Bittleman, Alexander

BITTELMAN, ALEXANDER (1890–1982). Arriving in the United States in 1912 as a young man, the Ukrainian-born Alexander Bittelman had already amassed years in the revolutionary underground fighting to overthrow the Russian government. Bittelman had joined the General Jewish Labor Bund as a thirteen-year old boy, only to run afoul of the secret police apparatus. Although Bittelman would ultimately emigrate to a new land and its altogether different political milieu, he would never venture far from his youthful political training. A characteristic hard-line Communist of the 1920s, he nevertheless attained his greatest influence and prestige within the Left of Popular Front days.

After settling in New York City, Bittelman soon joined the Jewish Socialist Federation, the semi-autonomous Yiddish-language affiliate of the Socialist Party of America. The overthrow of the czarist regime in 1917 confirmed his commitment to the revolutionary path.

When an organized proto-communist section emerged in the ranks of the Socialist Party early in 1919, Bittelman became an enthusiastic supporter. The majority of that faction split from the Socialist Party to establish the Communist Party of America (CPA) in September, 1919, with Bittelman in its ranks at its founding convention. A talented and intense writer, he emerged as a leading Yiddish-language journalist, editing in succession the CPA’s official organs in that language, Der Kampf (The Struggle) and di frayhayt (Freedom).

A leader of the Jewish Communist Federation from its inception, Bittelman joined the governing Central Executive Committee of the CPA in 1920 as well as that body’s directing Executive Council. During the underground period (1920–1923), amidst a protracted war between rival communist organizations in opposition to Moscow’s demand for merger, Bittelman took part in the Communist Unity Committee. What might have been cause for expulsion in January 1921, proved a positive benefit in May, however, when unity became a reality. He joined the governing Central Executive Committee of the new unified organization.

The struggle between rival communist parties soon morphed into a war between rival communist factions, and Bittelman cast his lot with the Chicago-based trade union group headed by William Z. Foster. Serving as Foster’s top lieutenant and expert on the theoretical side of Marxism, he contributed reams of often inflammatory factional prose to the party press, a position roughly equivalent to that served by arch-factionalist Jay Lovestone in service of the rival Ruthenberg group, concentrated in New York City.

The dysfunctional factional war of the 1920s ended in 1929 with a special gathering in Moscow of the American Commission of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. Both Lovestone, who had assumed party leadership after the sudden death of C. E. Ruthenberg in March, 1927, and Bittelman found themselves removed from American party leadership by ECCI and reassigned to Comintern work abroad. Lovestone rejected removal from office by Moscow, attempting a small coup to lock up party assets for a new organization. Expelled together with about 200 of his followers, Lovestone marched off to create a rival organization. Bittelman accepted Moscow’s authority and soon found himself en route to India as the Comintern representative.

Expelled from India in 1931, Bittelman returned to the United States, having demonstrated his loyalty. He first lived in Southern California but returned to New York in 1934 for work in the prestigious propaganda department of the Party. Here, he continued his polemics against those considered political and/or theoretical deviants, using his knowledge of classic Marxist texts to batter his victims.

Bittelman assumed control in 1937 of the “Review of the Month” feature in the Communist. The official Party monthly said to be read reluctantly or with difficulty by ordinary Communists, it did not rival the popularity of the Daily Worker or New Masses. But it carried the official stamp of Marxist authenticity, in the current Communist version, and Bittelman’s analysis at the outset of each issue was considered the authorized view of Party leaders. During this high point of industrial unionism, leftwing culture and influence of the Party itself, Bittelman championed the Popular Front abroad and at home. The legacy of Marx and Lenin, not long before a legacy of unremitting class struggle, now shifted to become democratic, easily reconciled with American patriotism and the higher points of US history, without ceasing to be loyal to the visions of the Marxist founders. Bittelman could be described as a key champion of what would later be called “Browderism.”

Ever loyal to Party views, Bittelman nevertheless retained William Foster’s confidence. After World War II, Bittelman joined in the repudiation of Browder and the resumption of class struggle views. He retained his high reputation as the Cold War accelerated and the Party slid downward.

Convicted of violating the Smith Act by acting as an unregistered agent of the Soviet Union, Bittelman was arrested along with other Party leaders in 1951. After a legal battle, he served a three-year term in federal prison, gaining release in May, 1957. The explosive revelations of the criminal abuse of power by Joseph Stalin made by Nikita Khrushchev in his so-called “secret speech” the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union found Bittelman taking the Khrushchev criticism to heart. He penned a twelve-part series, “I Take a Fresh Look,” in the party’s weekly newspaper, The Worker, then under the editorial control of party reformers. He also began work on a memoir.

Soon, the once-again reformed Bittelman came under heavy fire. The return of Foster’s followers to leadership prompted a formal condemnation by the National Executive Committee in October, 1959. Bittelman was formally expelled by his local Westchester Club early in 1960. Called before the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities in November, 1961, he refused to testify, citing the First and Fifth Amendments. He was said to be a strong supporter of the state of Israel in his later years.

Bittelman spent his last decades in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, dying at the age of ninety-two.

Draper, Theodore. American Communism and Soviet Russia. New York: Viking Press, 1960.

Ottanelli, Fraser M. The Communist Party of the United States: From the Depression to World War II. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1981.

Zumoff, Jacob A. The Communist International and US Communism, 1919–1929. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2015.

Guide to the Alex Bittelman Papers, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University. http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_062_001/