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Red Diapers
Judy Kaplan and Linn Shapiro (eds), Red Diapers: Growing Up in the Communist Left, Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1998, ISBN 0 252 02161 4 (hbk); 0 252 06725 8 (pbk) pp320.
This is a wonderful book. Through it we enter a world populated by ordinary people who did extraordinary things in exceptional circumstances as they worked to make the world a better place. The children of these communist parents, the 'red diaper babies', grew up in a milieu shaped by the interaction between their parents' commitment to the cause and the society in which they lived. The forty six memoirs contained in the book provide a vivid picture of the different ways in which they engaged with a rich and creative yet often hostile and frightening environment. Perhaps I should declare an interest, for I, too, was a 'child of the revolution'. [1] However, although I spent my teens growing up in cold war England, these American children mostly lived through the altogether more threatening witch-hunt of McCarthyite America.
As the editors state in their loving and insightful introduction, '[f]or those in the CP milieu, the personal has always been political' (p9). The authors of virtually all the memoirs comment on how from a very early age they sensed that their families lived in very different ways and had very different values from their neighbours and their school friends. Indeed, a common theme running through the book is how as children they came to espouse, accept or find ways of dealing with their parents' values while becoming part of their peer group and developing a rooted sense of their own identity in a more or less hostile world.
Despite the palpable sense of difference, some authors did not know that their parents were communists until as adults they asked them — it was apparently party policy not to tell children since they might talk (p271). Others knew but were warned not to tell anyone. A few knew and were open about it, arguing things out with their friends, neighbours and relatives. Almost all, however, grew up in a rich social and cultural environment made up of like-minded families, left wing labour halls, fraternal orders and community groups, folk-singing clubs, drama groups and progressive summer camps.
Of the thirty eight memoirs from which I was able to form a view of how the authors now see their childhood, twenty two are positive, ten ambiguous and six negative, in one or two cases strongly so. Among the factors that may have influenced their feelings appear to have been the extent to which parents were open and talked with their children, the more general quality of parenting and the severity of the McCarthyite persecution. Leading communists were subject to routine arbitrary arrest under the Smith Act and held until punitively high bail bonds had been raised. The passionately fought campaign to save the Rosenbergs eventually failed and they were executed. The memoirs record heart-rending accounts of deeply frightened children worried that their parents might meet the same fate.
Yet overall what emerges is how proud the children were of their parents, of their humane values, their commitment, their bravery. Many of the 'commies' accused of un-American activities were from immigrant backgrounds and tried desperately to assimilate, to be Americans. They saw themselves as defending the Constitution and working to further the values enshrined in it — organising workers, fighting racism, opposing inequality and oppression. Although in different ways, the children for the most part absorbed the radical values of their parents and became progressive political activists of one sort or another — labour organisers, participants in the peace and anti-Vietnam War movement, civil rights workers. Many ended up in education, passing on the humane values of their parents, and often also their grandparents, in a new context.
Some, however, rejected their heritage. In part, this seems to have been because their parents were so taken up by the cause, possibly as a result of their own difficult personal histories, that they had little time to spare for their children. More generally, however, it seems to have been associated with different and changing perceptions of the Soviet Union. For the first generation of communists the Bolshevik Revolution represented the hope for the future. My mother, an American born to working class immigrant parents, was fond of telling whoever would listen of how she, at the age of six, first heard about the revolution from her mother: 'Frieda, this is a wonderful day. The workers have taken power in Russia. People like us!'
Most communists came to the party as a result of their first hand experience of capitalist reality, saw the Soviet Union as being in the forefront of the international movement for a better world, and developed a fierce loyalty to it. The process of coming to terms with the mounting evidence of the Stalinist terror, the absence of democracy and the growth of a privileged ruling stratum was not easy and some never made it. While many of the parents who figure in these memoirs left the party in 1956, after Khrushchev's secret speech, they mainly continued their life's work in other ways, as did their children. Some parents, however, for whatever reasons, were unable to distance themselves from the Soviet Union and this may have been one factor which contributed to their children's rejection not only of the Soviet experience but also of their parents' rich legacy of struggle for a better America.
Several of the authors, recalling the ubiquitous presence of the FBI, in later years obtained access to their files under the Freedom of Information Act. What they discovered was a largely banal record of meetings and events that they had attended and lists of those who had been there, with an obsessive interest in the racial composition of those present. Little, if anything, was found in the files arising from the weeks and months when they had been continuously followed by FBI agents observing every aspect of their daily lives. One of the authors raises the question of what, therefore, all that surveillance had been about and answers: 'We were experiencing and internalizing state terror, an American version of totalitarianism. ... They were trying to put the fear of police power in the minds of the people they spied on. To a large degree, it worked' (p174).
The memoir that made me laugh most is an extract from a novel based on the author's childhood experiences. A young boy is present at his parents' 'Party party' held to collect money for the 'Smith Act Defense Fund'. Tiring of the adults he joins his sister and her friend to play 'Party Meetings'. Sister is 'Org. Sec.' and 'Lit. Org.', friend is 'Sec. Org.' (chair), and little brother is consigned the dolls as part of the rank and file. After dues collection, literature sales and reports on work in 'Mass Orgs.', the meeting turns to 'Problems and Questions'. That evening it is the turn of the 'Negro Question' and the boy is asked to give the report. He states that things are getting much better as there are now more 'Negroes' on major league baseball teams than ever before. '"He's left deviationist and right opportunist both at the same time," said Vera. "Clear cause for expulsion," said Simone. "Out" shouted Vera, pointing to the door.' (pp136-8) Children use their experience creatively in play. It is one of the ways in which values are transformed and live on.
