1. Luce, Henry R., “The American Century,” Life 10 (02 17, 1941): 61–65Google Scholar; reprinted in Reader's Digest 38, no. 228 (April 1941): 45–49.

2. In the past few years, Fast has generated some interest. See the collection of essays on Cold War culture in Prospects 20 (1995): 451–541Google Scholar; Seed, David, “Howard Fast and the Shape of the Political Memoir,” in Writing Lives: American Biography and Autobiography, ed. Bak, Hans (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; and Macdonald, Andrew, Howard Fast: A Critical Companion (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1996)Google Scholar.

3. “In those days of the 1920s, there was no safety net beneath the poor, no welfare, no churches handing out free dinners. Survival in poverty was your own affair. I have tried to explain this to people who expressed indignant wonder at the fact that I joined the Communist Party” (Fast, Howard, Being Red [Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990], 36Google Scholar).

4. Fast wrote the copy for Voice of America news broadcasts from its inception in 1942 to 1944, when he was removed because of his affiliation with Left organizations (ibid., 49, 51).

5. Ibid., 83. The year 1944 was the high-water mark for Communist Party enrollments. Most of those who joined at that time, however, left soon after as relations cooled between the United States and the USSR.

6. Letter from Howard Fast (New York) to A. Chakovsky (Moscow), May 19, 1955, in Inostrannaia Literatura (Foreign Literature) archive, Russian State Archive of Literature and Culture, Moscow [hereafter cited as IL archive], f. 1573, op. 1, d. 12, 1. 72. The following abbreviations of transliterated Russian documentary identification terms are used in reference to archival material: f., fond (stock); op., opis (catalog); d., delo (matter); and 1[1]., list[y] (page[s]).

7. Letter from Howard Fast (New York) to Boris [Polevoy?] (Moscow), September 16, 1955, in Union of Soviet Writers archive, Russian State Archive of Literature and Culture, Moscow [hereafter cited as USW archive], f. 631, op. 26, d. 3845. The English is my translation of the Russian: “Oni nenavidyat etu traditsiu tak zhe yarostno, kak oni nenavidyat nas, dazhe yesli o pokoynikakh oni i naxodyat inogda lestnie slova.”

8. Letter from Howard Fast (New York) to A. Chakovsky (Moscow), March 18, 1955, in IL archive, f. 1573, op. 1, d. 11, 1. 96.

9. Howard Fast, “On the Role of the Critic,” in IL archive, f. 1573, op. 1, d. 987, 11. 42–52. This essay was published in Inostrannaia Literatura (Foreign Literature) 4 (1956): 2Google Scholar.

10. Letter from Howard Fast (New York) to B. Polevoy (Moscow), September 19, 1956, in USW archive, f. 631, op. 26, d. 3886.

11. “I wish that more good left-wing writing were being done in our country, but the terror is mounting very rapidly and I find, to my constant disappointment, that writers are not the most courageous of people” (letter from Howard Fast [New York] to P. Pavlenko [Moscow], October 12, 1949, in P. A. Pavlenko archive, Russian State Archive of Literature and Culture, Moscow [hereafter cited as PAP archive, f. 2199, op. 1, d. 189.

12. Letter from Howard Fast (New York) to P. Pavlenko (Moscow), April 26, 1951, in PAP archive, f. 2199, op. 1, d. 189.

13. Letter from Howard Fast (New York) to B. Polevoy (Moscow), September 19, 1956, in USW archive, f. 631, op. 26, d. 3886.

14. Citizen Tom Paine is a fictionalized biography of Tom Paine, pamphleteer and rabble-rouser of the American revolution, who is represented as the first professional revolutionary, a proto-Marxist writer who shares most of the attributes of the typical Fast hero. In its representation of the American revolution, the novel recasts the war for independence as a fight for the communist values of solidarity, classlessness, and democracy that was later co-opted by American businessmen for their own ends. If one takes Citizen Tom Paine as history, Fast seems say that the communist revolution happened in 1776, only his contemporaries have forgotten. In this revisionary view, the original United States most closely resembles the American Left or the Soviet Union, fighting for its democratic ideals, while imperialistic England acts like Fast's vision of the United States, concerned with its own growing wealth and heedless of the injustice it has inflicted. Fast invites these comparisons with his use of anachronistic language and concepts, such as comrade, worker, and proletariat, which are used in the manner in which they were used in the 1950s, with all the connotations of communism intact. For example, Tom Paine calls out in a speech, “Listen to me, comrades!” (Fast, Howard, Citizen Tom Paine [New York: World, 1943], 130Google Scholar).

15. His historical novels reveal their own biases. In Citizen Tom Paine, for example, Fast represents the American Revolution as a fight initially led by American workers that was taken over by the business classes eager to move the United States down a capitalist road. However, historians argue that the class of small businessmen provided the strong impetus for revolution while the workers were only sporadically involved (Eisinger, Chester, Fiction of the Forties [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963], 92)Google Scholar.

16. Ridley, F. A., Spartacus: A Study in Revolutionary History (London: Independent Labour Party, 1944)Google Scholar. Ridley notes references to Spartacus in Voltaire, Plutarch, and Appian as well as in novels by Mitchell, J. Leslie (Spartacus [1933; rept. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1990])Google Scholar and Koestler, Arthur (The Gladiators [New York: Macmillan, 1939])Google Scholar. See also Rubinsohn, Wolfgang Zeer, Spartacus' Uprising and Soviet Historical Writing, trans. Griffith, John G. (1983; rept. Oxford: Oxford Bow, 1987])Google Scholar. Rubinsohn traces the Spartacus story from its mention in Marx and Engels to Soviet historical accounts. Spartacus is mentioned in letters between Marx and Engels (Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, Correspondence 1846–95, ed. Torr, D. [New York: International, 1934], 126Google Scholar).

17. Macdonald, , Howard Fast, 23Google Scholar.

18. I refer to the characteristics of the socialist-realist positive hero described by Clark, Katerina in Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

19. For example, Walter Lippman said in 1945, “What Rome was to the ancient world, what Great Britain has been to the modern world, America is to be to the world of tomorrow” (quoted in Brinkley, Alan, “For America, It Truly Was a Great War,” New York Times Magazine, 05 7, 1995, 54–57Google Scholar, which is quoted in Patterson, James T.Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 [New York: Oxford University Press], 7–8Google Scholar).

20. Although invited by Varinia to leave Rome and accompany her in exile, Gracchus chooses not to leave the city that he loves (318). There is also a distinction between the city and the country at work here in the difference in the radical consciousness of Spartacus and the inability of Gracchus to change until the very end. Fast always held an idealized view of the country and its potential for fostering an authentic life as it does for the slaves, who create a just society around Mount Vesuvius. The city seems for Fast to be inherently corrupting, perhaps because it puts the inequalities of society on view every day so that they become accepted as inevitable.

21. Diggins, John Patrick, The Rise and Fall of the American Left (1973; rept. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), 189Google Scholar.

22. Letter from Howard Fast (New York) to B. Polevoy (Moscow), September 19, 1956 USW archive, f. 631, op. 26, d. 3886.

23. See, for example, Lynd, Henry S. and Lynd, Helen Merrell, Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1929)Google Scholar; and Spock, Benjamin's Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (New York: Pocket, 1946)Google Scholar.

24. The use of homosexuality as a marker of sexual/political deviance appears throughout 1950s culture. It is ironic that homosexuality was used by Fast as the sign of capitalist decadence — the sexual equivalent of commodification and consumer culture — because it was used by the U.S. government as a sign of possible anti-U.S. leanings. In the early 1950s, homosexuals were included among groups considered security risks in sensitive positions. Clearly, homosexuality was a mark of otherness from either side of the barricades. See Nadel, Alan, Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Corber, Robert J., Homosexuality in Cold War America: Resistance and the Crisis of Masculinity (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and In the Name of National Security: Hitchcock, Homophobia, and the Political Construction of Gender in Postwar America (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; and Berube, Alan, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II (New York: Free Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

25. Letter from Howard Fast (New York) to Mrs. R. B. Shipley (U.S. State Department, Washington), March 6, 1951, in Literaturnaia Gazeta archive, Russian State Archive of Literature and Culture, Moscow, f. 634, op. 3, d. 180, 1. 238. The English is my translation from the Russian, “Ya ne napisal ni odnogo slova krome kak iz lubvi positaniya i uvazhaniya ludshikh traditsiy i shastliveyshego buduwego soedinennykh shtatov Ameriki.”

26. Letter from Howard Fast (New York) to P. Pavlenko (Moscow), April 26, 1951, in PAP archive, f. 2199, op. 1, d. 189.

27. Letter from Howard Fast (New York) to Boris [Polevoy?] (Moscow), April 29, 1955, in USW archive, f. 631, op. 26, d. 3845.

28. “Biographical Reports on U.S. Writers,” in USW archive, f. 631, op. 14, d. 1113.

29. The Union of Soviet Writers was the official governmental organization of writers of fiction, poetry, literary criticism, and film. It was a major cultural arm of the government and the Party and oversaw the support, publication, and criticism of literature. The Union of Soviet Writers branch that Fast had contact with was the Foreign Bureau, which was responsible for overseeing the literary contact between the Soviet Union and the rest of the world, in conjunction with the Ministry of International Affairs, the Cultural Office of the Embassy, and the International Bureau of Cultural Exchange.

30. “Correspondence with Writers and Public U.S. and Canada on the Publication of Their Work,” in IL archive, f. 1573, op. 1, d. 43, 1. 79.

31. Letter from L. Kislova (VOKS) to Chuvikov, P. A., director, Inostrannaia Literatura (Foreign Literature), 01 5, 1952Google Scholar, in USSR Society of Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS) archive, State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow, f. 5283, op. 22s, d. 337, 1. 1.

32. Official List of Prize Recipients for 1953, in Committee for the Lenin Prize for Promoting Peace Among Nations archive, State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow, f. 9522, op. 1, d. 26.

33. “Minutes of the Meeting of Foreign Commission of the Union of Soviet Writers of USSR, Bureau of Criticism and Literature, RSFSR, on the Theme of Contemporary American Literature in Russian Translation,” November 25, 1959, in USW archive, f. 631, op. 26, d. 3983, 1. 5.

34. From “List of Howard Fast's Works, Published in the USSR from 1948–1956,” in USW archive, f. 631, op. 26, d. 3898.

35. Letter from Boris Polevoy (Moscow) to Howard Fast (New York), no date, in USW archive, f. 631, op. 26, d. 3824.

36. Letter from P. Pavlenko (Moscow) to Howard Fast (New York), no date, in USW archive, f. 631, op. 26, d. 3378.

37. Ibid.

38. Letter from Boris Polevoy (Moscow) to Howard Fast (New York), December 31, 1954, in USW archive, f. 631, op. 26, d. 3824.

39. Letter from P. Pavlenko (Moscow) to Howard Fast (New York), April 26, 1951, in PAP archive, f. 2199, op. 1, d. 189.

40. Zil'berbord, B. A., “Howard Fast: Fighter for Peace and Democracy” (Ph.D. diss., Moscow, 1954)Google Scholar; Beglova, L. D., “The Tradition of the Proletarian Novel in 1930s USA and Problems in the Development of Socialist Realism in the Postwar Progressive American Novel” (Ph.D. diss., Moscow 1973)Google Scholar; Mirkamalova, F., “The Stylistics of Howard Fast's Novels” (Ph.D. diss., Tashkent, 1954)Google Scholar; and Dubashinskii, I. A., “Exposure of American Imperialism in the Progressive Literature of US (1946–1951)” (Ph.D. diss., Moscow, 1952)Google Scholar.

41. Letter from P. Pavlenko (Moscow) to Howard Fast (New York), no date, in USW archive, f. 631, op. 26, d. 3378.

42. Letter from M. Apletin (Moscow) to K. Simonov (Moscow), June 22, 1952, in USW archive, f. 631, op. 26, d. 3789.

43. Therefore, his reception in the Soviet Union cannot be interpreted in the same way as reception is popularly understood in the United States. Although Fast speaks of his popularity in the Soviet Union, the cultural apparatus in the Soviet Union made it difficult to determine whether a writer was sought out by many readers or whether the writer was being pushed by the system. Thus, beginning with the choice of works to be translated and continuing to the volume of the print run, and book reviews, statistical evidence can tell us little of the desires of the audience and of an author's influence. Although there was a mechanism in place for providing feedback to writers after publication, this cycle of popular discussion and commentary was not available to Fast. Fast's “popularity” tells us more about the goals of the apparatus — how much they wanted Fast to be known and appreciated — than it does about his appeal for the Russian audience. On the cycle of reader response and commentary in Soviet literature, see Lahusen, Thomas, How Life Writes the Book: Real Socialism and Socialist Realism in Stalin's Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 151–78Google Scholar.

44. Letter from Howard Fast (New York) to A. Fadeev (Moscow), March 28, 1951, in USW archive, f. 631, op. 26, d. 3378.

45. Howard Fast, “On the Role of the Critic,” in IL archive, f. 1573, op. 1, d. 987, 11. 42–52; published in Foreign Literature 4 (1956): 2Google Scholar.

46. A. Kahn's review of The Naked God, in USW archive, f. 631, op. 26, d. 4296, 11. 5–6.

47. Rather, Fast equates the nation with the people, but the people here is again a concept rather than any particulars (idealized, fictionalized citizens fulfill this role in Citizen Tom Paine, not actual historical figures). There is a similarity here to Fast's representations of Paine's idea of God. Paine says that he sees God present in creation, that is, outside of the institution of the Church, and this leads everyone to label him an atheist.

48. Letter from Howard Fast (New York) to Boris Izakov (Moscow), February 15, 1957, in USW archive, f. 631, op. 26, d. 3921.

49. Fast constantly pictured himself as between or outside of established categories thanks to his impoverished background, his vocation as a writer, his embrace of communism, and his rejection of communism. This formed the backbone of his concept of the writer's vocation as well — that of the critic commenting on society as an observer. The writer, then, occupied a privileged place, free from that which kept others blind to the workings of history. He wrote, “It seems that we [writers] out of the whole world have imposed upon us the curse of the necessity of looking at the world in utter freedom and independence. Historically, the world has found this very annoying.” Progressive writers, furthermore, “were always a minority trend, always rebels, always castigated, always persecuted in one form or another.” Fast credited his own ability to understand and critique American society to his position as a progressive writer and the persecution that he experienced because of his political beliefs (letter from Howard Fast [New York] to Boris Polevoy [Moscow], January 15, 1957, in USW archive, f. 631, op. 26, d. 3921; and Fast, , Literature and Reality, 38Google Scholar).