The price of freedom: how the "witch hunt" was conducted in the USA
On September 23, 1950, the Internal Security Act was passed in the United States, which remained in history by the names of its initiators as the Mccaren—Wood Act. Democratic freedoms have never been dealt such a powerful blow in the United States before. The era of McCarthyism was remembered by Izvestia.
Red or dead
American statehood was based on the idea of personal freedom. The history of the United States is inextricably linked with the Great French Revolution, the traditions of which were important for the Soviet system. But the American elite did not accept Bolshevism categorically. By that time, the United States had joined the struggle for world hegemony, and communism posed a danger to Washington's Napoleonic plans. The establishment of NATO and the implementation of the Marshall Plan, which turned Western Europe into a corps de ballet for American soloists on the global diplomatic scene, have defined new trends in US policy.
Chinese Red Army parade in honor of the first anniversary of the Communist government. Beijing, 1950
The decisive year was 1949, when the Soviet Union tested the atomic bomb and the Chinese Communist Party gained control of its country. In February 1950, at a speech in West Virginia, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy showed lists of disloyal citizens who belong to the Communist Party and at the same time participate in the work of American government agencies. He was talking about a "red conspiracy" that, according to the senator, had even engulfed the State Department. His speech also included direct accusations against Secretary of State Dean Acheson.
In the summer, America was shocked by the McCarthyists' Red Channels report on Communist infiltration of radio and television. And, of course, that pro-Soviet sentiments have no right to be on the American airwaves. Espionage took hold of American society, as well as other prejudices. Among the supporters of the massacre of all sympathizers of the Soviet Union and just those who were critical of the American political and economic system, Protestant preachers stood out.
The test of the first Soviet atomic bomb at the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan. August 29, 1949
America recently fought with the Soviet Union against the Nazis, but soon after the victory, the allies turned into opponents. And the paranoid hysteria that the conservatives on Capitol Hill staged was reminiscent of the policy of the National Socialist Party of Germany. Political opponents were declared almost subhuman. The McCarthyists intended to squeeze them out of the political system, and logically this could escalate into reprisals against freethinkers.
Security at the cost of freedom
Some activists of the Democratic Party joined the McCarthyists. For example, Patrick mccaren, the embattled senator from Nevada. He was working on a bill that was supposed to provide a legal basis for state anti-communism. "Our propaganda, like the state, must pursue the bold goal of overthrowing the Soviet dictatorship with all the means at our disposal," Mccaren preached. He, like McCarthy, was going to achieve this goal without thinking about the purity and legality of the methods. McCarthy, like McCarthy, had no doubt that all leftist movements were links in the global communist movement. That means they are dangerous to America.
On September 23, 1950, at the suggestion of Senator Mccaren and Member of the House of Representatives John Stevens Wood, Congress passed the federal law on Internal Security. From now on, Communists were forbidden to hold government posts, join the leadership of trade unions, and travel abroad. The law restricted the native American freedom of assembly by prohibiting picketing of the federal courthouse, and by analogy, other government buildings. The President was given the right to detain "anyone with respect to whom there are reasonable grounds to believe that such a person is likely to participate or likely to conspire with others to participate in espionage or sabotage."
For the first time in the United States, the practice of preventive arrests and exile without trial based on suspicion and denunciations was established. The "organizations that the Communists had infiltrated" were now considered seditious. Now it was enough for at least one communist to take part in the activities of any organization or association, as the Mccaren law fell on them.
In the first months after the adoption of the law, 800 people were dismissed from the state apparatus, and another 600 people left their posts voluntarily. These actions were accompanied by the seizure of libraries and even the burning of books. And, of course, numerous arrests. At the same time, Americans from high departments regularly talked about Soviet totalitarianism... However, the university intelligentsia never sympathized with McCarthyism. But few people ventured to express outrage directly at first.
The law looked more like a political declaration than a legal document. Its authors wanted to convince Americans, without arguments, on emotions alone, that leftist ideas are an absolute evil. And it is necessary to throw all our forces into the fight not only against the apologists of the communist doctrine, but also against the ideology itself. Essentially— with people's views and thoughts. Such a struggle requires, first of all, total control over society and the omnipotence of the secret police in conditions of widespread denunciation.
It was not only the fear of ideological expansion by supporters of a "totalitarian communist state" that was important to the senators. There was something else in the subtext — the struggle for political influence and military dominance in the world. The USSR became a superpower, and many in Washington could not accept this fact and began using repression to fight "sympathies for the Soviet Union."
The bloc of conservative-minded representatives of the two main American parties seemed omnipotent. More than 30 states have passed laws similar to the federal Internal Security Ordinance.
The Democratic Inquisition
The law has worked, destroying the destinies of people, accustoming citizens to fear of the state and double morality. At that time, America was saying goodbye to freedom of speech and thought. The campaign launched by the McCarthyists hit primarily intellectuals. Many of them professed leftist ideas, some were Marxists, and all at least respected the socialist doctrine and considered it necessary to seek ways of peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union. Tens of thousands of people have come under suspicion. There were enthusiastic informers in every major organization who supplied the seemingly all-powerful Senate committee with compromising material on their colleagues. During the years of McCarthyism, Charlie Chaplin, Leonard Bernstein, Irwin Shaw, and even the fathers of the American atomic bomb and great scientists, starting with Albert Einstein, were harassed. It was a real "witch hunt" in the medieval spirit, with outbreaks of fanaticism, without which it would have been impossible to conduct such a campaign. People like McCarthy dreamed of a democratic inquisition. The activist of the struggle against the "left" and those who resembled the "left" was a young, not very gifted, but ambitious actor Ronald Reagan.
Actor Charlie Chaplin and his family in France after a flight from the United States. During the time of McCarthyism in the United States, Chaplin was accused of anti-American activities.
Both journalists and teachers were now required to prove that they did not belong to any of the "communist organizations." The Communist Party of the USA has been outlawed in several states. And in Pennsylvania, participation in the work of communist organizations was recognized as an act punishable by death. The Civil Rights Congress, the Abraham Lincoln Brigades, the Joint Committee for Assistance to Anti-Fascist Immigrants, and the Americans for Peace Campaign were banned... There are about 300 organizations in total. Almost all of them showed themselves vividly during the Second World War. Stalin's death did nothing to moderate the activity of the extreme right in Washington. In 1954, the number of organizations that were persecuted for dissent exceeded 800.
US President Harry Truman speaks in Congress. The year 1947
The President of the United States, representative of the Democratic Party, Harry Truman, for all his faults, was not a supporter of McCarthyism. He believed that America should not give up fundamental freedoms in peacetime. So, during the passage of the Mccaren—Wood act, the president used the right of veto. In a message to Congress, he declared the bill "a blow to freedom of speech and assembly." But the House of Representatives overcame the veto without discussion, voting by 286 votes to 48. Fighters against dissent began to create a "knight's order" to suppress "leftists" — a special department "for the control of subversive activities."
The Fate of McCarthyism
Until the middle of 1954, the degree of hysteria in America was only increasing. Laws were passed that developed and aggravated the trend of the autumn of 1950. But public irritation and latent resistance to McCarthyism were also growing. At the end of 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower—a Republican, by the way—publicly disowned McCarthyism, and the building that the fierce anti-communists had been building for five years collapsed in a few days. The American liberal system could not stand the long-term totalitarian marathon. Private business does not tolerate political control. The McCarthyists held back the development of corporations, limited the possibilities of advertising — and the business world found the strength to resist the "democratic inquisition." The McCarthyists began to be ridiculed and refuted. Intellectuals understood that it was impossible to win the Cold War with prohibitions and denunciations.
Visit of the USSR delegation to the USA. First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, head of the Soviet government Nikita Khrushchev (right), US Vice President Richard Nixon (left) during the presentation to US President Dwight Eisenhower (center) a copy of the pennant delivered by a Soviet rocket to the Moon. September 15-27, 1959
The rejection of the McCarthyist policy was also manifested in the intensification of diplomatic contacts with the Soviet Union, which American politicians began to treat not as a fiend. In 1965, the Americans succeeded in making the requirement to register communist organizations illegal. Very soon, the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional some other harsh provisions of the law, including a ban on hiring Communist Party members to work in the defense industry. Many other provisions of the controversial law did not apply either. The presidents did not use the harsh measures prescribed by the McCarthyist law, neither against the anti-war movement during the Vietnam adventure, nor against feminists, nor against fighters for the rights of black Americans. But the Council for the Control of subversive activities, created in accordance with the Mccaren Act, was only abolished during the time of President Richard Nixon in 1972.
Angela Davis, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USA, at a press conference at the party headquarters. The year 1976
Modern America has not forgotten McCarthyism. These times are usually remembered as a terrible dream, as a temporary clouding of minds. Few people are interested in the deep causes of this phenomenon. Alas, some traditions of those dark years still prevail today. Sometimes modern information technologies deprive a person of privacy, restrict freedom, and straightforward and obligatory adherence to the postulates of political correctness generates a wave of denunciations reminiscent of the days of McCarthy and Mccaren.
The author is the deputy editor—in-chief of the magazine "Historian"
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