"Canadian Communism is an original and scholarly history of the Communist Party of Canada (1921-1981). This work puts the Party into an international setting and compares it with similar movements in Great Britain, the United States, and France. The CPC was organized by Canadian socialists influenced by the Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and its leader Vladimir Lenin. They decided to become a section of the newly formed Communist International and to follow its guidelines. But the rise to power of Joseph Stalin, after the death of Lenin in 1924, changed the outlook and tactics of the Communist International and its affiliates. Penner traces the specific way these changes affected the CPC at every important stage in Canadian and world events. He shows how the frequent battles within the Party, and especially among the leaders, were in response to directives from the Communist International or the Soviet party. Penner credits the Canadian Communists with contributing to the building of the trade union movement, with assistance to the unemployed during the thirties, and with helping Spain's democratic government fight the fascists during the civil war. These activities, often undertaken in the face of state repression, resulted in the emergence of such popular figures as Tim Buck, Norman Bethune, Jacob Penner, J. B. Salsberg, A. A. MacLeod, and Dorise Nielsen. Penner presents a new evaluation of the Canadian Communists' tactics, the popular front, the alliance with the Liberals in the trade union movement, and the bitter conflict with the CCF. He describes the year-long debate within the Party over the Khrushchev revelations about the brutal nature of Stalin's rule, a debate that split all the Communist parties in the West and from which they have never recovered. Norman Penner has drawn the material for his book from major Canadian archives, as well as public and private collections in Britain and the U.S. He has talked with Communists and ex-Communists in all three countries and has also drawn from his own material and recollections." --

Not for King or Country tells the story of Edward Cecil-Smith, a dynamic propagandist for the Communist Party of Canada during the Great Depression. Born to missionary parents in China in 1903, Cecil-Smith came to Toronto in 1919 where he joined the Canadian militia and lived a happy life ensconced in the Protestant missionary community of Toronto. He became increasingly interested in radical politics during the 1920s, eventually joining the Communist Party in 1931. Worried by the growing strength of fascism around the world, particularly in China, Germany, Italy, and Spain during the summer of 1936, Cecil-Smith quietly departed Canada and became among the first volunteers to fight for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War. Cecil-Smith was motivated to fight not out of any sense of traditional patriotism (“for king or country”) but out of a sense that the onward march of fascism had to be stopped, and Spain was where the line had to be drawn. Not for King or Country is the first biography of a Canadian commander in the Spanish Civil War, and is also the first book to critically analyse the major battles in which the Canadian and American volunteers fought. Drawing upon declassified RCMP files, records held in the Russian Archives in Moscow, audio recordings of the volunteers, a detailed survey of maps, and battle records, as well as the Communist Party press, Not for King or Country breaks down the battles and the Party's activities in a way that will be accessible to interested readers and scholars alike.

In 1919, Bolshevik Russia and its followers formed the Communist International, also known as the Comintern, to oversee the global communist movement. From the very beginning, the Comintern committed itself to ending world imperialism, supporting colonial liberation, and promoting racial equality. Coinciding with the centenary of the Comintern's founding, Left Transnationalism highlights the different approaches interwar communists took in responding to these issues. Bringing together leading and emerging scholars on the Communist International, individual communist parties, and national and colonial questions, this collection moves beyond the hyperpoliticized scholarship of the Cold War era and re-energizes the field. Contributors focus on transnational diasporic and cultural networks, comparative studies of key debates on race and anti-colonialism, the internationalizing impulse of the movement, and the evolution of communist platforms through transnational exchange. Essays further emphasize the involvement of communist and socialist parties across Canada, Australia, India, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Latin America, South Africa, and Europe. Highlighting the active discussions on nationality, race, and imperialism that took place in Comintern circles, Left Transnationalism demonstrates that this organization - as well as communism in general - was, especially in the years before 1935, far more heterogeneous, creative, and unpredictable than the rubber stamp of the Soviet Union described in conventional historiography. Contributors include Michel Beaulieu (Lakehead University), Marc Becker (Truman State University), Anna Belogurova (Freie Universitat Berlin), Oleksa Drachewych (University of Guelph), Daria Dyakonova (Université de Montréal), Alastair Kocho-Williams (Clarkson University), Andrée Lévesque (McGill University), Lars T. Lih (Independent Scholar), Ian McKay (McMaster University), Sandra Pujals (University of Puerto Rico), John Riddell (Ontario Institute of Studies in Education), Evan Smith (Flinders University), S.A. Smith (All Souls College, Oxford), Xiaofei Tu (Appalachian State University), and Kankan Xie (Peking University).

Canada and the Cold War is a fascinating historical overview of a key period in Canadian history. The focus is on how Canada and Canadians responded to the Soviet Union -- and to America's demands on its northern neighbour.

From German conspiracies along Ontarios borders to monitoring mail between Canadian communists and Moscow an exploration of newly declassified documents.

"Canadian communism did not spring out of the ground suddenly at the end of World War I, and it was not smuggled into the country by Russian agents. The men and women who built the new movement were long-time socialist and labour militants in Canada. Inspired by the Russian Revolution and by their own experiences as leaders of the post-war labour revolt in Canada, they set about to create a new kind of party, one that could lead the fight for workers' power. The new Communist Party, formed between 1919 and 1921, quickly became the largest party on the left, with strong roots and influence in the unions and basic industry. Its members led heroic strikes. They fought for labor unity, and engaged in united electoral activity with other currents in the workers movement. They were in the forefront of the struggle for democratic rights.

Active for over 40 years with the Communist Party of Canada, Bert Whyte was a journalist, an underground party organizer and soldier during World War II, and a press correspondent in Beijing and Moscow. But any notion of him as a Communist Party hack would be mistaken. Whyte never let leftist ideology get in the way of a great yarn. In Champagne and Meatballs--a memoir written not long before his death in Moscow in 1984--we meet a cigar-smoking rogue who was at least as happy at a pool hall as at a political meeting. His stories of bumming across Canada in the 1930s, of combat and comaraderie at the front lines in World War II, and of surviving as a dissident in troubled times make for compelling reading. The manuscript of Champagne and Meatballs was brought to light and edited by historian Larry Hannant, who has written a fascinating and thought-provoking introduction to the text. Brash, irreverent, informative, and entertaining, Whyte's tale is history and biography accompanied by a wink of his eye--the left one, of course.