Historians, Primary Sources, and Truth

As an erstwhile historian (never killed off the dissertation at Michigan years back) who's been away from the academy for a decade now, I'm glad to see some members of the profession take the offensive against anti-anti-communists who've perverted the history of the twentieth century's bloodiest ideology. Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes published their latest book, In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage, last fall and it's the subject of a positive (and lively) review by John Gavin in the April issue of Reason magazine.

Gavin notes the degree to which many academic historians, including such prominent figures as Columbia's Eric Foner, former president of the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians, have gone to discredit the work of those bold enough to break with reigning opinion and declare the USSR (and communism in general) an ideology that has brought misery and bloodshed wherever it's been tried. This denial continues in spite of the evidence presented in Soviet primary sources that show, incontestably, that the Communist Party of the United States was run and funded directly by Moscow and that Roosevelt's administration was rife with spies and fellow travelers.

As the Founders understood, a republic can't abide citizens whose ignorance of their own history condemns them to a life based solely on present-day experiences. We must turn to the past to understand how the present came to be and to interpret modern events and personalities. Democracy Project was founded to combat a dearth of learning that, if left unchecked, leads to a decline of the institutions that make up civil society. It's no secret that our universities are in the vanguard of this decline, not least because of the ideological blinders (or old fashioned mendacity) of too many historians who're willing to distort the past. Kudos to Klehr and Haynes (at Emory and the Library of Congress, resp.) for doing what historians are supposed to do: write about the past as guided by their sources rather than their wishes.