Harvey Elliott Klehr (born December 25, 1945) is a
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...
of
politics
Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that stud ...
and
history
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...
at
Emory University
Emory University is a private research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1836 as "Emory College" by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory, Emory is the second-oldest private institution of ...
John Earl Haynes
John Earl Haynes (born 1944) is an American historian who worked as a specialist in 20th-century political history in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. He is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist and anti- ...
).
Early years
He was born in
Newark, New Jersey
Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.Bachelor's degree from
Franklin and Marshall College
Franklin & Marshall College (F&M) is a private liberal arts college in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It employs 175 full-time faculty members and has a student body of approximately 2,400 full-time students. It was founded upon the merger of Frankli ...
in 1967. He received his
doctorate
A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''li ...
from the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States ...
in 1971, after defending a dissertation entitled ''The Theory of American Exceptionalism.''
Klehr later recalled that his interest in the American radical left had been shaped by the domestic political upheaval of the era of the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...
during which he had attended college.Harvey Klehr, "Preface" to ''The Communist Experience in America: A Political and Social History.'' New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2010; pg. x. In 2010, Klehr wrote:
..I originally intended to study traditional American politics, but became distracted by the upheavals of the era. I considered myself on the political left, but hardly a revolutionary. Some of my friends and classmates, however, were associated with the Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC), a spin-off of
Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s, and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships ...
Two political events from those tumultuous years gave me my lifetime research agenda. During the 1968 presidential election, a number of radicals, including some I knew, supported George Wallace for president. They certainly had no sympathy for the Alabama governor but argued that his election would precipitate an American revolution. Their rationale was that a dose of
fascism
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...
would prepare the way for American radicalism. ..br />
After the American incursion into Cambodia in 1970, student protestors held a mass meeting on the Chapel Hill campus. A number of speakers called for a student strike to shut down the university. My advisor, Dr Lewis Lipsitz, had been one of the most prominent leftists on campus for many years. ..When Lew urged the crowd not to strike since a university should not be closed down, he was booed.
Convinced that the student left was losing its grip on reality and was likely to fail, I became increasingly intrigued by the question of why the American left always seemed to fail. What was it about America or the left that accounted for 'American exceptionalism,' the inability of socialists or communists to make inroads comparable to those it enjoyed elsewhere?Klehr, "Preface" to ''The Communist Experience in America,'' pp. x-xi.
Academic career
Following graduation, Klehr was hired to teach political theory at
Emory University
Emory University is a private research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1836 as "Emory College" by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory, Emory is the second-oldest private institution of ...
in
Atlanta
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
.Klehr, "Preface" to ''The Communist Experience in America,'' pg. xii. After generating several journal articles from his dissertation, Klehr moved to the study of the demographic composition of the party leadership of the
Communist Party, USA
The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...
, agglomerating biographical information from archival study and person-to person interviews, Klehr examined the social composition of the party's leadership caste for the first time. The result of this research was a first book, ''Communist Cadre: The Social Background of the American Communist Party Elite,'' published in 1978 by the
Hoover Institution Press
The Hoover Institution (officially The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace; abbreviated as Hoover) is an American public policy think tank and research institution that promotes personal and economic liberty, free enterprise, and ...
.Klehr, "Preface" to ''The Communist Experience in America,'' pg. xiii.
Klehr's book drew the attention of
Theodore Draper
Theodore H. Draper (September 11, 1912 – February 21, 2006) was an American historian and political writer. Draper is best known for the 14 books he completed during his life, including work regarded as seminal on the formative period of the Ame ...
, a pioneering historian of American communism who had published seminal books on the topic in 1957 and 1960 on the story of the American communist movement from its origins to 1929 but had found himself unable to continue the saga into later years despite having accumulated a substantial research library on the topic. Draper pushed Klehr to continue his history to include its glory days in the years of the Great Depression. Klehr made possible the acquisition of Draper's archive by Emory University Library and began intensive study of the topic. The result was the publication of a second book in 1984, ''The Heyday of American Communism: The Depression Decade.''
In the nearly quarter-century between the publication of Draper's second book on American communism and Klehr's 1984 effort at continuation, a new school of
social historians
Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not.
Etymology
The word "social" derives from ...
had come to the fore in the field of American history, an unorganized group sharing a disaffection with the "traditionalist" orientation towards leaders and the machinations of high politics. These self-described "revisionists" made Klehr's 1984 work a focus of heated intellectual critique by asserting that it was an example of polemic Cold War
anti-Communism
Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the ...
.
The highly politicized argument was returned in kind by the so-called "traditionalists," who frequently saw in the "revisionists'" predilection for local history and the party rank-and-file a thinly-disguised apologetic for the abuses of communism "glorifying the CPUSA, hiding its warts, and apologizing for its crimes."Klehr, "Preface" to ''The Communist Experience in America,'' pg. xiv. For more than two decades, the debate raged among historians of American radicalism, with Klehr emerging as one of the leading defenders of the "traditionalist" approach and its associated critique.
The historical approaches were largely connected to the contemporary views of their adherents, Klehr later noted:
The disagreements between the two camps were only partly generational, because some traditionalists, like myself and my long-time co-author John Haynes, were roughly the same age as our revisionist counterparts. To some degree, the combatants were divided by current political loyalties, with most revisionists locating themselves at least on the left wing of the Democratic Party, if not as members of various socialist groupings. But traditionalists themselves ranged from such self-identified socialists as
Irving Howe
Irving Howe (; June 11, 1920 – May 5, 1993) was an American literary and social critic and a prominent figure of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Early years
Howe was born as Irving Horenstein in The Bronx, New York. He was the son of ...
Klehr has received a number of awards, including Emory's Thomas Jefferson Award (in 1999). He was a member of the National Council on the Humanities, served a term that expired in 2010.
References
Bibliography
* ''Communist Cadre: The Social Background of the American Communist Party Elite.'' Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1978. OCLC 4683880.
* ''The Heyday of American Communism: The Depression Decade.'' New York: Basic Books, 1984. OCLC 10456780.
* ''Biographical Dictionary of the American Left.'' Editor, with Bernard K. Johnpoll. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986.
* ''Far Left of Center: The American Radical Left Today.'' New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1988. OCLC 17210024.
* ''The American Communist Movement: Storming Heaven Itself.'' With
John Earl Haynes
John Earl Haynes (born 1944) is an American historian who worked as a specialist in 20th-century political history in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. He is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist and anti- ...
. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992. OCLC 25201075.
* ''The Secret World of American Communism.'' With John Earl Haynes and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. OCLC 30779937.
* ''The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism.'' With Ronald Radosh. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. OCLC 32590046.
* ''The Soviet World of American Communism.'' With John Earl Haynes and Kyrill Anderson. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. OCLC 37187391.
* ''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America.'' With John Earl Haynes. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999. OCLC 44694569.
* ''In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage.'' With John Earl Haynes. San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, 2003. OCLC 62271849.
* ''Communism, Espionage, and the Cold War: A Unit of Study for Grades 9-12.'' With Robert Gabrick. Los Angeles, CA: National Center for History in the Schools, University of California, Los Angeles, 2004.
* ''Early Cold War Spies : The Espionage Trials That Shaped American Politics.'' With John Earl Haynes. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
* ''Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America.'' With John Earl Haynes and
Alexander Vassiliev
Alexander Vassiliev (russian: Александр Васильев; born 1962) is a Russian- British journalist, writer and espionage historian living in London who is a subject matter expert in the Soviet KGB and Russian SVR. A former officer ...
. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.
* ''The Communist Experience in America: A Political and Social History.'' New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2010. —Selected articles.
* ''Secret Cables of the Comintern, 1933-1943.'' With Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov and John Earl Haynes. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014.