Must read for those on the fence about the American Communist movement and who ran and supported it.

books:

	• The Venona Secrets, Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors Herbert Romerstein, Eric Breindel Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2001 - 608 pages average customer review:based on 27 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Must read for those on the fence about the American Communist movement and who ran and supported it.

It saddens me how some people still think The Rosenbergs,Hiss and others were somehow just misled or completely innocent. In the real world when I study those peoples words I usually can write them off as only following the party line to defend what is wrong despite any evidence or proof otherwise. This book puts one more salvo through an already dead theory that there was no communist subversion plot in the US. That does not detract from it's usefulness as a great reference or primer on US communist subversion. Read it for an even more in depth study of VENONA (already well described in previous reviews) Sometimes the authors do leave you to put some pieces together,nothing wrong with that,a decent education in the real world will bring you to many of the same conclusions.If the topic was not so important I would give it 4 stars for being a bit dry at times,but the juicy bits make up for it and you will come away with a better knowledge of who Americas traitors were and how they were controlled by Moscow.One last note to those on the left who may avoid this book based on reviews or content,when I read Chomsky I still come away with knowledge and a feeling I gained something, just the same as when I read Buchanan (who also says absurd things to annoy me). The truth usually lies between the extremes if you do not search both sides you will often be in the wrong.

for more information click here

The Facts Laid Bare

This book is the most complete "who's who" of the entire Soviet Communist movement from the early 1900s on. It effectively destroys the old notions that there was no connection between the Communist Party U.S.A. and Moscow. It demonstrates beyond question that Moscow's two-fold plan in the United States - influencing government policy and spying - were carried out for years by the people identified in the government hearings. The Venona decrypts, together with the examination of Soviet and American Communist archives, bring together the entire despicable story. A must-read book for those who want to sort fact from fiction concerning the history of the Soviet Union.

for more information click here

An Important Book on USSR espionage

If you went to school before the Soviet archives & Venona papers were opened up/released (1991-1995), you must read this book. If you don't know what the Venona Project's papers say, then your knowledge on immediate pre and post WWII Soviet espionage is incomplete and, most importantly, probably not accurate. The truth is uncomfortable to some- Alger Hiss was definitely a spy, as were the Rosenbergs, and penetration into New Deal personnel was very deep. Plenty of material for the anti-FDR types, and the "McCarthy was right" folks. I personally feel very uncomfortable with the fact that about 2 our of every 3 names that pop up here as spies were Jewish. Most humiliating. The authors, no anti-semites they, make the irony of Jews spying for the virulent Jew-hater Uncle Joe very clear. Like many peoples, though perhaps more so, Jews have an unfortunate tendency towards self-delusion. The book is a bit of a bumpy read, sometimes flowing smoothly, sometimes reading like its out of Reader's Digest (a bit...lowbrow??), which accounts for the 4 stars, rather than 5. It has photos of many of the spies, but overall the photographs could be much stronger.

for more information click here

Shocking Details

Much in the way revelations about the cracking of the German Enigma code have forever altered the history of the Second World War, the Venona Secrets should change the history of Soviet espionage in the United States.

This book reveals details about the extensive Soviet penetration of the Communist Party of the United States, unions, the government, industry, the Democratic Party and the media. No account of the era of McCarthyism can be viewed as complete without including some evidence of how extensive was the decades-long Soviet infiltration of the U.S. government at the highest levels -- including Harry Hopkins, a close advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt -- and of the atomic program. Soviet spying, which led to the Russian atomic bomb only four years after our own, reached the highest levels of the Manhattan Project, including J. Robert Oppenheimer; Soviet spies even targeted Albert Einstein for anti-Western propaganda efforts.

One result of the successful Soviet atomic spying was that Stalin, who knew about the atomic bomb, felt secure in giving the green light for the North Korean invasion of the south in 1950, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties.

My only, relatively minor, criticism of the book is that it is almost too detailed for a casual student of history. As someone who hasn't studied Soviet history for twenty years, some of the names had faded from my memory.

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

The Venona Files are several intercepted communiques between the Soviet Union and American Communists following WWII.

hot