The Red Decade-Eugene Lyons-1941

On the day when this book was ready for the press, Nazi Germany invaded Russia. The attack, as Vice-Premier Viacheslav Molotov charged, was wholly unprovoked. Stalin had appeased Hitler and supported Hitler’s cause with unflagging and demonstrative energy. For twenty-two months the Communist International and its endless open and clandestine extensions had preached defeatism to the French, immediate negotiated peace to the British, anti-Yankee sentiments to the Latin Americans, rigid isolationism to the people of the United States. The communist “line” for America had been indistinguishable from the Nazi line : non-intervention in European affairs, promotion of strikes in defense industries, class and group hatreds and the rest. That line was hastily and clumsily reversed within a few hours after the blitzkrieg was unloosed against Stalin’s country. Yesterday’s “imperialist” and “plutocratic” war was magically transmuted into a people’s war for freedom and justice. Conscription, national armaments, aid to Britain were mysteriously sanctified in a flash for all American Stalinists, whether acknowledged or disguised.

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