The Australian Library Journal

Disputing the history of the American library profession: a review article

Russell Cope

Karetzky, Stephen: Not seeing red: American librarianship and the Soviet Union, 1917-1960. Lanham, MD, University Press of America, 2002. xii, 505 p. ISBN 0 7618 2163 5. Price: $ US 57.00 (paper).

Introduction

Not Seeing Red is not only about American librarianship and the Soviet Union. It is as much about intellectual and political history as well. Karetzky's book brings together in a readable, if at times too expansive, flow, many strands of the Left's influence, direct or indirect, on American librarians' attitudes towards, and support for, Soviet librarianship and for 'a great social and political experiment' (p60). It is a passionate description and documentation of a pervasive pro-Soviet stance in American librarianship over some five decades. In particular, leaders of the American library profession are singled out in this regard. Inevitably it is a work which will excite ire and dispute. How we may view these issues today and how they were viewed in the intellectual climate of their own time are, of course, two different things. Truth and justice are nevertheless values which some of us would like to think have stability. More will be said on this score later in this review.

Karetzky levels charges of delusion, gullibility and naiveté against a number of leading librarians, publicists and public figures (John Dewey is one); in some more extreme cases the charges are graver. Certainly, the story of the influence of the Left in American life in the 20^th century is complex and, at its extreme, includes activity aimed to overthrow the system of government itself. There is consequently much passion in Karetzky's book, accusations and even some persiflage. It draws lines in the sand and raises a number of issues important still to a profession which sees itself as intellectually responsible and concerned with informed opinions about the clash of ideas.

Not seeing red is, however, not all about exposés and accusations. Karetzky balances his condemnations with details of 'the beginnings of scholarly research on Soviet librarianship that produced a picture quite unlike the deluded ones of previous decades' (p145). In this regard, George Chandler's 1972 volume on the Soviet library system is praised as reliable but, Karetzky adds, works such as his were 'not incorporated into the received body of knowledge of the profession' (p279). A surprising Australian name is singled out for praise, that of Howard A Gregory, who may not now be widely known to Australian librarians. This City Librarian of Prahran (1941-1952) is given an unusual accolade by Karetzky for the 'unique perspicacity displayed [in his speech to the Australian Institute of Librarians' conference in 1940] ...on the USSR' (p83). There is also a long biographical note on Gregory obtained from his widow. This example shows the seriousness and sweep of Karetzky's research[1].

The scope of Not seeing red

A single reading of Not seeing red will be insufficient to get a full grasp of its contents. Indeed, the reviewer wonders how it can ever be possible to deal with its multitude of issues within normal space limitations. The text and copious notes take up 411 pages; the rich documentation commands as much attention as the text itself. The work's wide scope (1916-1960) leads to some thin patches where analysis is supplanted by narrative, but the notes sometimes compensate for this thinness. However, one virtue must be stressed: the work has an easy style which leads the reader on effortlessly. The bibliography will be blessed by researchers for its comprehensiveness.

Stephen Karetzky has good academic qualifications (including a Columbia doctorate in library science) and has written various works including Reading research and librarianship: A history and analysis (1982) which received a lot of attention in professional circles. He is at present library director at the liberal arts Felician College at Lodi in New Jersey. He does not appear to have a personal interest in Soviet librarianship as such and to judge by the garbled version of Stalin's patronymic (p20) may have no knowledge of the Russian language. This is no sin, but means that his knowledge of Russian librarianship derives from a limited range of secondary sources. But his account of Soviet librarianship and the vital roles of Lenin and Krupskaya is satisfactory at the level of a broad orientation (chapter 1, 16-42). It is deepened in later parts of the book where specific points, such as Lenin's keen awareness of the importance of scientific information, get more attention. But Soviet librarianship is really of secondary importance in this work where attention focuses on the intellectual shortcomings of a number of 'icons' of the American library profession.

The work itself consists of ten chapters, some with accusatory titles such as 'The betrayal of the professionals: Why?' and 'The complicity of library historians'. Some chapters are fifty or more pages in length; the conclusion covers pages 401-412, and the bibliography pages 413-467. A detailed index covers pages 469-504. In other words, Karetzky has brought together a formidable array of information and documentation that must command respect. But his work belongs by tone and style not to sober scholarship and analysis, but rather to the field of political exposé, polemics and the clash of ideologies.

Criticism of high-profile American librarians is severe and at times so categorical that readers (and reviewers) may feel the need to go back and read the actual evidence for themselves. Most of us must consequently accept a lot on trust, after asking ourselves the question: Is Karetzky trustworthy? This review is an attempt to answer that question.

Some points of argument

Persons whom Karetzky names unfavourably include Harry M Lydenberg, J P Danton, R B Downs, Lawrence C Powell, Ralph E Ellsworth, Marjorie Fiske, Helen Haines, Archibald MacLeish, Ralph Shaw and Wayne Wiegand. Younger Australian librarians may not know all these names, but they are eminent persons who played leading roles in various aspects of American library affairs. In addition to individuals, fault is found with professional bodies such as the American Library Association's International Relations Board, and the Round Table for Library Service Abroad, and the Intellectual Freedom Movement. Severest criticism is directed at library historians, mostly associated with library schools. Issues such as censorship and 'balanced collections', especially with relation to works placed in American overseas libraries, are examined in turn for the influence of Leftist activists.

Karetzky is obviously keen to redress the misrepresentations and prejudices he pinpoints in various aspects of American librarianship vis-à-vis the Soviet library system. In doing this he makes an important point that is too often played down or badly distorted: the very negative depiction of pre-revolutionary Russian libraries in circulation. The picture of Russia before 1917 as a virtual Slavic abyss of ignorance and oppression was, of course, used and promoted to further the aims of overthrowing the Russian state: it is this picture that took strong root in the West. The contrast between the dark Czarist times and the shining future promised by the Bolshevik revolution underlay the early picture of Soviet library achievements. It was exactly the image that suited the Bolshevik regime to have foremost in the minds of those in the West. In correcting this distortion, Karetzky in turn gives too schematic a picture to do justice to positive features of Soviet reality. But the sad truth is that the Soviet system consciously poisoned the wells of information on a grand and continuing scale. Russian writings since the fall of the Soviet Union leave no doubt about this[2]. If only for making us keen to have a less distorted account of pre-revolut-ionary Russian librarianship and culture, Karetzky has performed a valuable service. The same applies even more strongly to Soviet times, but one wonders where the requisite objectivity can be found for this.

Many readers will be interested in how the McCarthy era is treated by Karetzky. This era still evokes for many of us to-day somewhat the same kind of responses as Czarist times did for earlier generations. Few will not have negative feelings and little confidence in either the unappealing Senator from Wisconsin and his eager acolyte Roy Cohn, or in the American political system of the time. Flowing from the McCarthy hearings and the even earlier State legislature investigations into un-American activities began the rise within America itself of anti-American feeling that was strongly promoted by leftwing sympathisers. The words 'witch hunt' came into vogue at this period. This phenomenon and the counters to it (called anti-anti-Communism by Karetzky) occupy a lot of space in Not seeing red. It needs a peculiar degree of skill to tackle the McCarthy era with its various troubled offshoots in American public life. We are not unduly surprised to find the main casualty of this politically contentious period to be truth and objectivity. It would take us too far afield to go into the issues as they deserve, but whilst Karetzky is obviously a supporter of what McCarthy was striving to achieve, the unmasking of communist infiltration into American public life, the author does succeed in making the reader willing to look at the issues with less prejudice than may have been the case earlier (p365-370). Karetzky has reviewed the transcripts of committee hearings and points out how rarely this is actually done by persons dealing with the era. He makes interesting observations about the appearance before the Californian State Senate's Committee on Education of Lawrence Clark Powell, well-known as a leading bookman, friend of contemporary avant-garde writers such as Henry Miller, and head of the UCLA Library. The nature of what transpired there, and the exaggerated via crucis Powell later claimed to have undergone, are contrasted sharply by Karetzky who claims much posturing on the part of Powell. He had been in his youth a member of the American Communist Party (p317-322).

This reviewer was in fact surprised to find himself made interested in Senator Joseph McCarthy in a way he would not have thought possible. It is now established that Alger Hiss (NKVD codename Ales) was indeed a Soviet agent; other charges by McCarthy, hotly disputed and largely disbelieved by US intellectual circles at the time, have similarly been found not too far off the mark if we are to believe the Mitrokhin Archive of KGB documents and the memoirs of the appalling General Pavel Sudoplatov[3]. If nothing else, Karetzky has produced considerable evidence of double standards at play in American political discourse of the Left. Perhaps the following quotation from the autobiography of the American academic and Yale professor, Alvin Kernan sets the context of the McCarthy era as well as any:

But we children of the Depression, raised in the Age of Roosevelt, were so indoctrinated with liberal views that we took them as simply given and obvious truth. They were the truths that academic freedom made it possible to teach. It never occurred to us to doubt that Hiss was innocent, that McCarthy was a total liar, that the state was the best means for remedying all evils; and so we joined with everyone else in reviling and laughing at Buckley.[4]

The reference to Buckley refers to the still active Conservative, William F Buckley. 'Given and obvious truth' was the last thing to be found in the passions surrounding the Soviet Union. We may wonder whether such a value as 'given and obvious truth' is easily found whenever controversial political and public policy issues come under discussion. Librarians were in no way exempt from the frailties of the time and perhaps were far more doctrinaire than many may have realised. The fellow travellers of this period were, of course, often an active force on behalf of the Soviet Union.

Karetzky tackles these sensitive issues head on and has considerable argument with library historians. In fact he devotes his longest chapter of just over 100 pages to their delinquencies. He does not spare his invective and outrage against some writers, which weakens his impact and colours his case. His personal feelings, understand-able as they may be, get in the way rather more than they should. Pamela Spence Richard and Louise Robbins are among his targets (p326-344). Analysing in particular a 1998 award-winning article in Library Quarterly by Richards ('Soviet-American library relations in the 1920s and 1930s'), Karetzky points to serious flaws vitiating its reliability. Richards has made a 'facile equation of the "establishments'' of the Soviet Union and the United States', and 'merely recycled New Left revisionist history' (p327). She draws, he claims, false parallels between the two countries. 'In actuality, the two Groups [librarians in each country] were antithetical in their most essential values and goals' (p327). Karetzky offers in effect a severe critique of this article and once more questions what he believes is the false reigning orthodoxy in American writings on the era.

Karetzky comes down even more heavily on the writings of Louise Robbins (p332-344). He says of her 1966 work Censorship and the American library:

Throughout most of the book Robbins reiterates the views of the 1950's Intellectual Freedom Movement leaders with no critical analysis or evaluation of the evidence. Their word is enough for her - quite frequently their very words ... Almost all her assertions and allegations are based on those from within the Movement: their utterances are taken on faith. While apparently sufficient for Robbins, this should not be adequate for the inquisitive reader (p333).

He then comments (p334): 'Leaving nothing to chance, positive book reviews have been insured by the choice of reviewers'. Finally he quotes with irony Carl Bowen Davis' published remark that this work by Louise Robbins 'is an example of what he [Davis] considers to be the recently increased sophistication of American library history' (p335). There is here a mixture of opinion, strong feelings and intellectual claims. The reader cannot easily decide how to distinguish where truth, balance and justice lie. There are no nuances in Karetzky's analysis.

Where the subject is so contentious and personal reputations are at stake, analytical sharpness, combined with as much distance and objectivity as possible are the guidelines that seem preferable. Perhaps shades of grey really do exist. But Not seeing red is not that kind of book: it has a strong personal orientation and an urge to denounce professional blindness and the practice of librarianship as social action of a kind he rejects.

A further look at chapter 11 ('The complicity of library historians', pp305-400) brings out points in addition to those raised already with respect to Louise Robbins and Pamela Spence Richards. Karetzky has in general a sharp tone when dealing with library historians. He opens his long chapter by reiterating earlier castigations of Marjorie Fiske and J Periam Danton whose 'biased analyses' have provided 'much shot for later histories of the period' (p305) He continues:

Ralph Ellsworth and Sarah Harris' hysterical 1960 report, The American Right Wing, has gained renewed currency in even the more academic-looking works of recent years. Conversely, the accounts by the most objective observers and scholars of the past have been ignored. Consequently, the genuine dangers posed by the Soviet Union and the international Communist movement it directed have been minimized, if not dismissed. According to these widely applauded studies of the past, the primary enemies of freedom and peace were those who were robust in their Americanism and anti-Communism (p306).

These words give a fair idea of the line of argumentation adopted throughout by Karetzky. He repeats a claim that is made in other parts of the work: the 'frequent sloppy utilization of evidence - or a failure to even look at the evidence' (p306). Those are certainly 'fighting words' and ones which set up standards for the author himself to meet. Historian John Lewis Gaddis, author of We now know: Rethinking Cold War history (1966) is attacked on pp307-309 as one of those historians prior to the fall of Communism who failed to see what, as Karetzky avers, few others did in fact see. Even now such historians are reluctant to fully face the realities 'with the advantage of hindsight and the fuller access to Communist depositories' (p308). This leads Karetzky then to focus on historians of librarianship who 'imitate the worst in contemporary academic history' (p311). Footnote 1 (p370-373) gives a detailed literature review of works which analyse the Leftwing revisionism currently predominant in American historical disciplines. The revisionist approach is, he claims,

...a major element in the field of library history [in the United States]. A full understanding of why prominent American librarians did not adhere to the most significant values of their culture and their profession could provide valuable insights into the problem democracies will always face in maintaining their free societies. It is not likely that such an understanding will come from the work of those currently conducting research in relevant areas of library history. Most fully sympathize with the librarians criticized in this book... (p312).

The criticism of ALA's International Relations Board and its Round Table for Library Service strikes at points where librarians would think ALA had shown leadership and responsibility. Karetzky touches here on issues where profess-ionalism's self-image is involved. It is no secret that professional organisations sometimes offer small groups of activists an opportunity to introduce their own agenda and to shape the organisations for non-transparent purposes. But when democratic safeguards fail or simple membership apathy takes over, dangers may emerge. That Lenin was a brilliant strategist in the use of organisational structures so as to manipulate them for ideological purposes, is now well understood[5]. Whatever the merits of the evidence Karetzky cites, the crux of the matter lies in their interpretation. His particular viewpoint is certainly a valid one, but it tends to be categorical and thus undifferentiated. Truth and understanding may suffer as a consequence. This is not to argue for a wishy-washy version of 'Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner', but rather for a stronger understanding of the nature of the values (political, social, professional) which make librarians feel they belong (if at the periphery) with those who pursue the free play of the mind with all its contradictions, dead-ends and disappointments. Ideology subordinates all values and actions to whatever is its current dogma. Soviet history with its recurrent purges and murders amply bears this out.

Explaining why all this happened

After so many examples of professional failure, Karetzky looks in chapter 10 ('The betrayal of the professionals: Why?' pp290-303) for explanations. The heading of this chapter is itself judgment with its echoes of Benda's La Trahison des Clercs. He lists some explanatory psychological, moral and cognitive pathologies which should be considered as causes for the phenomena he deals with; he then looks at the lack in the United States of a conservative body of professional thought, but does not seek an explanation for this lack. He makes an important point (in relation to Harry M Lydenberg): 'While some librarians were conservative in their private lives or their political ideology, their ethos of librarianship was still liberal' (p293). International liberalism is seen by Karetzky as having played a considerable role in United States intellectual activity and it too is a contributory cause. 'Ignorance, naiveté, fantasy, and arrogance were most evident in [the assertion of liberal internationalism] that the Communist and the democratic countries were essentially the same' (p295). In his closing section of this chapter Karetzky quotes a statement made as long ago as 1982 by Susan Sontag which is worth citing:

Imagine if you will, someone who read only the Reader's Digest between 1950 and 1970, and someone in the same period who read only The Nation or The New Statesman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of Communism. The answer, I think, should give us pause (p298).

Susan Sontag adds further 'While they [Western intellectuals] had loved justice ... they had not loved the truth'. This seems to sum up the era neatly.

Conclusion

What has been written here can scarcely be called a book review for reasons hopefully clear to the reader. It is unlikely that anyone can properly review this book without entering into a disquisition as long as Not seeing red itself. This is not to say that the work does not warrant such effort. It is an important work because it compels re-assessment of current library historiography. But it is an idiosyncratic work, striving at times to call attention to the author's own presence and moral superiority. At the beginning of this article the question was posed: Is Karetzky trustworthy? An unequivocal answer cannot be given because 'trustworthy' is a slippery term. His text is often compelling, although not always authoritative; but it is certainly worth taking seriously and makes American library history interesting in a new way. Even casual acquaintance with the controversies of contemporary historiography (The Holocaust and Nazism, Cold War studies, German reunification are some examples) make it apparent that a Manichean duality of good and evil quickly makes its appearance in disputes dealing with ideology and value systems.

The now numerous writings of former fervent followers of the Left often show a painful shift of consciousness that has profound psychological interest. Australians may note the autobiography of Eric Aarons (What's Left? 1993) as a work instructive in this regard[6]. Although Aarons did not move from the Left, it simply evaporated before his eyes. Karetzky belongs to the Right and has a religious belief to strengthen him. He judges freely and concludes too readily without allowing scope for nuances and a degree of doubt in areas where opinions may legitimately differ or be hesitant. The reader comes away with the feeling that indeed Leftist views may have been too strongly represented in American library writings and affairs, but that was equally true of a large part of the democratic West.

Karetzky's work, audacious and extreme as it may appear, invites not only American librarians to self-appraisal both in individual and organisational terms. It strengthens the profession's concern for the indisputable importance of understanding the processes of communication, the nature of information and its sub-species (propa-ganda, disinformation, misinformation), and the goal of avoiding the ideological entanglements which exist to-day as ever. It is too much to expect any of us to rise above the shortcoming of being 'all too human', but it is surely possible to achieve a wider degree of awareness of intellectual and emotional snares that are part of life in society.

Not seeing red is not perfect and is far too 'scatter-gun' in its approach to gain the reader's total conviction. But it is a work worthy of serious attention, worthy even of refutations which will no doubt fill the pages of Libraries and Culture and the Library Quarterly. If this prophecy is fulfilled, we may all be the better for a higher level of understanding of the era Karetzky deals with. Who would not want a replacement of 'false consciousness' by whatever is a step beyond it?

References

1. There is no entry for Gregory in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, so the information Karetzky provides is doubly valuable.

2. No one can do better than read the extraordinary Mitrokhin Archive to find how basic and essential espionage, murder, misinformation and lying were to official Soviet policy. This work has created a sensation both within and beyond contemporary Russia. It would appear to be almost unique in its revelations of the duplicity of a whole state ideology. Mitrokhin was a long-time career officer of the KGB and retired from its service in 1991. His archive of KGB documents, explosive and covering decades, is now in the British Isles. See The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West, by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin. (Penguin Books, 2000).

3. Pavel Sudoplatov was a general in Beria's NKVD. The fall of Beria, executed after the Khrushchev take-over on Stalin's death in 1953, led to Sudoplatov being gaoled for fifteen years because of this association. His autobiography is entitled Special tasks: the memoirs of an unwanted witness - a soviet spymaster, by Pavel Sudoplatov and Anatoli Sudoplatov with Jerrold L and Leona P Schecter. Boston, Little Brown and Co. 1995 (paperback). It has caused controversy in the United States for the revelations of Soviet infiltration into the atomic secrets of the United States. How accurate Sudoplatov's claims are of active recruitment of United States scientists is open to question, but the Mitrokhin revelations provide some support and elucidation. Sudoplatov was closely involved in the murder of Trotsky in Mexico in 1940.

4. Kernan, Alvin In Plato's cave. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1999. The quote is on p67.

5. See Selznick, Philip: The organizational weapon: a study of Bolshevik strategy and tactics. Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1960 (first published 1952.)

6. Other works of importance documenting a disillusion with the Left are: Ex-Friends by Norman Podhoretz (Free Press, 1999), Love and revolution: my journey through an epoch, by Max Eastman. (Random, 1964, the autobiography of L Trotsky's American translator), and Radical son: a generational odyssey, by David Horowitz. (Simon & Schuster, Touchstone Books, 1998). This latter book is of profound interest for its first-hand account of radical student politics at Berkeley in the 1960s and of the Huey Newton era of the Black Panthers. It is worth reading if only for the account of Huey's Berkeley doctorate! The full title of Eric Aarons's autobiography is What's Left? Memoirs of an Australian Communist (Penguin Books, 1993).

Biographical information

Dr R L Cope, sometime Visiting Associate at the University of NSW School of Information, Library and Archive Studies was NSW parliamentary librarian from 1962-1991.