A Communist ex-member risked his life to formally break with the Party

Evidence

Although discouraged by his wife, he decided to go to the Soviet Union, as he remembers it, out of a sense of honor to announce his break with communism. What began as a two-week visit ended as an eight-month nightmare with no certainty of survival. Finally, in 1938, Massing was permitted to leave both Moscow and the Party, but his involvement with communism was not yet entirely over. After returning, he began a comparison of Hitler’s foreign policy with the intentions announced in Mein Kampf, in the hope of putting together a marketable book. Hiller Is No Fool, as it was finally called, was published in 1940 by Modern Age, at that time secretly controlled by Communist editors. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 527

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader story of ex-Communist intellectuals and the factional infighting that shaped the Institute’s exiles. — connects to: A Pied Noir communist defector stole a truckload of arms to join the resistance — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 424; MRAP’s ties to the Communist Party loosened as the party declined — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in…, 1367; A Frankfurt School member risked his life resigning from the Communist Party — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 113
• CANDY: The detail that a book critical of Stalinist foreign policy was suppressed by its own Communist-controlled publisher is a surprisingly tight little anecdote.

Broader Connections

• A Pied Noir communist defector stole a truckload of arms to join the resistance #exemplifies (0.82) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 424
• MRAP’s ties to the Communist Party loosened as the party declined #expands (0.75) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 1367