THOSE COMMUNISTS

THE RED DECADE--Eugene Lyons--Bobbs Merrill ($3).

Eugene Lyons has been poking at the snakes again. The Red Decade (subtitle: The Stalinist Penetration of America) is the liveliest and most complete account to date of the "grotesque and incredible revolution" whereby the U.S. Communist Party, once a mob of mugwump Marxists led by nonentities, entrenched itself in the leadership of the C.I.O. and in strategic spots in the Federal Government. Eugene Lyons tells how the Commies managed by grace of the depression, the widespread fear of fascism, the Spanish Civil War and the New Deal to capture key positions in U.S. publishing, radio, movies and the stage.

Some of the facts in this book have already been revealed in ex-Communist confessionals like Benjamin Gitlow's I Confess (TIME, Jan. 22, 1940). Many were dug up by the Dies Committee. The Red Decade synchronizes them and for the first time brings them into orderly perspective.

There are excellent chapters on the prehistory of the Communist Party, then posturing as the Workers Party; on "the Cult of Russia-Worship"; on the "Communist Milquetoast" (Earl Browder); on "Stalin's Children's Hour" (The American Youth Congress); on "the Typewriter Front" and "the Intellectual Red Terror." "Cocktails for Spanish Democracy" includes some of the plainest and clearest speaking yet heard on the befogged subject of the Red stake in Loyalist Spain. Less outspoken (for reasons of libel) is the chapter on "America's Own Popular Front Government," the Communist penetration of the New Deal.

Most hilarious chapter is about Hollywood, where at one revolutionary banquet, the high-priced cinemarxists raised their champagne glasses in a toast before bursting into "Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!" Most important chapter is the one on red-baiting. Lyons points out that the epithet "red-baiter," uttered in shrill tones of ethical exaltation, has a paralyzing effect on almost all liberal critics of Communism, is one of the most effective silencing tricks in the versatile Communist repertory. The Lyons recipe for overcoming it: "Walk up boldly to the terrible hobgoblin and . . . say, 'Boo!'' He warns liberals that they will not find it easy at first "and may have to practice it before their mirrors with doors closed and blinds drawn. . . . [But] in the end they will be cured, and will be able to examine the mythology of Stalinism as calmly as the folklore of capitalism. . . ."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.