Minnesota, Moscow, Manhattan. Gus Hall’s Life and Political Line Until the Late 1960s

This Study, Minnesota, Moscow, Manhattan, examines the life and political line of Gus Hall (1910-2000), the long-time general secretary of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), up until the late 1960s. The first main part of the study examines Hall's Finnish American background and his life until 1959, when he became the general secretary of the CPUSA. The second main part studies Hall's political line during the first decade of his general secretaryship. The latter part is, to a large extent, based on the documents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In the mid- 1950s the FBI managed to infiltrate two of its informers into the very top of the CPUSA. In the 1960s, the two informers, Morris and Jack Childs, provided the FBI detailed information on Gus Hall and his relations with the Soviet Union, China and other communist countries. Thanks to the Childs brothers, the FBI became fully informed about, for example, the Soviet Union's financial support to the CPUSA.

 

In addition to more than 20 000 pages of FBI's intelligence documents, this study is based on a wide variety of other historical sources, including interviews with numerous former and current CPUSA members.

 

Tuomas Savonen is a graduate of the University of Helsinki, Doctoral Program in Political, Societal and Regional Change. This PhD study was submitted in the field of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki in 2020.