 Dewey Commission that inquired into the charges made against Trotsky in the Moscow show trials, and found them to have been a complete frame-up. He played a major role in the defense campaign for the 18 SWP leaders imprisoned in World War II under the Smith Act. Nov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reinhold Niebuhr
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (June 21, 1892 – June 1, 1971) was an American Reformed theologian, ethicist, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. Niebuhr was one of America's leading public intellectuals for several decades of the 20th century and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. A public theologian, he wrote and spoke frequently about the intersection of religion, politics, and public policy, with his most influential books including ''Moral Man and Immoral Society'' and ''The Nature and Destiny of Man''. The latter is ranked number 18 of the top 100 non-fiction books of the twentieth century by Modern Library. Andrew Bacevich labelled Niebuhr's book ''The Irony of American History'' "the most important book ever written on U.S. foreign policy." The historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. described Niebuhr as "the most influential American theologian of the 20th century" and ''Time'' posthumous ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook (December 20, 1902 – July 12, 1989) was an American philosopher of pragmatism known for his contributions to the philosophy of history, the philosophy of education, political theory, and ethics. After embracing communism in his youth, Hook was later known for his criticisms of totalitarianism, both fascism and Marxism–Leninism. A social democrat, Hook sometimes cooperated with conservatives, particularly in opposing Marxism–Leninism. After World War II, he argued that members of such groups as the Communist Party USA and Leninists like democratic centralists could ethically be barred from holding the offices of public trust because they called for the violent overthrow of democratic governments. Background Sidney Hook was born on December 20, 1902, in Brooklyn, New York City, to Jennie and Isaac Hook, Austrian Jewish immigrants. He became a supporter of the Socialist Party of America during the Debs era when he was in high school. In 1923, he earned a BA at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
