ABSTRACT
The early Communists never doubted what it was that made them Communists. "It was the Russian Revolution—the Bolshevik Revolution of November 7, 1917—which created the American Communist movement," the American Communist leader, Charles E. Ruthenberg, proclaimed. The impact of the Bolshevik revolution on the American Left Wing was stunning. It was as if some Left Wing Socialists had gone to sleep and had awakened as Communists. In the first flush of the Russian Revolution, few American Left-Wingers were in a position to make a more profound analysis of the causes for Lenin's and Trotsky's spectacular success. Whatever the reasons, their example was bound to be blissfully contagious. Some students have expressed the opinion that the American Communist movement was totally unrelated to the Socialist Left Wing of 1912. This view seems to minimize historical continuity.
