Canadian Communism

"Canadian communism did not spring out of the ground suddenly at the end of World War I, and it was not smuggled into the country by Russian agents. The men and women who built the new movement were long-time socialist and labour militants in Canada. Inspired by the Russian Revolution and by their own experiences as leaders of the post-war labour revolt in Canada, they set about to create a new kind of party, one that could lead the fight for workers' power. The new Communist Party, formed between 1919 and 1921, quickly became the largest party on the left, with strong roots and influence in the unions and basic industry. Its members led heroic strikes. They fought for labor unity, and engaged in united electoral activity with other currents in the workers movement. They were in the forefront of the struggle for democratic rights.

"Radicals and Revolutionaries explores a significant yet neglected area in Canadian history-the experiences of the radical workers' movement and the Communist Party of Canada. Although a minority current on the Canadian political scene, at key points the radical movement posed a pointed challenge to the established order. Within that section of the socialist movement which openly identified itself as revolutionary, the CPC clearly predominated. It was instrumental in building the industrial union movement and played a key role in many of the major strikes of this century. In the social upheavals of the 1930s and 1940s, its influence extended far beyond its numbers."--Fisher Library online

Canadian Bolsheviks is a book that cannot be overlooked by anyone interested in Canadian labour history and part played in its development by Canadian Communists. It is a story too little known, and Angus, to his credit, has done much to rectify that imbalance. -William Rodney, author of Soldiers of the International, in The Globe & Mail Canadian communism did not spring out of the ground suddenly at the end of World War I, and it was not smuggled into the country by Russian agents. The men and women who built the new movement were long-time socialist and labour militants in Canada. Inspired by the Russian Revolution and by their own experiences as leaders of the post-war labour revolt in Canada, they set about to create a new kind of party, one that could lead the fight for workers' power. The new Communist Party, formed between 1919 and 1921, quickly became the largest party on the left, with strong roots and influence in the unions and basic industry. Its members led heroic strikes. They fought for labor unity, and engaged in united electoral activity with other currents in the workers movement. They were in the forefront of the struggle for democratic rights. Ten years later, the party was destroyed. Most of its founding leaders were expelled, and three quarters of its membership dropped out. The Communist Party abandoned the program it had adopted in its early years, and turned its back on its principles. The organization still called itself Communist, but it was now Tim Buck's Party. It had been transformed from a revolutionary party into an agent of the new ruling caste in Moscow. In Canadian Bolsheviks, Ian Angus describes and explains the first attempt to build a Leninist party on Canadian soil, showing why it succeeded so well at first, and why it ultimately failed. The Second Edition of a book that has been widely hailed as a path breaking work, the best yet to appear on the origins of Canadian communism.

Polish Canadians typically identify themselves as stringent anti-Communists, a label solidified by the legacies of the 1980s Solidarity movement, its founder Lech Walesa, and the widespread anti-Communist riots that helped topple the Communist regime in 1989. Hurrah Revolutionaries challenges this common perception by examining the Polish immigrant community in Canada and the development of radical and traditionally "deviant" ideologies during the interwar period until the end of the Second World War. Patryk Polec unveils a versatile, well-funded, and influential Polish pro-Communist movement with a talented leadership that worked tirelessly to persuade traditionally conservative and religious immigrants to adopt an ideology that was anti-nationalist and atheist. He traces the roots of socialist support in Poland, its transplantation to Canada where the movement enjoyed its greatest support, the challenges the movement faced within an ethnic community influenced by Catholicism, and the complications caused by its links to the Communist International. Polec offers a deeper understanding of the ways in which the Communist Party was able to appeal to certain ethnic groups through cultural outreach as well as its complicated and often counter-productive relationship with the Soviet Union. Grounded in recently declassified Polish consular documents and RCMP surveillance reports, Hurrah Revolutionaries is the first full-length study of Polish Communists in Canada, a group that constituted a substantial portion of the country’s socialist left in the twentieth century.

The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) was created in 1939 to produce, distribute, and promote Canadian cinema both domestically and abroad. In Filming Politics, author Malek Khouri explores the work of the NFB during this period and argues that the political discourse of the films produced by this institution offered a counter-hegemonic portrayal of working class people and presented them as agents of social change. Filming Politics brings to light a number of films from the early years of the NFB, most of which have long been forgotten.

"Canadian Communism is an original and scholarly history of the Communist Party of Canada (1921-1981). This work puts the Party into an international setting and compares it with similar movements in Great Britain, the United States, and France. The CPC was organized by Canadian socialists influenced by the Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and its leader Vladimir Lenin. They decided to become a section of the newly formed Communist International and to follow its guidelines. But the rise to power of Joseph Stalin, after the death of Lenin in 1924, changed the outlook and tactics of the Communist International and its affiliates. Penner traces the specific way these changes affected the CPC at every important stage in Canadian and world events. He shows how the frequent battles within the Party, and especially among the leaders, were in response to directives from the Communist International or the Soviet party. Penner credits the Canadian Communists with contributing to the building of the trade union movement, with assistance to the unemployed during the thirties, and with helping Spain's democratic government fight the fascists during the civil war. These activities, often undertaken in the face of state repression, resulted in the emergence of such popular figures as Tim Buck, Norman Bethune, Jacob Penner, J. B. Salsberg, A. A. MacLeod, and Dorise Nielsen. Penner presents a new evaluation of the Canadian Communists' tactics, the popular front, the alliance with the Liberals in the trade union movement, and the bitter conflict with the CCF. He describes the year-long debate within the Party over the Khrushchev revelations about the brutal nature of Stalin's rule, a debate that split all the Communist parties in the West and from which they have never recovered. Norman Penner has drawn the material for his book from major Canadian archives, as well as public and private collections in Britain and the U.S. He has talked with Communists and ex-Communists in all three countries and has also drawn from his own material and recollections." --

Not for King or Country tells the story of Edward Cecil-Smith, a dynamic propagandist for the Communist Party of Canada during the Great Depression. He is most well-known for commanding the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion during the Spanish Civil War.