To All Sections, Clubs, and Members of the
Northwest District Communist Party, U. S. A.:
This is to notify all Sections and Clubs of the expulsion from the
Communist Party of Eugene V. Dennett, Harriet Dennett, and Claude
Smith.
In the case of Eugene Dennett and Harriet Dennett, the expulsion
is based upon violation of the conditions of membership in the
Communist Party as set forth in Article 9, Sections 1, 2, and 4 of
the Constitution of the Communist Party, U. S. A., based upon the
following facts established by the District Review Commission:
1. Admitted employment of Harriet Dennett by an agency of the F.
B. I. and the submitting of regular reports to said agency over a
long period of time, with the knowledge and consent, and direct
participation of Eugene V. Dennett. This was established by his
admission of personal contact with a known agent of the F. B. I.
and his concealment from the Party of Harriet Dennett’s activities
and his own personal contact with the F. B. I.
2. Admitted personal and political relations by Eugene V. Dennett
with known Trotskyites with established participation by Harriet
Dennett.
3. An established record of anti-party, disruptive, and provocative
activity by Eugene Dennett on numerous occasions and by Harriet
Dennett in several instances.
In the case of Claude Smith, the expulsion is based upon violation of
the conditions of membership in the Communist Party as set forth in
Article 9, Sections 1, 2, and 4 of the Constitution of the Communist
Party, U. S. A., and based upon the following facts established by the
District Review Commission:
1. Admitted participation in the preparation of the reports
submitted by Harriet Dennett to the Agency referred to above as
well as sharing in the payment for those reports and concealment of
these activities from the Party.
The District Review Commission wishes to call to the attention of
the Party membership and its organizations the necessary conclusions
from these facts. First, in this case as in many in the past, a
negative, carping attitude toward the Party and its program has upon
investigation disclosed enemies of the Party and the working class.
The same thing must be said of toleration and association with
Trotskyites who are simply fascists hiding behind “left” phrases. While
such attitudes may be due to lack of understanding in new members, in
the case of experienced long time members it can only be regarded as
conscious assistance to fascism and to the agents of fascism. It must
be noted also that the personal record of these people is marked by
individualism instability and extreme egotism.
The District Review Commission also wishes to point out that it is
necessary to learn to distinguish between honest differences of opinion
which we have to constantly resolve by discussion and majority decision
and disruptive, dishonest attacks upon the program activities and
leadership of the Party, which is the earmark of the provocateur and
agent of the enemy. Only by more resolutely defending and fighting
for the program of the Party can we make this distinction clear. Only
by becoming more alert to the smell of anti-Party poison can we root
out these disrupters. Only by fighting for the unity of the Party and
testing our cadres struggle can we create guarantees that such elements
will not remain long in the Party or be able to steal into its posts
of leadership, and that the damage that they do will be reduced to a
minimum.
Harriet Dennett is at present holding the position of President of the
Seattle UOPWA Local Union No. 35. Eugene Dennett is a member of the
Board of Control of the NEW WORLD and a member of the Steelworkers
Union. Claude Smith is at present editor of the Washington State CIO
news.
All Party members are warned against personal or political association
with these expelled members and to give them no consideration or
comfort in the excuses and protests they can be expected to make
against the expulsion action which was ordered carried out by unanimous
vote of the Northwest District Committee in executive session on
October 6, 1947.
Signed:
HENRY HUFF,
_District Chairman_,
C. VAN LYDEGRAF,
_District Orig. Sec’y_,
_For the Northwest District Committee Communist Party, U. S. A._
uopwa No. 35.
Mr. VELDE. There is one question I would like to ask you, Mr. Dennett,
about your expulsion and your wife’s. You probably recall the argument
that took place within the ranks of the Communist Party during the
change from the Communist political association to the militant type of
organization it was before.
Did you or your wife engage in any of those arguments after the receipt
of the Duclos letter?
Mr. DENNETT. Yes, we did.
Mr. VELDE. I am interested in that, if you will please be as brief as
you can.
Mr. DENNETT. I will do my best, sir.
I was still in the service at the time. This occurred in New Orleans.
My wife was still doing this same work in New Orleans.
Mr. VELDE. Was that in the middle of 1945?
Mr. DENNETT. That is right, in May and June of 1945.
And with the publication of the Duclos letter in the Daily Worker,
which my wife was a subscriber to at that time, we observed that
something tremendous was taking place within the party. And she made
contact with some of the party people in New Orleans.
When they found that we had an interest in it, they invited us to the
meetings where this discussion took place. And I was quite startled to
find that the general criticism was mainly directed at the bureaucratic
attitude and dictatorial policies pursued by Mr. Earl Browder. I was
flabbergasted because I did not have that conception of him, and I was
quite surprised as a result of it. And, of course, you know the rest of
the story, which was published.
Mr. VELDE. In other words, you and your wife both took the side of Earl
Browder?
Mr. DENNETT. I wouldn’t say that my former wife took the side of Earl
Browder. I wouldn’t say I took the side of Earl Browder either because
I was not in the party at the time. I was simply a visitor invited, and
I was mainly surprised. I questioned the reports that people made. I
didn’t pass judgment on it. I simply could hardly believe the criticism
which I heard.
Mr. VELDE. It appears to me from your testimony that you were probably
sort of independent in this matter of following the Communist Party
line as handed down from Soviet Russia, and that was probably one of
the chief reasons why you were expelled. Is that not right? You would
not follow the party line? You thought for yourself.
Mr. DENNETT. I thought I was following the party line, and I thought
the leaders around here were zigzagging all over the lot, and they
didn’t know what the line was. They thought I was nuts. I thought they
were nuts.
Mr. VELDE. Maybe you were just like Trotsky or Lovestone. You just
didn’t happen to be in the ruling class as far as the party line was
concerned.
Mr. TAVENNER. Mr. Chairman, we have just checked the names on exhibit
No. 10, and find that all of the persons whose names appear there have
been identified in testimony before this committee as Communist Party
members. Therefore, I see no reason for restricting that document in
any way in its introduction in evidence.
Mr. MOULDER. It is so ordered. Do you wish to read the names?
Mr. TAVENNER. I desire the witness to read the names.
Mr. DENNETT. Alice Kinney, known to me before as Alice Balmer,
B-a-l-m-e-r; Trudi Kirkwood, Helen Huff. Helen Huff was known to me
as the wife of Henry Huff, who was the district organizer of the
party, and Helen Huff was one of those persons to whom I spoke when I
requested that they allow my former wife to resign, but they would have
nothing to do with that. They wouldn’t allow it. They wanted to make an
example of her. Hallie Donaldson, Vivian Stucker, S-t-u-c-k-e-r, Jean
R. Hatten.
Mr. TAVENNER. Mr. Dennett, are there any other facts relating to your
expulsion which would be of interest to this committee?
Mr. DENNETT. I think, Mr. Tavenner and members of the committee, that
there are probably many. But, in view of the pressing time, I think
that this is sufficient to give you the picture, and, if you want to go
into more detail at a later time when you have more time available, I
think maybe we could do that. I have said all I think I need to say at
this time.
Mr. TAVENNER. After your expulsion have you been identified with the
Communist Party in any way?
Mr. DENNETT. No, sir; I have not.
Mr. TAVENNER. The committee had information indicating that you may
possibly have become a member after your expulsion, or even prior to
that, of the Socialist Workers Party. And the information that the
committee had in that respect was a nominating petition of that group
signed by you.
We would like to know whether you were at any time a member of the
Socialist Workers Party.
Mr. DENNETT. The answer is very simple. I was not. I never have been a
member of the Socialist Workers Party.
The occasion for that signature on that nominating petition is the
result of a request from the Socialist Workers Party leader, Mr. Daniel
Roberts, who was the leader at that time, that I sign a nominating
petition to permit their candidates to get on the ballot.
In the State of Washington a provision is in the election laws allowing
nominating petitions to be signed by a minimum of 25 people who are
qualified voters who did not vote in the primary. In other words, it is
equivalent to casting a vote.
Mr. TAVENNER. Did the Socialist Workers Party endeavor to recruit you
as a member?
Mr. DENNETT. Yes. Mr. Daniel Roberts tried time and time again to
recruit me, thinking that my vast experience in the Communist Party
gave me plenty of background to qualify me if I would simply change my
thinking with respect to certain fundamental ideas which were points
of difference between the Socialist Workers Party and the Communist
Party. However, I never was able to accept all of the ideas which Mr.
Roberts and some of their national leaders to whom he introduced me--I
could never resolve all of the policies which they advocated to my own
thinking.
And the whole experience caused me to go back and question and
challenge the validity of the theoretical basis upon which the
Communist Party was organized and upon which it operated. And it caused
me to reach the conclusion a long time ago that it is very inadvisable
for anyone to commit his political fealty to anyone or any organization
that he doesn’t understand in full. And I do not to this day completely
understand the Socialist Workers Party.
Mr. TAVENNER. I noticed in some of the earlier documents introduced in
evidence that reference was made to you when the Communist Party was
critical of you as being a Trotskyite.
Mr. DENNETT. That is true. Remarks were made about me on a number of
occasions. And, as near as I can make out, the reason for it is I was
asking embarrassing questions. It seems as though Trotsky did that
against Mr. Stalin in the Soviet Union--when everyone especially was
interested in a democratic procedure that went contrary to Stalin’s
rule. His rule was that you had to accept his decision whether you
liked it or not. And that is the rule of democratic centralism, a
principle with which I am in total disagreement today. I thought
for a long time that that was a wonderful principle. I had read
Lenin’s writings on the subject. I thought that his explanations were
quite good. But once I had had service in the military, once I knew
what military organization was like, I recognized the principle of
democratic centralism as the application of military rule to civilian
life. And I am strictly opposed to it.
Mr. TAVENNER. In light of your experience in the Communist Party,
and from your study of the Socialist Workers Party, would you please
state as briefly as you can the principal differences between these
organizations as you understood them.
Mr. DENNETT. One of the principal differences lies in the fact that the
Socialist Workers Party people accused the Communist Party people, in
particular Stalin and Stalinism, of having deserted the principle of
socialism, of internationalism, accusing Stalin of degenerating into
nationalism. That is when he developed the so-called theory of the
possibility of developing socialism in one country alone.
Mr. TAVENNER. That country being the Soviet Union.
Mr. DENNETT. That country being the Soviet Union.
The Trotskyites maintained that Stalin was thereby deserting the cause
of internationalism and that he would think first of the interests of
the Soviet Union, and later, if at all, subordinate the interests of
the world working class to building the Soviet Union at the cost of
letting the working class in other countries go by the boards.
In other words, if a revolutionary situation developed in some other
country Stalin would exert his power to prevent the success of the
revolution in that country for fear that it would detract from the
success of the Soviet Union.
Mr. TAVENNER. Unless, of course, such a revolution would strengthen
his power and his regime in the Soviet Union. Wouldn’t you make that
qualification?
Mr. DENNETT. That might be a consideration. But all history, all
experience since the Second World War would indicate that Stalin at
no time approved successful revolutions in any country. He opposed
revolutionary effort of the Yugoslavs. He opposed the revolutionary
effort of the Communists in Greece. He opposed the revolutionary
effort of the Chinese Communists. He even made commitments, and part
of the deal which people seemed to be so concerned about at Yalta and
Potsdam and Cairo and Casablanca involved Stalin making commitments to
Roosevelt and Churchill to the effect that the Soviet Union would use
its influence to suppress the revolutionary effort of the workers in
the various countries that were on the brink of revolution.
And that is why when the Soviet Red Army marched into those border
countries in eastern Europe they did not attempt to create a Soviet
revolution. They, instead, created something they called people’s
democracies. But they were established in some instances with the aid
of the Red army marching in, and the people in those countries had
nothing to say about it.
Mr. TAVENNER. What was the attitude of the Trotskyites as to Stalin’s
agreement with reference to Greece, for instance?
Mr. DENNETT. They accused him of betraying the working class not only
in Greece but in the Soviet Union because he was ruling in the Soviet
Union with such an iron hand that workers there were being suppressed.
They were being forbidden from enjoying the efforts they were putting
in to build a Socialist country. In fact, they were being deprived
of the fruits of what was intended to be socialism. In fact, the
Trotskyites, as I understand, their philosophy in the matter is that
the Soviet Union has suffered from an arrested development--it is not
truly Socialist; it has not been permitted to become Socialist, and
that the biggest crime Stalin committed was to pretend and hold the
Soviet Union up to world view as a Socialist country when, in fact, it
was not a Socialist country.
I also came to the conclusion, as a result of some of the theoretical
material I read in about 1946, where Stalin was insisting that,
instead of the authority of the state withering away as predicted
in the writings of Engels and Lenin, that Stalin insisted that the
authority of the state must increase, that the police power must be
increased in the Soviet Union to make sure that they would continue in
an ordered fashion, which certainly was contrary to all the earlier
writings on the theoretical subject of the development of the state.
Mr. TAVENNER. It has been demonstrated time and again, has it not, to
your satisfaction, that Stalin has endeavored to use international
communism as a tool in order to advance his own foreign policy which
necessarily, of course, meant his strengthening his own position in the
Soviet Union.
Mr. DENNETT. It certainly is.
Mr. TAVENNER. There are many other matters that I would have liked to
have gone into with you, but I must terminate the examination. I do
not like to do so without giving you an opportunity to state anything
that may be in your mind about the effect of your experience in the
Communist Party or your present attitude toward the Communist Party.
I am not insisting that you do, but I merely want to give you the
opportunity.
Mr. DENNETT. My counsel has already advised me to be very brief. I
am very appreciative of the suggestion because the hour is late, and
I want to thank you for the opportunity you have given me to make a
statement.
The only statement I would make at this time is some elaboration over
what I started to say earlier when we were talking about what steps to
take to protect yourself against this sort of deception.
I am sure that some people in hearing the account which I have given
by way of testimony before this committee may gather the impression
that I learned quite a little bit about deception. And I am sure that
some people were quite firmly convinced that I would do nothing except
deceive this committee when I appeared before it.
I wish to assure you that I have testified to the best of my ability
about the facts that I know and facts which I can substantiate with
documentary evidence in my own records.
Those records are available to the committee. They have been made
available to the committee, and I understand that you intend to have
the United States Marshal pick them up and place them in protective
custody where they will be available for me for further study and also
to yourself.
I simply recite that as some indication that in my testifying before
you the only reservation that I have is that I still have some
misgivings about this kind of procedure because I fear that we are
needlessly hurting individuals when we name them in such vast numbers
as the committee has called upon me to do.
I think that some means needs to be found to change that procedure. And
I believe that there will be more information of value to convincing
the general public and to assisting the Congress, by way of its
legislative effort, if a better effort is found.
And I hope that you will seriously pay attention to the recommendations
of the American Civil Liberties Union in this regard. I think their
recommendations deserve your worthy consideration.
I think, gentlemen, that is about all that is needed for me to say at
this time. I can only say that I am available for whatever further
work that you wish to do with me. I do not want anyone to think that
they are going to make a professional witness out of me. I have no
intention of being a professional witness. I would like to be able to
live in peace and quiet because my own health will not permit me to do
all the other things that need to be done.
Mr. MOULDER. Mr. Dennett, as chairman of this committee, and on behalf
of counsel, Mr. Tavenner, and Mr. Wheeler, and I believe I should
presume to express appreciation also on behalf of the full committee
on Un-American Activities, the Congress of the United States, and
the people of America for your honest, courageous, patriotic, and
convincing testimony and information concerning communistic activities.
Your comprehensive and intelligent testimony is not only revealing but
has been ably presented by you in a patriotic and conscientious spirit
and duty to your country and also to yourself.
We commend you for your appearance and conduct before this committee
as an example--and I emphasize this--as an example of how any and
all former Communist Party members can clear themselves of any doubt
whatsoever concerning their loyalty to the United States of America.
And, speaking for myself, I am glad I had an opportunity to observe
your conduct on the witness stand, and, having heard your testimony, I
am deeply impressed by the valuable information you have given to the
committee.
Mr. Velde, do you have anything?
Mr. VELDE. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I don’t think I can add too much to your
very fine statement.
Let me say that I concur with our distinguished friend from Missouri in
his statement about your testimony.
I happened to be here last year when you refused to testify. I think
I mentioned earlier--last Thursday--that you would have a lot more
friends after you got through testifying than you had before or during
the time that you appeared here last time, and I sincerely hope that
that is true. I believe it will be.
The reason, of course, that we were not able to hear your testimony at
the sessions here last June was that we had too many other witnesses
subpenaed to be heard as we do apparently this time, Mr. Chairman.
Let me say that I think you have made a great addition to the
information that is already on file concerning the activities of the
Communist Party. But, chiefly, you have made a great contribution in
substantiating, in large part, the testimony that was given by Mrs.
Barbara Hartle and other witnesses who gave information here last June.
For that we are very appreciative.