Abstract
Usually narrated in terms of a self-contained cold war epoch, the history of modern anti-Communism has become inextricably associated with the superpower rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union in the forty-year period following the mid-1940s. Representations of conservative anti-Communism, in particular, have been linked with the “liberation” and “roll-back” campaigns waged during the cold war and with the domestic countersubversive efforts under the rubric of McCarthyism. Few studies have examined the anti-Communism of the Right outside the United States, while many have narrated it as a peculiarly American phenomenon that was intricately tied in with national security considerations and notions of American exceptionalism and mission.1 Until very recently, even the investigations that have seen anti-Communism as, above all, an ideological construct or a popular movement, rather than as a mere aspect of superpower rivalry, have tended to concentrate on the extreme Right and to exclude from consideration the broad conservative mainstream.2 Comparative historical studies that conceptualize the anti-Communism of the Right as an international phenomenon remain quite rare.3
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Notes
See Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996)
Thomas G. Paterson, Meeting the Communist Threat: From Truman to Reagan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)
Gregory Mitrovitch, Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947–1956 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000)
David Foglesong, The American Mission and the “Evil Empire”: The Crusade for a Free Russia since 1881 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
For recent exceptions, see Richard Gid Powers, Not Without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998)
Markku Ruotsila, British and American Anticommunism before the Cold War (London: Routledge, 2001)
John Earl Haynes, Red Scare or Red Menace? American Communism and Anticommunism in the Cold War Era (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996)
Michael J. Heale, American Anticommunism: Combating the Enemy Within, 1830–1970 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990).
For exceptions, see Ruotsila, British and American Anticommunism; Abbot Gleason, Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, seventh revised edition (Chicago: Regnery Books, 1986), 8–11.
On the differences between Anglo-American and continental European forms of conservatism, see Brian Girvin, “The Party in Comparative and International Context,” 695–725, in Anthony Seldon and Stuart Ball (eds.), Conservative Century: The Conservative Party since 1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); and on the internal factions, Ruotsila, British and American Anticommunism, Chapter 1.
R.D. Blumenfeld, Twenty-Five Years Ago, 1908–1933: The Record of the Anti-Socialist and Anti-Communist Union (London: Anti-Socialist Union, 1933), 5.
William H. Doughty, “The Human Factor in Popular Government,” Constitutional Review 3 (April 1919), 80–95.
Ruotsila, British and American Anticommunism, 10–12. The quote is from William H. Mallock, A Critical Examination of Socialism (London: John Murray, 1908), 134.
Elihu Root cited in David Foglesong, America’s Secret War against Bolshevism: U.S. Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1917–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 39.
Nicholas Murray Butler, A World in Ferment: Interpretations of the War for a New World (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1918), 7–8.
David Jayne Hill, “International Law and International Policy,” North American Review (March 1919), 320–29; John Briton, The League of Nations (London: Boswell Publishing Company, nd), 5–15
Lord Sydenham of Combe, Studies of an Imperialist (London: Chapman and Hall, 1928), xii, 330–40.
See Robert D. Ward, “The Origin and Activities of the National Security League,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47 (September 1960), 51–65
Robert K. Murray, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919–1920 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1955), 84–94.
See Frans Coetzee, For Party or Country: Nationalism and Dilemmas of Popular Conservatism in Edwardian England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 38–42, 99–105
Kenneth D. Brown, “The Anti-Socialist Union, 1908–49,” 234–61, in Kenneth D. Brown (ed.), Essays in Anti-Labour History: Responses to the Rise of Labour in Britain (London: Macmillan, 1974).
See Markku Ruotsila, “Senator William H. King of Utah and His Campaigns Against Russian Communism, 1917–1933,” Utah Historical Quarterly 74 (Spring 2006), 152–53. In the conservative press, the most engaged were the three papers under the direction of George Harvey—the North American Review, the North American Review’s War Weekly, and Harvey’s Weekly.
See Jason Tomes, Balfour and Foreign Policy: The International Thought of a Conservative Statesman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 217–32.
Lord Balfour to David Lloyd George, July 16, 1918, Arthur Balfour papers, Add. Mss. 49692, British Library, London; David Lloyd George to Lord Reading, July 18, 1918, in Arthur S. Link (ed.), The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 49 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 9–11.
See Markku Ruotsila, “The Churchill-Mannerheim Collaboration in the Russian Intervention, 1919–1920,” The Slavonic and East European Review 80 (January 2002), 1–20.
In the conservative press, among the most active propagandists for the Kolchak plan were the Morning Post, the National Review, and Harvey’s Weekly. In the debates of the British Houses of Parliament and in the U.S. Senate, a great many conservatives spoke up repeatedly, as well, as did William Howard Taft in his editorials and Elihu Root in public statements. See Ruotsila, “The Origins of Anglo-American Anti-Bolshevism,” 205–22; Ruotsila, British and American Anticommunism Before the Cold War, 94–98, 141–42. William H. Taft, William Howard Taft, Collected Editonais, 1917–1921 (New York: Praeger, 1990, ed. James F. Vivian), 195–96.
Sir Robert Rhodes James (ed.), Churchill: His Complete Speeches, Vol. 5 (New York: Chelsea House, 1983), 36.
Norman E. Saul, War and Revolution: The United States and Russia, 1914–1921 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001), 437–39.
See G.C. Webber, The Ideology of the British Right, 1918–1939 (London: Croom Helm, 1986), esp. 4–29.
The Beilis trial of 1913 was the last major manifestation of the Czarist regime’s anti-Semitism. In it, the death of a thirteen-year-old boy in Kiev was blamed on Jews seeking Gentile blood for their religious rituals. The trial prompted major Western campaigns against Russian anti-Semitism and led to the cancellation of the U.S.-Russia trade agreement. See Leon Poliakov, The History of Anti-Semitism, Volume IV (London: Oxford University Press, 1985), 128–34.
H.A. Gwynne, The Cause of World Unrest (London: Grant Richards, 1920)
Nesta Webster, World Revolution: The Plot against Civilization (London: Constable, 1921).
Gwynne (ed.), The Cause of the World Unrest, 173–78, 201–18; Nesta Webster, The Surrender of an Empire (London: Boswell Publishing Company, 1933), 54–65.
Philip Williamson, Stanley Baldwin: Conservative Leadership and National Values (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 275–305; Duke of Northumberland, “Introduction,” 2–4, in John Briton, The League of Nations (London: Boswell Publishing Company, nd); Sir Henry Page Croft, “Democracy or Tyranny. No. I,” Bournemouth Echo, September 4, 1920.
Markku Ruotsila, The Origins of Christian Anti-Internationalism: Conservative Evangelicals and the League of Nations (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2008), 40–41, 134, 171–92.
Brian McKercher, “Churchill, the European Balance of Power and the USA,” 42–64, in RAC Parker (ed.), Winston Churchill: Studies in Statesmanship (London: Brassey’s, 1995)
D. Cameron Watt, Succeeding John Bull: America in Britain’s Place, 1900–1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), Chapter 3.
See Theodore Aubert, Bolshevism’s Terrible Record: An Indictment (London: Williams & Norgate, 1924); Vade-Mecum Bolchevique (Geneva: L’Entente Internationale contre la Me Internationale, 1926); Neuf Ans de Lutte Contre le Bolchevisme: L’Activité de l’Entente Internationale contre la IIIe Internationale (Geneva: Imp. Du Journale de Geneve, 1933).
Michel Caillat, “Le role de l’Entente internationale anticommuniste’ de Theodore Aubert face à la Guerre civile espagnole,” 421–37, in Mauro Cerrutti, Sébastien Guex and Peter Huber (eds.), La Suisse et l’Espagne de la République à Franco (1936–1946) (Lausanne: Editions Antipodes, 2001).
Michel Caillat, “L’Entente internationale anticommuniste de Theodore Aubert et ses archives,” Traverse 2 (2006), 15.
Powers, Not Without Honor, 79–80; Sara Diamond, Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States (New York: Guilford Press, 1995), 51.
Suomen Suojelusliitto, Suomen Suojelusliitto ja Lapuan Hike (Helsinki: Suomen Suojelusliitto, 1931), 6.
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© 2010 Martin Durham and Margaret Power
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Ruotsila, M. (2010). International Anti-Communism before the Cold War: Success and Failure in the Building of a Transnational Right. In: New Perspectives on the Transnational Right. Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230115521_2
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