“When I entered (college shortly after World War I) I was a conservative in my view of life and politics, and I was undergoing a religious experience. By the time I left, entirely by my own choice, I was no longer a conservative and I had no religion. 1 had published in a campus literary magazine an atheist playlet…. The same year, I went to Europe and saw Germany in the manic throes of defeat. I returned to Columbia, this time paying my own way. In 1925, I voluntarily withdrew for the express purpose of joining the Communist Party. For I had come to believe that the world we live in was dying, that only surgery could now save the wreckage of mankind, and that the Communist Party was history’s surgeon.”{71}
Chambers went to work for Communism in real earnest. He became co-editor of The Textile Worker, wrote for the Daily Worker, took a Communist “wife” and learned the strike tactics of trade union violence. He writes that during this period, “I first learned that the Communist Party employed gangsters against the fur bosses in certain strikes…. I first learned how Communist union members would lead their own gangs of strikers into scab shops and in a few moments slash to pieces with their sharp-hooked fur knives thousands of dollars’ worth of mink skins.”{72}
It was his intention to make the Communist program the permanent pattern of his life. Before long, however, his Communist “wife” left him to go her own way and Chambers felt it would be more to his liking to make his next union (which took place in 1931) an official “bourgeois marriage” at some city hall. At this stage, Chambers would never have guessed that he also had other sensibilities which would one day take him out of Communism and make him senior editor of Time magazine at a salary of around $30,000 per year!
In 1928, Chambers saw the first series of purges in the American Communist Party. For several years, the party had been dominated by Charles E. Ruthenburg, “the American Lenin.” When Ruthenburg suddenly died there was a mad scramble for power. Jay Lovestone came out on top with William Z. Foster representing a small, noisy minority. But soon Lovestone made a serious political mistake. He sided with one of Stalin’s most powerful Russian opponents. Nikolai Bukharin, who stood for a less violent program than Stalin had in mind.
Lovestone and William Z. Foster were summoned to Moscow. When they returned, Lovestone was a broken man. He had been called a traitor by Stalin and thrown out of the party. Stalin had named Foster the heir to the throne. The next step was to force every member of the party in the United States to support Foster’s radical program or be expelled. Most Communists picked up the new set of signals from Moscow and immediately swore allegiance to Foster. But not so with Chambers. It looked to him as though Stalin were behaving exactly like a Fascist dictator by forcing the majority of the American Communists to follow leadership they had already voted against. Chambers stopped being active in the party.
For two years, by his own choice, Chambers remained outside the regular ranks. He was never expelled, nor did his loyalty to Communism change, but he deeply resented Stalin. The entire situation was changed, however, by the great depression. Chambers’ sympathies for the unemployed once more drew him back toward the party program. He also felt forced to admit that from all appearances the long-predicted collapse of American capitalism had arrived.
In the spirit of the times, Chambers wrote a story called, “Can You Hear the Voices?” It was a great success. It was made into a play, published as a pamphlet and hailed by Moscow as splendid revolutionary literature. The next thing Chambers knew he was being feted by the American Communist Party as though he had never left it. Chambers soon went back to work for the revolution.
It was in June, 1932, that Chambers was asked to pay the full price of being a Communist. The Party nominated him to serve as a spy against the United States in the employment of the Soviet Military Intelligence. For the sake of his wife Chambers tried to get out of this assignment, but a member of the Central Committee in New York told him, “You have no choice.”
Chambers soon found himself under the iron discipline of the Russian espionage apparatus. Because Communism had become his faith, Chambers blindly followed instructions. He became expert in the conspiratorial techniques of clandestine meetings, writing secret documents, shaking off followers, trusting no one, being available day and night at the beck and call of superiors.
Before long Chambers was assigned to be the key contact man for Russia’s most important spy cell in Washington, D.C. Chambers has described his espionage associations with the following persons who were later to become top officials in the United States Government:
1. Alger Hiss, whom Chambers says became a close personal friend. Hiss started out in the Department of Agriculture, and then served on the Special Senate Committee investigating the munitions industry. For awhile he served in the Department of Justice and then went to the State Department. There he made a meteoric rise, serving as Director of the highly important office of Political Affairs. He served as advisor to President Roosevelt at Yalta and as Secretary General of the International Assembly which created the United Nations.
2. Harry Dexter White, who later became Assistant Secretary of the United States Treasury and author of the Morgenthau Plan.
3. John J. Abt, who served in the Department of Agriculture, the WPA, the Senate Committee on Education and Labor and was then made a Special Assistant to the Attorney General in charge of the trial section.
4. Henry H. Collins, who served in the NRA, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Labor, and the Department of State. During World War II he became a major in the Army and in 1948 became Executive Director of the American Russian Institute (cited by the Attorney General as a Communist front organization).
5. Charles Kramer, who served in the National Labor Relations Board, the Office of Price Administration, and in 1943, joined the staff of the Senate Sub-committee on War Mobilization.
6. Nathan Witt, who served in the Department of Agriculture and then became the Secretary of the National Labor Relations Board.
7. Harold Ware, who served in the Department of Agriculture.
8. Victor Perlo, who served in the Office of Price Administration, the War Production Board, and the Treasury.
9. Henry Julian Wadleigh, who became a prominent official in the Treasury Department.
Chambers testified that he received so many confidential government documents through his contacts that it took the continuous efforts of two and sometimes three photographers to microfilm the material and keep it flowing to Russia. Chambers says he considered Alger Hiss his number one source of information. He has described how Hiss would bring home a brief case each night filled with material from the State Department. Some of these documents would be microfilmed. Others would be copied by Hiss on his typewriter or he would make summaries in longhand. It was a number of these typed documents and memos in the certified handwriting of Alger Hiss which became famous as the “Pumpkin Papers” and subsequently convicted Hiss of perjury.
In later years when Chambers was asked to give his explanation as to why so many well-educated Americans were duped into committing acts of subversion against their native country, he explained that once a person has been converted to the ideology of Communism he will consider espionage to be a moral act—a duty—committed in the name of humanity for the good of future society.