ABSTRACT
The first substantial group of scholarly works on the Communist Party United States of America (CPUSA) the Communism in American Life series, the product of a grant from the Fund for the Republic, appeared in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By the early 1990s, assisted by the consensus in historical circles that the McCarthy era represented the most disgraceful episode in American life and fading memories of a Communist menace, the revisionist interpretation of American Communism was in the ascendant. The historiography of American Communism is today very unsettled. Social and cultural historians decried the previous emphasis on politics and explored the lives, mores and social milieu of American Communism. As American-Soviet conflict intensified, and particularly during the Korean War when American troops were directly engaged with Communist forces, the CPUSA became the pariah of American society. Privately held collections of CPUSA material also became available.
