American Bolsheviki: The Beginnings of the First Red Scare, 1917 to 1918

Authors

Jonathan DunningFollow

Editor's Notes

Within American Bolsheviki: The Beginnings of the First Red Scare, 1917 to 1918, Dunning works to describe the events that led up to what is defined as the First Red Scare. The Dunning focuses primarily on how the events during 1917-1918 led to the widespread panic that developed in American society.

Abstract

A consensus has developed among historians that widespread panic consumed the American public and government as many came to fear a Bolshevik coup of the United States government and the undermining of the American way of life beginning in early 1919. Known as the First Red Scare, this period became one of the most well-known episodes of American fear of Communism in US history. With this focus on the events of 1919 to 1920, however, historians of the First Red Scare have often ignored the initial American reaction to the October Revolution in late 1917 and throughout 1918. A study of this earlier period demonstrates that American fear and hatred of Bolshevism emerged immediately after the Bolshevik uprising in Russia. For over a year prior to 1919, the American press, American authorities, and American leaders claimed the American Bolsheviki plotted to seize control of the US. While fear of Bolshevism in American society during the period of 1917 to 1918 did not become as widespread as it did from 1919 to 1920, a study of these early years aids historical understanding of how the First Red Scare developed in American society and challenges widely accepted notions of when the First Red Scare began.

Recommended Citation

Dunning, Jonathan (2019) "American Bolsheviki: The Beginnings of the First Red Scare, 1917 to 1918," Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal: Vol. 3: Iss. 2, Article 4.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/steeplechase/vol3/iss2/4

References

Primary

Columbia University Quarterly. Columbia UP, 1918. Hathi Trust Digital Library, babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hwxntn;view=1up;seq=82. Accessed 12 Nov. 2017.

The Espionage Act of 1917. Edited by S. Mintz and S. McNeil, 2016. Digital History, www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=3&psid=3904. Access 10 Nov. 2017.

“Historical Newspapers from 1700s-2000s.” Newspapers.com, www.newspapers.com/.

The New York Times Online Database. The New York Times, nytimes.com.

Wilson, Woodrow. “An Address to a Joint Session of Congress.” 2 April 1917. World War I Document Archive, wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Wilson's_War_Message_to_Congress. Accessed 28 October 2017.

Wilson, Woodrow. “An Address in Buffalo to the American Federation of Labor.” The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 45, 15 Jan. 1918, edited by Arthur S. Link, et al., Princeton UP, 1984.

Secondary

Filene, Peter G. American Views of Soviet Russia, 1917-1965. Dorsey P, 1968.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution, rev. ed., Oxford UP, 2008.

Kennan, George F. “Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1920.” Russia Leaves the War, vol. 1, Princeton UP, 1956.

Lasch, Christopher. The American Liberals and the Russian Revolution. McGraw-Hill, 1972.

Ryan, Erica J. Red War on the Family: Sex, Gender, and Americanism in the First Red Scare.

Temple UP, 2015.

Thomas Jr., William H. Unsafe for Democracy: World War I and the U.S. Justice Department’s

Covert Campaign to Suppress Dissent. UP of Wisconsin, 2008.