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The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) is one of several Marxist-Leninist groups in the United States. For many years ( 1959- 2000) it was led by Gus Hall. Perhaps the most famous ex-member of the CPUSA is Angela Davis. The current leader of the party is Sam Webb.The Communist Party of America together with the Communist Labor Party was a predecessor of the Communist Party USA. It was founded on September 1, 1919 by Charles Ruthenburg , Louis Fraina and others who had boycotted the Socialist Party convention. They were inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution and pledged their fidelity to the Comintern. The Comintern was not happy with two Communist Parties and in January, 1920 dispatched an order that the two parties merge under the name United Communist Party . Part of the Communist Party of America under the leadership of Charles Ruthenburg and Jay Lovestone did this but a faction under the leadership of Nicholas I. Hourwich and Alexander Bittelman continued to operate independently as the Communist Party of America. A more strongly worded directive from the Comintern eventually did the trick and the parties were merged in May, 1921 as the Communist Party of America. The name was eventually changed to Communist Party USA.
1 Formation and early history
In January, 1919, Lenin invited the left wing of the Socialist Party to join the Communist International. During the spring of 1919 the left wing of the Socialist Party, buoyed by a large influx of new members from countries involved in the Russian Revolution, prepared to wrest control from the smaller controlling faction of moderate socialists. A referendum to join the Comintern passed with 90% support but the results were suppressed by the incumbent leadership. Elections for the party's National Executive Committee resulted in 12 leftists being elected out of a total of 15. Calls were made to expel moderates from the party. The moderate incumbents struck back by expelling several state organizations, half a dozen language federations, and many locals, in all two thirds of the membership.
At the time of the formation of the Communist Party, the working class in the U.S., particularly on the East Coast and in the Mid-West, consisted largely of recent immigrants and their children. As a result, many did not speak English, but many did carry their politics with them to their new homes. They sought to organise themselves in groups based on a shared language. These local groups then federated together and joined the Socialist Labor Party. Most (though not all) were to split from that party and join the Socialist Party when it was formed and again in 1919 many split to join the new Communist Party. (The reformist Socialist Party also retained language federations of its own.) In particular, the Russian languageRussian /'ruski j'zk/) is the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages. Russian belongs to the group of Indo-European languages, and is therefore related to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, as well as the modern Germanic, Romance, and Celtic languages, inclu federation, which had experienced large-scale growth as a result of the February RevolutionThe February Revolution of 1917 in Russia was the first stage of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Its immediate result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. It occurred largely as a result of dissatisfaction with the way the Tsar was running the country, and its radicalising effect, backed the new movement. In part, the fading importance of the language federations after the foundation of the Communist Party was the result of the Palmer RaidsThe Palmer Raids were a number of attacks on Socialists and Communists in the United States from 1918 to 1921. The raids are named after Alexander Mitchell Palmer, United States Attorney General under Woodrow Wilson. Palmer stated his belief that Communis and the return, not always voluntarily, of many revolutionaries to their homelands.
An emergency convention was then called which was held in Chicago on August 30August 30 is the 242nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (243rd in leap years), with 123 days remaining. Events 1574 Guru Ram Das became the Fourth Sikh Guru/Master 1813 Battle of Kulm French forces defeated by Austrian- Prussian- Russian alliance, 1919. Plans were made by the left wing to continue to gain control of the party at a June conference, the National Conference of the Left Wing, but the language federations, independent socialist organizations from areas involved in the Russian Revolution, eventually joined by Charles Ruthenberg and Louis Fraina broke away from that effort and determined to form their own party, forming the Communist Party of America on September 2, 1919 at a separate convention in Chicago. Meanwhile plans led by John Reed and Benjamin Gitlow to crash the Socialist Party convention went ahead. It was planned that delegations from the portions of the party which had been expelled would arrive early and demand participation. Tipped off, the incumbents dealt with that maneuver by calling the police who obligingly expelled the leftists from the hall. The remaining leftist delegates walked out and meeting with the expelled delegates formed the Communist Labor Party on September 1, 1919. Under pressure from the Communist International, these two communist parties officially merged at a conference in Woodstock, New York in May, 1921. Only 10% of the members of the newly formed party were fluent in English.
Many of the leading figures in these events were to have long careers in the Communist Party or in splinter movements from it, but two figures of great importance in these early days were to meet different fates. The first is the well-known figure of John Reed, who travelled to Moscow as a delegate of the American movement twice only to die of a fever in poverty-striken Russia, leaving as his chief contribution to the movement which he co-founded his important journalistic report of the October 1917 Revolution, Ten Days that Shook the World. His co-factionalist in the Socialist Party and leader of the rival Communist Party of America, Louis Fraina, also travelled to Russia on behalf of his comrades. In Russia Fraina was entrusted with a mission as an agent of the Comintern and travelled to Mexico. However, his mission seems to have miscarried and he became enmeshed in financial difficulties as it was alleged that he had absconded with Comintern funds. Obliged to drop out of the movement, Fraina travelled back to New York and gradually built up a career as an economist of note under the name Lewis Corey . Despite having turned his back on the Communist Party in the 1930s, his writings became influential in the party and for a time he sympathised with it again only to move away again with the development of the purges in Russia.
