Discrediting the Cold War

Abstract

James Kutcher’s firing and the veteran’s struggle to regain a menial government job is a story that has largely been excluded from most narratives on the Cold War. Robert Justin Goldstein aims to “revive Kutcher from the dustbin of history” and display the moral depths of the Red Scare. A World War II veteran who lost both of his legs fighting for the US military in Italy, Kutcher was fired from his job at the Veterans Administration in 1948 since he was a Trotskyist and a member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). In the midst of the federal government’s crackdown on the left, the SWP had been placed on the Attorney General’s List of Subversive of Organizations (AGLSO), creating the legal foundation for a double amputee to lose his job. A Professor Emeritus at Oakland University, Goldstein had previously offered up a short history of Kutcher’s case in his book American Blacklist: The Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations (University Press of Kansas, 2008). In his latest book, Goldstein expands on his previous research and produces a detailed biography of the now forgotten Cold War victim, including a carefully researched blow-by-blow account of the nearly decade-long effort to reverse Kutcher’s firing. Aside from a 1953 autobiography (that was reprinted in 1973), very little has been published about Kutcher. Goldstein’s book uncovers an impressive set of previously unpublished materials about Kutcher, leading to a valuable contribution to Cold War scholarship. Through the use of correspondence files from Kutcher’s legal team and numerous FBI records, Goldstein highlights the absurdity of the case and its importance for understanding the postwar era. With Kutcher at the center of his study, Goldstein documents the history of the SWP, its placement on the AGLSO, and its efforts to publicize the plight of its most sympathetic member. Given that the SWP was anti-Stalinist and was openly critical of the Soviet Union, Kutcher and his legal team were able to craft a defense strategy that emphasized the legless veteran’s loyalty, and kept him separate from the Communist Party and its own legal woes. Goldstein shows that renowned civil liberties lawyer Joseph L. Rauh was “very anxious” in the initial stages of the case to not have Kutcher go through the same experience because of what “he saw take place in the CP trial.” Rauh later conceded that an emphasis on Kutcher’s loyalty and his opposition to the Soviet Union would help “get rid of employees who might be loyal to Russia,” creating a compelling legal foundation that in some ways further pitted ideological adversaries on the left. Kutcher still struggled in the courts as the government’s main argument revolved around how revolutionary violence was a core part of his and the SWP’s ideological beliefs. The SWP’s placement on the AGLOSO even almost cost Kutcher and his parents their government housing unit in Newark. Congress passed the Gwinn Act in 1953, which banned