Jay Lovestone; Ex-Communist Leader in U.S.

NEW YORK — Jay Lovestone, a former Communist Party leader in the United States who once called Josef Stalin a murderer and lived to tell about it, died in his sleep Wednesday at his home. He was 91.

Lovestone, who became staunchly anti-Communist after fleeing the Soviet Union, later served as international affairs director of the AFL-CIO until his retirement in 1974.

Lovestone headed the Communist Party in the United States for two years but was deposed by Stalin in 1929 at a meeting in Moscow. He reputedly infuriated Stalin by calling him a murderer, and managed to escape to the West with false identity papers.

Born on Dec. 24, 1898, in Lithuania, Lovestone was brought to the United States as a boy by his father.

As he rose through the ranks of the Communist Party, Lovestone began to oppose Stalin. Lovestone argued that the struggle against capitalism in the United States could not be conducted along traditional Marxist-Leninist lines.

When Stalin expelled him, Lovestone and his followers formed a separate Communist Party, later known as the Independent Labor League of America and as “Lovestonites.” The group disbanded in 1940, when Lovestone concluded that communism was a totalitarian conspiracy being used by the Soviet Union to conquer the world.

In 1943, he became international affairs director for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. He went on to help lead the International Federation of Free Trade Unions, which was organized to oppose the Communist-dominated World Federation of Trade Unions.

He leaves no immediate survivors.