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The Communist Party in Maryland, 1919-57. By Vernon L. Pedersen. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, c. 2001. Pp. [xii], 253. $29.95, ISBN 0-252-02321-8.)
This minutely detailed volume, by an American historian who teaches in Bulgaria, is one of only three state studies of the U.S. Communist Party ever published. It narrates the history of communism in Maryland from shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution to the virtual collapse of the party during the early Cold War era. A brief epilogue covers the last decades of the twentieth century to the mid-1990s, when less than a hundred party loyalists remained.
Pedersen utilizes a remarkable array of sources, including Russian archives, FBI files, Catholic Church...