Not the Socialism We Dreamed Of: Becoming Ex-Communists in the United States and New Zealand, 1956-58

Abstract

Historians have previously analysed the crisis that gripped Western Communist parties in 1956 in response to Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin at the Twentieth Soviet Congress and the subsequent events in Poland and Hungary within a political and institutional frame. This thesis provides a more personal analysis of those events by examining and comparing the motivations and experiences of Communists who left the Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ) and the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) in the wake of the events of 1956. It uses autobiographies, memoirs, letters, oral histories, periodicals and archival sources to reveal the complex emotions and motivations which turned previously loyal Party members into ex-Communists. Through its comparative focus, the thesis also explores the different ways the CPNZ and CPUSA dealt with dissent, challenging the concept of the monolithic party and providing new insight into Communist Party organisations and the response of their leadership cadres to dissent and reformist pressures. This thesis explores the reasons why the events of 1956 resulted in a mass exodus which cost the CPNZ twenty-five percent of its membership and the CPUSA seventyfive percent of its members. It explores the responses of Communists in both parties to the revelations of Stalin’s crimes and their participation in hitherto unprecedented discussions and dissent. It examines the ways disillusioned Communists reassessed their political pasts, their present affiliations and traces their evolution into becoming ex-Communists. It then examines what ex-Communists faced in the transition to life outside the Party. In doing so, this thesis fits into an emerging scholarship that employs a more personal frame when approaching Communist history. It acknowledges the agency of individual Communists as they grappled with the consequences of de-Stalinisation, challenging narratives which portray Communists as Soviet automatons and subsume their experiences within the institutional history of the Party. The comparative focus of the thesis highlights the differences in national context and leadership responses which resulted in a much higher rate of attrition for the CPUSA than the CPNZ.