Fools for communism.

• Author: Foner, Eric
• Position: Letters - Letter to the Editor

I hope the rest of reason is more accurate than Glenn Garvin's review "Fools for Communism" (April), which references me. Garvin says "Foner ... denounces 'the obsessive need to fill in the blank pages of the Soviet era.'"

He is referring to an article I wrote after teaching in Russia in 1990. I did not "denounce" the focus on the Soviet past among the people I met in Moscow at all--I reported it, as part of a discussion of a museum exhibition on one of Stalin's prison camps and, more generally, of how Gorbachev's policy of "openness" had unleashed a wide-ranging discussion of history. As a historian I applaud all efforts to uncover forgotten or suppressed aspects of the past. How this qualifies me as one of the historians supposedly "in denial" about Soviet history is difficult to understand.

It is unclear if this misrepresentation stems from the book under review or is the invention of the reviewer. Either way, it does not reflect well on your generally interesting magazine.

Eric Foner

DeWitt Clinton Professor of History

Columbia University

New York, NY

Glenn Garvin writes, "During World War II, when the Soviet Union and the United States were allied against Hitler, [Christopher] Trumbo's Communist father, Dalton, also named names, secretly pointing the FBI to Hollywood figures he believed were suspiciously anti-war. But there was no suggestion during the [2003] press conference [about Hollywood and the blacklist] that his screenwriting Oscar be revoked."

The assertion that Trumbo pointed "the FBI to Hollywood figures he believed were suspiciously anti-war" is a product of Garvin's fecund imagination. There is no evidence to support it. The only reference to Trumbo's speaking to the FBI that I know of can be found in his published letters, Additional Dialogue: Letters of Dalton Trumbo, 1942-61 (M. Evans & Co.). Anybody sufficiently interested in Garvin's garbled thesis can find enlightenment on page 26 of that volume.

Finally, at the press conference Garvin attended, there was no suggestion that anybody's Oscar "be revoked." Revoking Oscars originates with Garvin. And by the way, Dalton Trumbo was given two of them--for motion pictures he wrote using a pseudonym during the time he was blacklisted and unable to find work using his own name.

Christopher Trumbo

Beverly Hills, CA

Glenn Garvin replies: If anything, both the book In Denial and my review soft-pedal the tone of Foner's essay, which appeared in the December 1990 issue of Harper's...