Witness: Cold War Classics

Whittaker Chambers uses this term to describe committed Marxist-Leninists who seek to spark a global Communist revolution. He also uses it to describe “Old Bolsheviks,” Russians and other Soviet peoples who had joined the Party prior to the 1917 downfall of Russia’s czarist regime. The term “Bolshevik” comes from the Russian word for “large” or “majority.” It is inspired by a 1903 socialist conference wherein more votes were cast for Lenin’s radical action faction than for the gradualist minority, which was later nicknamed the Mensheviks (“small” or “minority”). The respect accorded to the opinion of “Old Bolsheviks” became a thorn in Stalin’s side as he sought to consolidate his own personal power. Lenin’s most prominent colleagues were thus among Stalin’s first victims. By the time Stalin’s agents murdered Leon Trotsky in 1940, almost all of the Old Bolsheviks had been murdered.

Chambers describes various ranks in the Communist apparatus within the United States. One of the largest categories is the “fellow travelers.” These are Americans sympathetic to the Communist cause, and willing to lend it various kinds of aid, who never formally joined the Party. Chambers says that fellow travelers were in a difficult position: They had a respectable public profile and therefore had the most to lose.