NYT reports that the papers of the American Communist Party have landed at NYU.
Michael Nash, the director of New York University’s Tamiment Library, will announce the donation on Friday.
The collection consists of 20,000 items and contains decades of party history including founding documents, secret code words, letters, smuggled directives from Moscow, photographs and as you can imagine a lots of Soviet memorabilia.
Though its heyday was the 1930’s the party began in 1919 as a mostly underground organization and lasted until the beginning of the cold war.
Labor unions and the rights of the working class. Two elements the success of this country is built on owes much to the work of the American Communist Party, much like the ongoing destruction of these rights owes much to the Republican Party.
As the policies of the Republican party continue to implode what a better time for this treasure trove of material to make its way into the world.
Until now the only archival insight into the party was a collection of material that the Library of Congress had microfilmed from a stash the Soviet Government granted access to.
“The previous paucity of the archival record has been a major obstacle to scholarship on the history of the American Communist movement.”- from the 2000 LOC press release
Now the floodgates are open!
History of Communism in Washington State
People and Nature photo taken at WTO protest in Seattle,1999. Courtesy Marc Brodine
