Red Apple

The rise of fascism in Europe and the Spanish Civil War helped make communism attractive to many Americans in the 1930s. If they rationalized the Nazi-Soviet Pact, this attraction was consolidated during World War II. Living on the Left was not then difficult or perilous. But with the onset of the Cold War, sympathy for socialist ideas invited suspicion, hostility or repression. In the polarized postwar world, one could not simply hold left-wing principles; one must be prepared to defend them, and suffer the consequences. Red Apple explores how a group of radical individuals, who attempted to navigate their personal and public lives across this shifting political terrain, were brought to account. Through his close reading of a variety of sources-from FBI files to private papers-Phillip Deery brings to life stories of acquiescence and anguish, as well as courage and resilience. His case histories reveal how Cold War blacklisting affected different professions: medicine, academe, literature, publishing, music and law. Red Apple examines five New Yorkers and one Soviet citizen who, in different ways, were trapped by the Cold War. While each chapter is self-contained, several broader themes overlap: the legacy of the Spanish Civil War, the threat of a third world war, the apparatus of bureaucratic anti-communism, and the tension between artistic endeavor and political ideology. Deery's biographical approach enables the reader to witness at ground level the human dimension of political repression in a democratic society. His portraits of persecution in mid-twentieth century America hold salutary lessons for the present, when a readiness to curtail civil liberties in the name of national security still exists.