Where Is Juliet Stuart Poyntz?: Gender, Spycraft, and Anti-Stalinism in the Early Cold War

by Denise M. Lynn

Overview

On a sweltering June evening in 1937, American Juliet Stuart Poyntz left her boardinghouse in Manhattan and walked toward Central Park, three short blocks away. She was never seen or heard from again. Seven months passed before a formal missing person's report was made, since Poyntz worked for the Soviet Secret Police and her friends (many of whom were anti-Stalinist radicals in the United States) were scared to alert authorities. Her disappearance coincided with Josef Stalin's purges of his political enemies in the Soviet Union and it was feared that Poyntz was a casualty of Soviet brutality.

In Where Is Juliet Stuart Poyntz?, Denise M. Lynn argues that Poyntz's sudden disappearance was the final straw for many on the American political left, who then abandoned Marxism and began to embrace anti-communism. In the years to follow, the left crafted narratives of her disappearance that became central to the Cold War. While scholars have thoroughly analyzed the influence of the political right in the anti-communism of this era, this captivating and compelling study is unique in exploring the influence of the political left.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781625345486
Publisher:	University of Massachusetts Press
Publication date:	01/29/2021
Series:	Culture and Politics in the Cold War and Beyond
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	1,155,238
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

DENISE M. LYNN is associate professor of history and director of gender studies at the University of Southern Indiana.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

A Note on the Text xiii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 The Family 13

Chapter 2 The Communist 25

Chapter 3 The Anarchist 51

Chapter 4 The Intellectual and the Feds 73

Chapter 5 The Witness 93

Chapter 6 The Informers 111

Chapter 7 The Lady Spy 141

Conclusion 161

Notes 169

Index 193

What People are Saying About This

Vernon L. Pedersen

Lynn's scholarship is exhaustive. Even though I am familiar with the case and the characters, I found myself being drawn into the writing and turning the pages eager to learn some new detail or twist.

John Sbardellati

In the first full examination of this significant case in the annals of American communism and anti-communism, Lynn has constructed a tight story of one of the central precipitating narratives of the domestic Cold War that reads like a gripping spy thriller.

Editorial Reviews

"Lynn expertly weaves together biographical sketches, early Cold War events and ideology and sociopolitical analyses in her search for Juliet Stuart Poyntz . . . Highly recommended."—CHOICE

"Lynn does an admirable job of uncovering the details of Poyntz’s childhood, chronicling her roots in a family committed to education and activism, her role as a student leader at Barnard College, her early involvement in the suffrage and socialist movements, her turn to unionism and antifascism, and her eventual rise to leadership in the CPUSA in the late 1920s. As Lynn shows, Poyntz’s life mapped on to the tumultuous and splintered history of socialism, unionism, and communism in America."—H-Net Reviews 

"Lynn's scholarship is exhaustive. Even though I am familiar with the case and the characters, I found myself being drawn into the writing and turning the pages eager to learn some new detail or twist."—Vernon L. Pedersen, president of the Historians of American Communism and author of The Communist Party in Maryland, 1919–57

"In the first full examination of this significant case in the annals of American communism and anti-communism, Lynn has constructed a tight story of one of the central precipitating narratives of the domestic Cold War that reads like a gripping spy thriller."—John Sbardellati, author of J. Edgar Hoover Goes to the Movies: The FBI and the Origins of Hollywood's Cold War

From the Publisher