The Hollywood Blacklist

By taking part in the rehabilitation of the Hollywood Ten (“The Blacklist Legacy,” by Judith Michaelson, Oct. 18), Calendar has displayed not only an ignorance of history but a classic example of the moral dilemma faced by the intelligentsia when confronted with Stalinism.

Are your writers that uneducated that they do not know what the world was like after World War II?

In 1945-49, the Soviets liquidated Jewish culture in Russia as they had previously destroyed the Ukraine, by mass murder. They consolidated their hold on Poland and Czechoslovakia with more executions. They tried to take over Greece and enabled Mao’s victory in China with massive supplies of arms. They were preparing for the invasion of South Korea and supporting revolution in Vietnam.

Large sections of the intelligentsia in Europe and the U.S. supported them, propagandized for them, and took part in covering-up their crimes, as they had covered-up the Ukrainian mass murders and the blood purges of the ‘30s.

This was the cause of the Cold War: a real threat to democracy posed by an aggressive, brutal, expanding Soviet Union. Not, as your writers suggested, the imagination of greedy capitalists.

At this point in history, to refuse to break with the Party was to support Stalin. This was fully understood by Party members and those who left the Party at this time.

At least those of us who helped form the New Left can plead ignorance of the reality of Stalin and of Mao’s Cultural Revolution; by the mid-’60s this sort of thing was not discussed or taught. This ignorance does not, however, free us from partial responsibility for the Gulag of Vietnam or the killing fields of Kampuchea, for we helped bring that about.

Similarly, the Hollywood Ten are responsible for supporting Stalin; in a real way, the blood of Ukrainian peasant children is on their hands. Once again, though, the intelligentsia turns reality on its head and cheers unrepentant Stalinists while attacking those who stood up to Stalinism.

The Popular Front of the ‘30s is back, stronger than ever, and ignorant liberals (and journalists) are flocking to join.

CHARLES ROGERSON

Los Angeles