In Denial: Historians, Commun [Hardcover]

This book isn't really for the lay reader. The authors minutely examine scholarly arguments against Venona, or arguments that attempt to "of course" it aside. The refutations they deploy sound convincing to me. The authors don't fight entirely fair. They excoriate one revisionist author for mixing up the principals in one case, but confess to a similar error of their own in an endnote. Throughout, the psychic indigestion of the revisionists is on display, as they try to salvage the reputations of their heroes. They do so either by rejecting or distorting the evidence, or falling back into the "higher truth" position, in which spying for Stalin against America was just another form of action for social justice.

One bit of Venona controversy that seems to have fallen silent is the case of leftist gadfly journalist I. F. Stone, who does not appear in this book. Apparently no case from the Venona decrypts can be made to back up Herbert Romerstein's accusation that Stone was a Soviet agent of influence for a while. Instead, Stone appears to have rejected monetary offers from his would-be handlers, so far as Venona reveals. To be fair, Haynes and Klehr weren't the ones who made that accusation in the first place.

The retired NKVD assassin Pavel Sudoplatov makes a cameo appearance. The authors really should have put a caution flag next to his name, as the most explosive allegations from his book have never been proven. But there he is, invoked to bolster the case against the Rosenbergs (which didn't really need bolstering, at this late date).

A sad bit of history is presented in an appendix. It is a list of names of mostly Baltic immigrants to America, who moved to the Soviet Union, were arrested and executed, and buried by the KGB. Their names and bodies were recovered by Memorial, the Russian organization that searches for secret mass graves in Russia. The bitter consequences of deluded idealism...

The fraudulent aura of progressivism that Stalinism had for so many Americans is still a mystery. How a dream of a better world led these people to betray the most just country in history to the most oppressive country in history defies easy explanation. Ignorance is no excuse, as the bloody nature of Soviet communism was well reported in the West almost from the Soviet Union's inception. (If they couldn't believe Stalin's own ex-secretary, Boris Bazhanov, who would they have believed?) Although leftist compilers of standard reference works are reported here to be distorting the Venona evidence, one can only hope for its lessons to start seeping into the curriculum, as well as the broader culture. It can't happen a decade too soon.

But there were other amazing aspects of this book. I was aware of people who long denied the brutality of communism. There are certainly many people in academia right now who still write glowing commentaries on Fidel Castro, for instance. But I was not aware that there are current tenured professors of history who write glowingly of Joseph Stalin. Some of the quotes in this book from these people are jaw-dropping (some of them have been reproduced in other reviews on this website). I think that Haynes and Klehr are right to note that it is amazing not only that these people exist, but that some of them hold (or held) prominent positions in academia. They are correct in noting that Holocaust-deniers and Nazi-sympathizers are rare and regularly suppressed by the historian community whereas people who hold equally repugnant views about communism are often held in high esteem by their colleagues.

I attended the Venona conference that they mention, and have read some of their previous works. I am also somewhat familiar with the academic study of the Hiss and Rosenberg cases, where some individuals insisted for decades of their absolute innocence, but are now shown to be massively wrong. As recently as a few months ago the New York Times printed a mopey article that complained that the real travesty was not that the Rosenbergs ran a spy ring that provided the Soviet Union with vital secrets, but that they were executed in a show trial.

But I must fault Haynes and Klehr somewhat on their misuse of the terms "traditionalists" and "revisionists." They admittedly create these terms as shorthand for the groups they are discussing, but this introduces problems to the discussion, because these terms already have their own meanings within the historical community. And they aren't really accurate anyway. History that is properly done is by definition revisionist, for it attempts to revise our understanding of events. And Haynes and Klehr in many ways are seeking to revise the previously popular view of subjects such as the Communist Party of the USA with new sources and sophisticated interpretation. So doesn't that make them "revisionists" as well?

But this is only a small criticism. This is a fascinating book.