Shades of Red: The Communist Party and Chicago's Workers, 1928-1939

This dissertation challenges those written by an earlier generation of scholars who studied the Communist party from a strictly national and institutional perspective and who emphasized the Comintern's unilateral ability to enforce its teachings through party lines. By focusing on experience of Chicago's communists, who included a large working class, African-American and ethnic population, this study re-examines party members' actions as an integral part of the communities in which they lived and the industries where they worked. This perspective, more grounded in the life of the party activists than national studies have allowed, helps to explain the party's relative strength during the 1930s and suggests reasons for its weaknesses and ultimate disintegration in the 1950s. This study of Chicago's Communist party is an important contribution to our understanding of how ordinary people experienced American communism.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Storch, Randi Jill

Contributors dc:contributor

• Barrett, James R.

• Sociology, Industrial and Labor Relations

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI9912388

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/84745