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13 Photos of Powerful Communist Leaders and Dictators

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From Karl Marx to Joseph Stalin to Mao Zedong, the label of communism has been attached to these figures—and their often ruthless governments—through history.

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History Crunch - History Articles, Summaries, Biographies, Resources and More

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Espionage, or spying, is when one secretly gathers information about a foreign government or a competing business, with the purpose of placing one's own government or business at some military or financial advantage. Espionage usually involves a government or person getting access to information that is considered secret or confidential. The secret information is taken by the spy without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is illegal and against the law. Espionage was common during the Cold War and led to other Cold War event such as: McCarthyism.

The Cold War was a major world event that took place from approximately 1945 until 1990. In general, the Cold War was a period of increased tensions and hostility between the superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR). Espionage played an important role in the Cold War and highlighted the ongoing tensions between the two superpowers.

Espionage was a key tool of the - This may involve information within a company that is one of a kind or unique to the world. If that information is obtained by the spying country then the employment jobs and work generated from that information may go to another country. Countries spy on other countries (and the companies in that country) to get an economic advantage. Secondly, the company's information may be used by the military and is secret due to its final use in the military. An example of this is the companies who produce the material used by the United States Air Force to make certain aircraft "stealth". (This is a secret process used to make United States military aircraft invisible to radar). Companies in the United States may be providing the United States military with some of the elements that go into making an airplane invisible to radar. Cold War and helped both superpowers (the United States and the Soviet Union) in their policies to expand their influence. These countries conducted espionage against each other and other countries to get information on subjects such as military secrets, government secrets; or economic secrets.

Military Secrets - One country's military secrets may be of interest to another, especially if the two countries have a history of conflict, (not being at peace and they may share a border). The military information may involve secret defense planning by a country's military, its methods of operations, its personnel, its secret specialized equipment or weapons in use by that military, or the military's capabilities in any location of the world.

Government Secrets - This may involve information about a government's secret approach to another country or to specific issues like the environment or foreign spending. This may also involve the spy attempting to learn information about the country's own intelligence service, its operations and personnel within that intelligence service, an example being the Russian Intelligence Service (SVR) may be interested in the people who are employed in the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
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Economic Secrets

During the Cold War both superpowers (and many other major nations) maintained government agencies related to espionage (spying) and intelligence gathering. For example, in the United States these functions were carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The CIA's Cold War activities ranged from general surveillance of suspected foreign agents, to the deployment of agents abroad, to illicit operations like assassinations and human experimentation. The CIA also supported US foreign policy by providing support, funding and equipment to anti-communist leaders and groups abroad. The Soviet Union maintained its own agencies, most notably the KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, or 'Committee for National Security'). The KGB assumed responsibility for both domestic security and foreign intelligence. Decades of experience, along with a greater preparedness to employ devious tactics, gave the Soviet Union a distinct 'head start' when it came to espionage. During World War II, Moscow prioritized the infiltration of the Manhattan Project, America's nuclear weapons research program. Soviet agents were able to obtain and pass on technical information about this program, including blueprints, with remarkable ease.

​The most effective way to gather and information and intelligence about the enemy, (or potential enemy), is by infiltrating the enemy's (or other country's) government. This is the job of the spy, (or an espionage agent). Spies can bring back all sorts of information concerning the size and strength of the other country's military and its capabilities. Espionage has been going on for a number of years. In the 1960's the intense espionage activity between the United States and the Soviet Union and China involved nuclear weapons secrets. More recently espionage agencies have targeted the illegal drug trade and persons believed to be terrorists. Since 2008 the United States has charged at least 57 people for attempting to spy for China.

A country will attempt to recruit an 'agent' or person from another country. This recruited agent is called a 'human source'. A good human source is of great value to a country as he or she may be deeply involved in the other country's intelligence service, military or access to secret information of an economic advantage.

Spying is also conducted by the interception of communications. Examples are telephone calls, e-mails, or text messages.
Today, some countries now have the ability to conduct cyber espionage against another country. This is when access to restricted or secret computer data banks is illegally made. That information is then illegally transferred to the attacking country. This type of interception may be of a more general nature targeting another country's specific government department or it may be targeted to a specific person.
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There were several examples of espionage and spying during the years of the Cold War and for the purposes of one superpower trying to gain an advantage over the other.

A final example of a very damaging spy to the United States was the case of Mr. Aldrich Ames. He was employed in the United States Central Intelligence Agency but was recruited by the Soviet Union and sold secret information to them from 1985 to 1993. Ames was later determined to have been responsible for the execution of about a dozen (12) agents spying for the United States. These were persons employed with the government of the Soviet Union who were recruited as spies by the United States. Ames had told the soviets the identities of all these spies. Ames had received over 2 and a half million dollars from the Soviets for his secret information. He was sentenced to life in prison.

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Espionage, or spying, is when one secretly gathers information about a foreign government or a competing business, with the purpose of placing one's own government or business at some military or financial advantage. Espionage usually involves a government or person getting access to information that is considered secret or confidential.

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After overthrowing the centuries-old Romanov monarchy, Russia emerged from a civil war in 1921 as the newly formed Soviet Union. The world's first Marxist-Communist state would become one of the biggest and most powerful nations in the world, occupying nearly one-sixth of Earth's land surface, before its fall and ultimate dissolution in 1991. The United Socialist Soviet Republic, or U.S.S.R., was made up of 15 soviet republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

The Russian Revolution

The Soviet Union had its origins in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Radical leftist revolutionaries overthrew Russia's Czar Nicholas II, ending centuries of Romanov rule. The Bolsheviks established a socialist state in the territory that was once the Russian Empire.

A long and bloody civil war followed. The Red Army, backed by the Bolshevik government, defeated the White Army, which represented a large group of loosely allied forces including monarchists, capitalists and supporters of other forms of socialism.

In a period known as the Red Terror, Bolshevik secret police-known as Cheka-carried out a campaign of mass executions against supporters of the czarist regime and against Russia's upper classes.

A 1922 treaty between Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Transcaucasia (modern Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The newly established Communist Party, led by Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, took control of the government. At its peak, the USSR would grow to contain 15 Soviet Socialist Republics.

Joseph Stalin

Georgian-born revolutionary Joseph Stalin rose to power upon Lenin's death in 1924. The dictator ruled by terror with a series of brutal policies, which left millions of his own citizens dead. During his reign-which lasted until his death in 1953-Stalin transformed the Soviet Union from an agrarian society to an industrial and military superpower.

Stalin implemented a series of Five-Year Plans to spur economic growth and transformation in the Soviet Union. The first Five-Year Plan focused on collectivizing agriculture and rapid industrialization. Subsequent Five-Year Plans focused on the production of armaments and military build-up.

Between 1928 and 1940, Stalin enforced the collectivization of the agricultural sector. Rural peasants were forced to join collective farms. Those that owned land or livestock were stripped of their holdings. Hundreds of thousands of higher-income farmers, called kulaks, were rounded up and executed, their property confiscated.

The Communists believed that consolidating individually owned farms into a series of large state-run collective farms would increase agricultural productivity. The opposite was true.

The Great Purge

Amid confusion and resistance to collectivization in the countryside, agricultural productivity dropped. This led to devastating food shortages.

Millions died during the Great Famine of 1932-1933. For many years the USSR denied the Great Famine, keeping secret the results of a 1937 census that would have revealed the extent of loss.

The Ukrainian famine-known as the Holodomor, a combination of the Ukrainian words for "starvation" and "to inflict death"-by one estimate claimed the lives of 3.9 million people, about 13 percent of the population.

Stalin eliminated all likely opposition to his leadership by terrorizing Communist Party officials and the public through his secret police.

During the height of Stalin's terror campaign, a period between 1936 and 1938 known as the Great Purge, an estimated 600,000 Soviet citizens were executed. Millions more were deported, or imprisoned in forced labor camps known as Gulags.

The Cold War

Following the surrender of Nazi Germany at the end of World War II, the uncomfortable wartime alliance between the Soviet Union and the United States and Great Britain began to crumble.

The Soviet Union by 1948 had installed communist-leaning governments in Eastern European countries that the USSR had liberated from Nazi control during the war. The Americans and British feared the spread of communism into Western Europe and worldwide.

In 1949, the U.S., Canada and its European allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO). The alliance between countries of the Western bloc was a political show of force against the USSR and its allies.

In response to NATO, the Soviet Union in 1955 consolidated power among Eastern bloc countries under a rival alliance called the Warsaw Pact, setting off the Cold War.

The Cold War power struggle-waged on political, economic and propaganda fronts between the Eastern and Western blocs-would persist in various forms until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Khrushchev And De-Stalinization

After Stalin's death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev rose to power. He became Communist Party secretary in 1953 and premier in 1958.

Khrushchev's tenure spanned the tensest years of the Cold War. He instigated the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 by installing nuclear weapons just 90 miles from Florida's coast in Cuba.

At home, however, Khrushchev initiated a series of political reforms that made Soviet society less repressive. During this period, later known as de-Stalinization, Khrushchev criticized Stalin for arresting and deporting opponents, took steps to raise living conditions, freed many political prisoners, loosened artistic censorship, and closed the Gulag labor camps.

Deteriorating relations between the Soviet Union and neighboring China and food shortages across the USSR eroded Khrushchev's legitimacy in the eyes of the Communist party leadership. Members of his own political party removed Khrushchev from office in 1964.

Sputnik

The Soviets initiated rocketry and space exploration programs in the 1930s as part of Stalin's agenda for building an advanced, industrial economy. Many early projects were tied to the Soviet military and kept secret, but by the 1950s, space would become another dramatic arena for competition between dueling world superpowers.

On October 4, 1957, the USSR publicly launched Sputnik 1-the first-ever artificial satellite-into low Earth orbit. The success of Sputnik made Americans fear that the U.S. was falling behind its Cold War rival in technology.

The ensuing " Space Race " heated up further in 1961 when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space.

U.S. President John F. Kennedy responded to Gagarin's feat by making the bold claim that the U.S. would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. The U.S. succeeded-on July 16, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon.

Mikhail Gorbachev

A longtime Communist Party politician, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985. He inherited a stagnant economy and a crumbling political system. He introduced two sets of policies he hoped would reform the political system and help the USSR become a more prosperous, productive nation. These policies were called glasnost and perestroika.

Gorbachev's glasnost plan called for political openness. It addressed personal restrictions of the Soviet people. Glasnost eliminated remaining traces of Stalinist repression, such as the banning of books (like Boris Pasternak's Nobel Prize-winning " Dr. Zhivago") and the much-loathed secret police (though the KGB wouldn't fully dissolve until the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991). Newspapers could criticize the government, and parties other than the Communist Party could participate in elections.

Perestroika was Gorbachev's plan for economic restructuring. Under perestroika, the Soviet Union began to move toward a hybrid communist-capitalist system, much like modern China. The policy-making committee of the Communist Party, called the Politburo, would still control the direction of the economy. Yet the government would allow market forces to dictate some production and development decisions.

Collapse of the Soviet Union

During the 1960s and 1970s, the Communist Party elite rapidly gained wealth and power while millions of average Soviet citizens faced starvation. The Soviet Union's push to industrialize at any cost resulted in frequent shortages of food and consumer goods. Bread lines were common throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Soviet citizens often did not have access to basic needs, such as clothing or shoes.

The divide between the extreme wealth of the Politburo and the poverty of Soviet citizens created a backlash from younger people who refused to adopt Communist Party ideology as their parents had.

The USSR also faced foreign attacks on the Soviet economy. In the 1980s, the United States under President Ronald Reagan isolated the Soviet economy from the rest of the world and helped drive oil prices to their lowest levels in decades. When the Soviet Union's oil and gas revenue dropped dramatically, the USSR began to lose its hold on Eastern Europe.

Meanwhile, Gorbachev's reforms were slow to bear fruit and did more to hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union than to help it. A loosening of controls over the Soviet people emboldened independence movements in the Soviet satellites of Eastern Europe.

Political revolution in Poland in 1989 sparked other, mostly peaceful revolutions across Eastern European states and led to the toppling of the Berlin Wall. By the end of 1989, the USSR had come apart at the seams.

An unsuccessful coup by Communist Party hard-liners in August 1991 sealed the Soviet Union's fate by diminishing Gorbachev's power and propelling democratic forces, led by Boris Yeltsin, to the forefront of Russian politics.

On December 25, Gorbachev resigned as leader of the USSR. The Soviet Union ceased to exist on December 31, 1991.

SOURCES:

Guns or butter problems of the Cold War. CIA Library.
Revelations from the Russian Archives. Library of Congress.
Sputnik, 1957. U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian.

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After overthrowing the centuries-old Romanov monarchy, Russia emerged from a civil war in 1921 as the newly formed Soviet Union. The world's first Marxist-Communist state would become one of the biggest and most powerful nations in the world, occupying nearly one-sixth of Earth's land surface, before its fall and ultimate dissolution in 1991.

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Since its start a century ago, Communism, a political and economic ideology that calls for a classless society in which everything is shared equally, has seen a series of surges-and declines. What started in 1917 Russia, became a global revolution, taking root in countries as far-flung as China and Korea to Kenya and Sudan to Cuba and Nicaragua.

Communism launched from Lenin's October Revolution and spread to China with Mao Zedong's rise to power and to Cuba, with Fidel Castro's takeover. It was the ideology behind one side of the Cold War and saw a symbolic decline with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today just a handful of countries remain under communist rule. Below is a timeline of notable events that shaped Communism's arc in history.

Soviet Union Emerges From October Revolution

* February 21, 1848: German economist and philosopher Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto, calling for a working-class revolt against capitalism. Its motto, "Workers of the world, unite!" quickly became a rallying cry.

Communism Takes Hold in China and Beyond

* July 1, 1921: Inspired by the Russian Revolution, the Communist Party of China is formed.

* 1940 to 1979: Communism is established by force or otherwise in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Yugoslavia, Poland, North Korea, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, China, Tibet, North Vietnam, Guinea, Cuba, Yemen, Kenya, Sudan, Congo, Burma, Angola, Benin, Cape Verde, Laos, Kampuchea, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Vietnam, Somalia, Seychelles, Afghanistan, Grenada, Nicaragua and others.

Cold War Begins

* October 1, 1949: Following a civil war, China's Communist Party leader, Mao Zedong declares his creation of the People's Republic of China, leading the United States to end diplomatic ties with the PRC for decades.

* July 5, 1950: Leading United Nations forces, the first U.S. troops engage in the Korean War, after communist North Korea invaded South Korea with the intent of creating a unified communist state. The war would last until July 27, 1953, with North Korea, China and the United Nations signing an armistice agreement.

Communists Win in Cuba, Vietnam

* January 1, 1959: Fidel Castro overthrows the corrupt Fulgencio Batista regime, and Cuba becomes a Communist state.

* June 4, 1989: After weeks of protests, the Communist Chinese government sends in its military to fire on demonstrators calling for democracy in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The bloody violence ends in hundreds to thousands of deaths (no official death toll was ever released).

Berlin Wall Falls, Soviet Union Dissolves

* November 9, 1989: The Berlin Wall -that separated communist East Berlin from democratic West Berlin for nearly 30 years-falls. The years 1989-90 see the collapse of communist regimes in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Benin, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Yemen.

Sources

"History of Communism," Stanford University
"Communism: Karl Marx to Joseph Stalin," Center for European Studies, University of North Carolina
"From Tsar to U.S.S.R.: Russia's Chaotic Year of Revolution," National Geographic
"The Truman Doctrine, 1947," U.S. Department of State
"The Chinese Revolution of 1949," U.S. Department of State
"The Korean War: Timeline," CBS News
"Tiananmen Square Fast Facts," CNN
"United States Invades Grenada," Politco

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Since its start a century ago, Communism, a political and economic ideology that calls for a classless society in which everything is shared equally, has seen a series of surges-and declines. What started in 1917 Russia, became a global revolution, taking root in countries as far-flung as China and Korea to Kenya and Sudan to Cuba and Nicaragua.

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What is McCarthyism? And how did it happen? - Ellen Schrecker

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Types:

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pogrom

organized persecution of an ethnic group (especially Jews)

rendition

handing over prisoners to countries where torture is allowed

boot

a form of foot torture in which the feet are encased in iron and slowly crushed

burning

a form of torture in which cigarettes or cigars or other hot implements are used to burn the victim's skin

genital torture

blunt or penetrating trauma or rape (vaginal or anal)

judicial torture

torture that is sanctioned by the state and executed by duly accredited officials

kia quen

a form of foot torture used by the Chinese in which the victim's foot was placed between three pieces of bamboo and systematically squeezed

kittee

a form of torture used by American Indians in which sensitive parts of the body were squeezed between two boards until the victim could bear no more

prolonged interrogation

a form of psychological torture inflicted by questioning the victim for hours

rack

a form of torture in which pain is inflicted by stretching the body

sensory deprivation

a form of psychological torture inflicted by depriving the victim of all sensory input

sleep deprivation

a form of psychological torture inflicted by depriving the victim of sleep

electric shock

the use of electricity to administer punishment or torture

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Types: show 21 types... hide 21 types...

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The Lavender Scare: Firing Homosexuals

Gay men and women were targeted by McCarthy-era witch-hunts. In 1950, homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder that could be reversed through electro-shock therapy. In many states, sex acts between two men or two women was illegal. Individuals who were caught having sex with members of their same gender could be arrested, charged, and imprisoned. Many people viewed gay men and women as degenerates, sexual perverts, and pedophiles. It was also believed that gay men and women were on a quest to convert the young to their perceived subversive way of life.

Until the end of the Second World War, the military had been one of the largest employers for homosexuals. With noted exceptions, for the most part, as long as a person was willing to die for his country, sexual orientation was not a major concern. For gay service members, as long as they were not caught acting on their sexual desires, they could receive an honorable discharge and be entitled to all the benefits of the GI Bill. Many service members took advantage of employment opportunities offered under the GI Bill and began working for the federal government.

Being openly gay was not a viable option in 1950s America. Gay men and women used symbols to identify their sexual orientation. Some placed colored bandanas in their back pockets to state that they were gay. Others lived in city neighborhoods known for a more relaxed and accepting lifestyle. Bars and restaurants placed rainbows in their windows to identify their establishments as a friendly place for gay men and women. Such symbols would make it easier to avoid arrest for sexual perversion.

Homosexual males became a target for McCarthy-era fervor. The belief was that homosexuals were dangerous because they were more susceptible to blackmail by communist supporters. The "lavender lads" were deemed a national security risk. It became the goal of McCarthy and his supporters to remove these lads from their posts within the State Department and other federal civil service positions.

Senator McCarthy professed that homosexuality was almost worse than communism. As such, homosexuals had to be removed from their federal positions. This stance gained public support within the anti-communist movement. Anyone that was openly gay or accused of being gay could be arrested, interrogated, and removed from their federal job. Just like the anti-communist measures employed in eliminating communist supporters from Hollywood, McCarthy implemented a guilt-by-association policy. It was not just gay people who were suspicious; it was also people who associated with a suspected gay person as a coworker, friend, or family member.

Homosexuals in particular were viewed as diseased and an invasion against the American way of life. More people were forced to resign from their federal jobs due to their sexual orientation than those charged with anti-communism. Veterans who had earned an honorable discharge from the military could see their discharge changed to dishonorable if they were accused of being a homosexual during the Lavender Scare of the 1950s. Any benefits that they had received through the GI Bill would have to be repaid to the government that charged them with an un-American way of life.

Even after McCarthyism faded, the removal of gay people from federal employment continued. Gay people were formally barred from entering the military until 1995 when President Bill Clinton implemented a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. In January 2017, the State Department officially apologized for the Lavender Scare that booted out tens of thousands of federal civil service employees solely for being gay. Much of the ongoing rhetoric surrounding the debate of constitutional protections for the LGBTQ community is rooted in the post-war witch-hunts spearheaded by Joseph McCarthy.

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American Hysteria: 5 Witch Hunts That Rocked the U.S. in the 20th Century

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The Lavender Scare: Firing Homosexuals Gay men and women were targeted by McCarthy-era witch-hunts. In 1950, homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder that could be reversed through electro-shock therapy. In many states, sex acts between two men or two women was illegal. Individuals who were caught having sex with members of their same gender [...]

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Seventy-eight percent of the people executed for witchcraft in New England in the late 17th and early 18th centuries were women. Jef Thompson/Shutterstock.com

"Witch hunt" - it's a refrain used to deride everything from impeachment inquiries and sexual assault investigations to allegations of corruption.

When powerful men cry witch, they're generally not talking about green-faced women wearing pointy hats. They are, presumably, referring to the Salem witch trials, when 19 people in 17th-century Massachusetts were executed on charges of witchcraft.

Using "witch hunt" to decry purportedly baseless allegations, however, reflects a misunderstanding of American history. Witch trials didn't target the powerful. They persecuted society's most marginal members - particularly women.

Too rich, too poor, too female

In my scholarship on the darker aspects of U.S. culture, I've researched and written about numerous witch trials. I teach a college course here in Massachusetts that explores this perennially popular but frequently misinterpreted period in New England history.

Perhaps the most salient point about witch trials, students quickly come to see, is gender. In Salem, 14 of the 19 people found guilty of and executed for witchcraft during that cataclysmic year of 1692 were women.

Across New England, where witch trials occurred somewhat regularly from 1638 until 1725, women vastly outnumbered men in the ranks of the accused and executed. According to author Carol F. Karlsen's " The Devil in the Shape of a Woman," 78% of 344 alleged witches in New England were female.

And even when men faced allegations of witchcraft, it was typically because they were somehow associated with accused women. As historian John Demos has established, the few Puritan men tried for witchcraft were mostly the husbands or brothers of alleged female witches.

Women held a precarious, mostly powerless position within the deeply religious Puritan community.

The Puritans thought women should have babies, raise children, manage household life and model Christian subservience to their husbands. Recalling Eve and her sinful apple, Puritans also believed that women were more likely to be tempted by the Devil.

'Witch Hill (The Salem Martyr)'/New York Historical Society Museum and Library

Powerless people

As magistrates, judges and clergy, men enforced the rules of this early American society.

When women stepped outside their prescribed roles, they became targets. Too much wealth might reflect sinful gains. Too little money demonstrated bad character. Too many children could indicate a deal with a devil. Having too few children was suspicious, too.

Mary Webster of Hadley, Massachusetts, was married without children and relied on neighborly charity to survive. Apparently, Webster was not meek and grateful enough for the alms she received: She developed a reputation for being unpleasant.

Webster's neighbors accused her of witchcraft in 1683, when she was around 60 years old, claiming she worked with the devil to bewitch local livestock. Boston's Court of Assistants, which presided over cases of witchcraft, declared her not guilty.

Then, a few months after the verdict, one of Webster's upstanding neighbors, Philip Smith, fell ill. Distraught residents blamed Webster and attempted to hang her, supposedly to relieve Smith's torments.

Smith died anyway. Webster, however, survived the attempted execution - much to the terror of her neighbors, I imagine.

The accused witch Mary Bliss Parsons, of Northampton, Massachusetts, was the opposite of Webster. She was the wife of the wealthiest man in town and the mother of nine healthy children.

But neighbors found Parsons to be a "woman of forcible speech and domineering ways," historian James Russell Trumbull wrote in his 1898 history of Northampton. In 1674 she was charged with witchcraft.

Parsons, too, was acquitted. Eventually, continuing witchcraft rumors forced the Parsons family to resettle in Boston.

Stay in line, woman

Prior to Salem, most witchcraft trials in New England resulted in acquittal. According to Demos, of the 93 documented witch trials that happened before Salem, 16 "witches" were executed.

But the accused rarely went unpunished.

In his 2005 book " Escaping Salem," Richard Godbeer examines the case of two Connecticut women - Elizabeth Clawson of Stamford and Mercy Disborough of Fairfield - accused of bewitching a servant girl named Kate Branch.

Both women were "confident and determined, ready to express their opinions and to stand their ground when crossed." Clawson was found not guilty after spending five months in jail. Disborough remained imprisoned for almost a year until she was acquitted.

Both had to pay the fines and fees related to their imprisonment.

Woman v woman

Most Puritans who claimed to be victims of witchcraft were also female.

In the famed Salem witch trials, the people "afflicted" by an unexplained "distemper" in 1692 were all teenaged girls.

Initially, two girls from the Reverend Samuel Parris' household claimed they were being bitten, pinched and pricked by invisible specters. Soon other girls reported similar feelings. Some threw fits, crying out that they saw terrifying specters.

Some have suggested that the girls were faking their symptoms. In a 1700 book, Boston merchant and historian Robert Calef called them " vile varlets."

Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible" also casts one of the Salem girls as the villain. His play depicts Abigail - who was, in real life, a girl of 11 - as a manipulative 16-year-old carrying on an affair with a married man. To get his wife out of the way, Abigail makes witchcraft accusations.

[ You're smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation's authors and editors. You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter. ]

Nothing in the historical record suggests an affair. But Miller's play is so widely staged that countless Americans know only this version of events.

Systematic oppression

Other Salem stories blame Tituba, an enslaved woman in the household of the Reverend Samuel Parris, for teaching witchcraft to the local girls. Tituba confessed to "signing the devil's book" in 1692, confirming Puritans' worst fears that the devil was actively recruiting.

But given her position as an enslaved person and a woman of color, it's almost certain that Tituba's confession was coerced.

This is why witch trials weren't just about accusations that today seem baseless. They were also about a justice system that escalated local grievances to capital offenses and targeted a subjugated minority.

Women were both the victims and the accused in this terrible American history, casualties of a society created and controlled by powerful men.

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Most witches are women, because witch hunts were all about persecuting the powerless

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Powerful men often proclaim baseless accusations to be a 'witch hunt.' But American witch trials have always targeted a persecuted minority: women.

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What is a witch-hunt? When studying the history of witchcraft, it is important to understand that witchcraft was a crime created and imposed on innocent people. No individual actually had the power to cause hailstorms, spread mass disease, or fly through the night to a gathering of evil beings. This was a crime imposed on innocent people during times of mass fear and hysteria. While the legal prosecution of witchcraft came to an end in the eighteenth century, the pattern of behavior that caused witch-hunts can be identified throughout history and in the modern day.

The Salem Witch Museum's mission is to be the voice of the innocent victims of the witch-hunt of 1692, while also bringing awareness to the root cause of witch-hunts and how they continue to impact our society today. In our second exhibit, Witches: Evolving Perceptions, we present a formula that can be used to describe the pattern of behavior responsible for sparking witch-hunts, with examples from 1692 through the twentieth-century.

This formula is "fear + a trigger = a scapegoat."

A scapegoat is defined as a person who is unfairly or irrationally the object of blame.

Over the years, many of our visitors have made suggestions to our staff, offering examples of what they feel qualify as an instance of a witch-hunt. There are so many examples of witch-hunts that have taken place throughout history, that we couldn't highlight all of these suggestions in our exhibit. Since August 2017, we have been asking our visitors to fill out this formula with examples they believe fit this pattern, and to submit these suggestions to our museum. This webpage is a place to share these examples. Within this project, our Department of Education is currently actively imputing and updating these pages so as to display as many submissions as we are given, in their entirety, without alteration or interpretation.

The goal of this project is to give our public a voice to interact with the concept of a witch-hunt. Please note, the views and opinions expressed on the witch-hunt website are those of our visitors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Salem Witch Museum.

You may view these examples month to month, or thematically by scapegoat. If you wish to add a submission, please enter your example into the blank spaces below.

Search Witch Hunts by Date

Submissions may be viewed month to month by selecting a date below.

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Witch Hunt Fears, Triggers, And Scapegoats

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Submit what you think was a fear, trigger, or scapegoat from the time of 1692. We'll review submissions, and post them to this page so you can see how specific elements impacted society, and furthermore how they have impacted the witch trials.

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CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM & COMMUNISM EXPLAINED SIMPLY

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Table of Contents

1. The Cold War

2. Joseph McCarthy and the Rise of McCarthyism

3. 'Have you no sense of decency, sir?'

4. The Fall of Joseph McCarthy

During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the prospect of communist subversion at home and abroad seemed frighteningly real to many people in the United States. These fears came to define-and, in some cases, corrode-the era's political culture. For many Americans, the most enduring symbol of this "Red Scare" was Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin. Senator McCarthy spent almost five years trying in vain to expose communists and other left-wing "loyalty risks" in the U.S. government. In the hyper-suspicious atmosphere of the Cold War, insinuations of disloyalty were enough to convince many Americans that their government was packed with traitors and spies. McCarthy's accusations were so intimidating that few people dared to speak out against him. It was not until he attacked the Army in 1954 that his actions earned him the censure of the U.S. Senate.

The Cold War

In the years after World War II ended, events at home and abroad seemed to many Americans to prove that the "Red menace" was real. In August 1949, for instance, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb. Later that year, Communist forces declared victory in the Chinese Civil War and established the People's Republic of China. In 1950, North Korea's Soviet-backed army invaded its pro-Western neighbors to the South; in response, the United States entered the conflict on the side of South Korea.

Did you know? Along with the Army-McCarthy hearings, journalist Edward R. Murrow's exposés of McCarthyism played an important role in the senator's downfall. On March 9, 1954, millions of Americans watched as the national news program "See It Now" attacked McCarthy and his methods.

At the same time, the Republican-led House Un-American Activities Committee (known as HUAC) began a determined campaign to extirpate communist subversion at home. HUAC's targets included left-wingers in Hollywood and liberals in the State Department. In 1950, Congress passed the McCarran Internal Security Act, which required that all "subversives" in the United States submit to government supervision. (President Truman vetoed the Act-he said it "would make a mockery of our Bill of Rights"-but a Congressional majority overrode his veto.)

Joseph McCarthy and the Rise of McCarthyism

All of these factors combined to create an atmosphere of fear and dread, which proved a ripe environment for the rise of a staunch anticommunist like Joseph McCarthy. At the time, McCarthy was a first-term senator from Wisconsin who had won election in 1946 after a campaign in which he criticized his opponent's failure to enlist during World War II while emphasizing his own wartime heroics.

In February 1950, appearing at the Ohio County Women's Republican Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, McCarthy gave a speech that propelled him into the national spotlight. Waving a piece of paper in the air, he declared that he had a list of 205 known members of the Communist Party who were "working and shaping policy" in the State Department.

The next month, a Senate subcommittee launched an investigation and found no proof of any subversive activity. Moreover, many of McCarthy's Democratic and Republican colleagues, including President Dwight Eisenhower, disapproved of his tactics ("I will not get into the gutter with this guy," the president told his aides). Still, the senator continued his so-called Red-baiting campaign. In 1953, at the beginning of his second term as senator, McCarthy was put in charge of the Committee on Government Operations, which allowed him to launch even more expansive investigations of the alleged communist infiltration of the federal government. In hearing after hearing, he aggressively interrogated witnesses in what many came to perceive as a blatant violation of their civil rights. Despite a lack of any proof of subversion, more than 2,000 government employees lost their jobs as a result of McCarthy's investigations.

'Have you no sense of decency, sir?'

In April 1954, Senator McCarthy turned his attention to "exposing" the supposed communist infiltration of the armed services. Many people had been willing to overlook their discomfort with McCarthyism during the senator's campaign against government employees and others they saw as "elites"; now, however, their support began to wane. Almost at once, the aura of invulnerability that had surrounded McCarthy for nearly five years began to disappear. First, the Army undermined the senator's credibility by showing evidence that he had tried to win preferential treatment for his aides when they were drafted. Then came the fatal blow: the decision to broadcast the "Army-McCarthy" hearings on national television. The American people watched as McCarthy intimidated witnesses and offered evasive responses when questioned. When he attacked a young Army lawyer, the Army's chief counsel thundered, "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" The Army-McCarthy hearings struck many observers as a shameful moment in American politics.

The Fall of Joseph McCarthy

By the time the hearings were over, McCarthy had lost most of his allies. The Senate voted to condemn him for his "inexcusable," "reprehensible," "vulgar and insulting" conduct "unbecoming a senator." He kept his job but lost his power, and died in 1957 at the age of 48.

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The Cold War Joseph McCarthy and the Rise of McCarthyism 'Have you no sense of decency, sir?' The Fall of Joseph McCarthy During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the prospect of communist subversion at home and abroad seemed frighteningly real to many people in the United States.

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Synopsis

Joseph McCarthy was born on November 14, 1908, near Appleton, Wisconsin. In 1946 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, and in 1950 he publicly charged that 205 communists had infiltrated the U.S. State Department. Reelected in 1952, he became chair of the Senate's subcommittee on investigations, and for the next two years he investigated various government departments and questioned innumerable witnesses, resulting in what would be known as the Red Scare. A corresponding Lavender Scare was also directed at LGBT federal employees, causing scores of citizens to lose their jobs. After a televised hearing in which he was discredited and condemned by Congress, McCarthy fell out of the spotlight. He died on May 2, 1957.

Early Years and Career

Joseph McCarthy was born on November 14, 1908, near Appleton, Wisconsin. Excelling academically, McCarthy attended Marquette University in Milwaukee, where he was elected president of his law school class. A few years after earning his law degree in 1935, McCarthy ran for the judgeship in Wisconsin's Tenth Judicial Circuit, a race he worked at relentlessly and won, becoming Wisconsin's youngest circuit judge ever elected at the age of 30.

McCarthy took a leave of absence in July 1942 and entered WWII as a first lieutenant in the Marines. (He would later lie about being wounded in combat.) McCarthy was still on active duty when he embarked upon his next political campaign: for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate. He was defeated but soon began planning for the 1946 Senate race.

U.S. Senate

In 1946, McCarthy won his race in an upset against Senator Robert M. La Follette Jr. and entered the U.S. Congress as the youngest member of the Senate. McCarthy leaned toward conservatism and generally flew under the radar, working on such issues as housing legislation and sugar rationing. All that would change in 1950, when it became suspected that communists had infiltrated the U.S. government in the wake of high-profile espionage trials.

Burdened by an uneventful political career and having an eye towards reelection, McCarthy claimed that 205 communists had infiltrated the U.S. State Department and soon after claimed to have the names of 57 State Department communists, despite having little knowledge of international espionage. As he released his charges, he called for a wide-reaching investigation that would lead to what was termed the Red Scare.

Red Scare

McCarthy was reelected in 1952 and became chairman of the Senate's Committee on Government Operations, where he occupied the spotlight for two years with his anti-communist investigations and questioning of suspected officials. McCarthy's charges led to testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, but he was unable to substantiate any of his claims against a single member of any government department.

Despite this setback, McCarthy's popularity nevertheless continued to rise, as his claims had struck a nerve with an American public tired of the Korean War and concerned with communist activity in China and Eastern Europe. Undaunted by his testimonial shortcomings, McCarthy ratcheted up the rhetoric, going on a colorful anticommunist "crusade" through which he cast himself as an unrelenting patriot and protector of the American ideal. On the other side of the argument, his detractors claimed McCarthy was on a witch hunt and used his power to trample civil liberties and greatly damage the careers of leftists, intellectuals and artists. His aggressive tactics, in the end leading to the persecution and loss of livelihood of countless innocent people, came to be known as McCarthyism.

Lavender Scare

Around the same time as McCarthy implemented his charges around communist infiltration, the senator would also turn his sights to the gay and lesbian communities, alleging that LGBT governmental employees could be blackmailed by enemy agents over their sexuality and thereby betray national secrets. In 1950, a special report drawn up by the senator's Republican allies, the Senate minority at the time, cited gay and lesbian workers as a potential moral threat to the workings of the government.

In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower would sign Executive Order 10450, which sanctioned the administrative policy of tracking down gay-lesbian governmental employees and having them fired due to the labeling of "sexual perversion" as an undesirable trait for employment. Scores of employees were thus fired or resigned out of fear of persecution, with various surveillance measures instituted to try and track down citizens' intimate habits. Frank Kameny, PhD, a gay mapping official and astronomer who was fired from his job, would challenge the order, issue a groundbreaking 1961 legal brief to the Supreme Court (which would deny his petition) and years later organize a protest in front of the White House. Decades passed before the governmental agency ban on LGBT employees was officially lifted by President Bill Clinton.

Televised Hearing

McCarthy's charges of communism and anti-American activity affected more and more powerful people, including President Eisenhower, until 1954 when a nationally televised, 36-day hearing illustrated clearly to the nation that he was overstepping his authority and any ideas of common sense. (The hearings also famously prompted special counsel for the Army Joseph Nye Welch to ask McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?") Before the hearings, public opinion had also turned against McCarthy due to a discrediting feature on Edward R. Murrow's program See It Now.

Later Years and Death

McCarthy was eventually stripped of his chairmanship and condemned on the Senate floor (Dec. 2, 1954) for conduct "contrary to Senate traditions." That turned out to be the final nail in the coffin of the McCarthyism era, and Joseph McCarthy himself fell from the public eye though he continued to serve in Congress. A deeply troubling movement helmed by a demagogue inspired the 1953 Arthur Miller play The Crucible, which looked at the Salem Witch Hunt Trials of the 17th century to draw parallels to contemporary McCarthyism.

McCarthy was historically a heavy drinker and became mired in alcoholism after his fall from public power. McCarthy would eventually suffer from liver failure and on May 2, 1957, died of acute hepatitis at the Bethesda Naval Hospital outside Washington, with his wife, the former Jean Kerr, at his side.

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Joseph McCarthy was born on November 14, 1908, near Appleton, Wisconsin. In 1946 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, and in 1950 he publicly charged that 205 communists had infiltrated the U.S. State Department.

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Table of Contents

1. The Cold War: Investigating the Red Menace

2. Subpoenas and Blacklists

3. Targeting Hollywood and Alger Hiss

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, investigated allegations of communist activity in the U.S. during the early years of the Cold War (1945-91). Established in 1938, the committee wielded its subpoena power as a weapon and called citizens to testify in high-profile hearings before Congress. This intimidating atmosphere often produced dramatic but questionable revelations about Communists infiltrating American institutions and subversive actions by well-known citizens. HUAC's controversial tactics contributed to the fear, distrust and repression that existed during the anticommunist hysteria of the 1950s. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, HUAC's influence was in decline, and in 1969 it was renamed the Committee on Internal Security. Although it ceased issuing subpoenas that year, its operations continued until 1975.

The Cold War: Investigating the Red Menace

Upon its formation in 1938, the official role of the House Un-American Activities Committee was to investigate Communist and fascist organizations that had become active during the Great Depression, though it also examined the activities of other groups on the political left. From the outset, the committee proved to be a source of political discord. Its defenders argued it uncovered vital information that bolstered national security, while critics charged it was a partisan tool bent on discrediting the New Deal programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945).

Did you know? One of the members of HUAC in the late 1940s was a first-term U.S. representative from California named Richard Nixon. Nixon played a prominent role in the Alger Hiss spy hearings in 1948; 20 years later, he was elected the 37th president of the United States.

As tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union intensified following World War II (1939-45), the committee took up its investigations of communist activities with new vigor. Particularly after 1947, HUAC assumed new heights of prominence and notoriety, and the committee conducted a series of high-profile hearings alleging that Communists disloyal to the U.S. had infiltrated government, schools, the entertainment industry and many other areas of American life.

Subpoenas and Blacklists

The committee employed several controversial methods to accomplish its goal of ferreting out suspected Communists. Typically, an individual who raised the suspicions of HUAC received a subpoena to appear before the committee. During the hearing, the suspected Communist was grilled about his or her political beliefs and activities and then asked to provide the names of other people who had taken part in allegedly subversive activities. Any additional figures identified in this manner also received subpoenas, widening the committee's probe.

Individuals who refused to answer the committee's questions or to provide names could be indicted for contempt of Congress and sent to prison. Subjects of HUAC investigations had the option of invoking their right to avoid self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment, but "pleading the Fifth" created the impression that they were guilty of a crime. In addition, those who refused to cooperate were often blacklisted by their employers. They lost their jobs and were effectively prevented from working in their chosen industry.

Critics claimed that HUAC's tactics amounted to a witch hunt that trampled on citizens' rights and ruined their careers and reputations. These critics argued that most people who were called before the committee had broken no laws, but instead were targeted for their political beliefs or for exercising their right to free speech. Supporters of the committee, on the other hand, believed that its efforts were justified given the grave threat to U.S. security posed by communism.

Targeting Hollywood and Alger Hiss

The HUAC investigations delved into many areas of American life, but they paid special attention to the motion picture industry, which was believed to harbor a large number of Communists. Not wishing to get on the wrong side of Congress or the movie-going public, most film industry executives did not speak out against the investigations. In addition, many of the major studios imposed a strict blacklist policy against actors, directors, writers and other personnel implicated in Communist activity.

The film industry investigations reached their peak with the events surrounding the Hollywood Ten, a group of writers and directors who were called to testify in October 1947. The all-male group of screenwriters, producers and directors (Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Larson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott and Dalton Trumbo) refused to cooperate with the investigation and used their HUAC appearances to denounce the committee's tactics. All were cited for contempt of Congress and sentenced to prison terms, in addition to being blacklisted from working in Hollywood.

HUAC also sounded an alarm about Communists infiltrating the federal government. The most infamous case began in August 1948, when a self-confessed former member of the American Communist Party named Whittaker Chambers (1901-61) appeared before the committee. During his dramatic testimony, Chambers accused Alger Hiss (1904-96), a former high-ranking State Department official, of serving as a spy for the Soviet Union. Based on allegations and evidence provided by Chambers, Hiss was found guilty of perjury and served 44 months in prison. He spent the rest of his life proclaiming his innocence and decrying his wrongful prosecution.

Hiss' conviction bolstered claims that HUAC was performing a valuable service to the nation by uncovering Communist espionage. The suggestion that Communist agents had infiltrated senior levels of the U.S. government also added to the widespread fear that "Reds" (a term derived from the red Soviet flag) posed a serious threat to the nation. HUAC's work served as a blueprint for the tactics employed by U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s. McCarthy led an aggressive anticommunist campaign of his own that made him a powerful and feared figure in American politics. His reign of terror came to an end in 1954, when the news media revealed his unethical tactics and he was censured by his colleagues in Congress.

By the late 1950s and early 1960s, HUAC's relevance was in decline, and in 1969, it was renamed the Committee on Internal Security. Although it ceased issuing subpoenas that year, its operations continued until 1975.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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HUAC - Definition, Hearings & Investigations

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The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives that investigated allegations of communist activity in the U.S. during the early years of the Cold War (1945-91). It was abolished in 1975.

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It was the casting call no one in Hollywood wanted to receive. In October 1947, when the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) convened a hearing in Washington, D.C., to investigate subversive activities in the entertainment industry, 41 screenwriters, directors and producers were subpoenaed. Most witnesses were "friendly" - that is, willing to respond to the committee's central question: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" And those who confessed to membership were offered the opportunity to name "fellow travelers," thereby regaining their good standing with the committee and, by extension, the American film industry.

Ten witnesses - all current or former party members - banded together in protest, refusing to cooperate on First Amendment grounds (freedom of speech, right of assembly, freedom of association) and affirming that HUACdisagreed: It found the so-called Hollywood Ten in contempt of Congress, fined them each $1,000 and sentenced them to up to a year in federal prison. All 10 artists also were fired by a group of studio executives - and the era of the Hollywood blacklist began.

Meet the Hollywood Ten:

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The Hollywood Ten: The Men Who Refused to Name Names

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It was the casting call no one in Hollywood wanted to receive. In October 1947, when the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) convened a hearing in Washington, D.C., to investigate subversive activities in the entertainment industry, 41 screenwriters, directors and producers were subpoenaed.

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The Crucible: Context (The Cold War, McCarthyism and HUAC)