More than just an economic turmoil, the 1930s despair. As a result of economic hardship, people’s deepest beliefs about America and the American study were forced to question all aspects of American culture.  ,
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Maybe capitalism wasn’t the way to a better world. Millions of people, both academically and politically, came up with the idea that Socialism might be a workable alternative to the current economic and social design. Before Joseph Stalin’s and Russian Communism’s atrocities were exposed and discredited, this was before.
America’s left-wing elite embraced Marxism. The Soviet Union’s struggle against Nazi Germany, supported eagerly by American Communists, blinded many of these Americans to the problems of Socialism in America. They refused to believe that Stalin was an evil tyrant, even after the proof was enormous.
The majority of these “fellow travelers” and honest dupes were unaware that the Soviet Union’s state was in charge of organizing and guiding the American Communist motion. They vehemently denied any Russian effect on their movement. The” Venona Papers,” which revealed the remarkable level of Soviet invasion of the British government and all levels of society, were released in July 1995.
Difficulty brands were included in the Venona files, which were decoded wires from Russian agents in Moscow. Not all were informants for Moscow, but many were mentioned as Russian officials.
Alger Hiss, a former top State Department official, was one of those brands mentioned as a Russian spy, who later rose to the position of president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace after the war. In 1948, Time Magazine top writer Whittaker Chambers accused him of being a Russian agent, sparking one of the first significant philosophical debates in post-war America.
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What the test and subsequent events arguably represent the conception of contemporary conservatism, according to the majority of scholars. It started with Chambers’s testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee ( HUAC ).
Chambers gave a testimony to the committee regarding his knowledge of an Alger Hiss, a Socialist spy, working in the State Department during the 1930s. Hiss had risen to the top of the State Department as a senior State Department official and member of the American delegation at Yalta since the 1930s, before taking the position of leader of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Chambers testified that Hiss was a Russian spy based on personal information, as Chambers was a member of the” Ware” organization, which had switched from Communist invasion of the British government to spying in the late 1930s.
Harry Truman was quite unhappy. He pressed on the HUAC to keep Hiss ‘ hands away. However, Hiss was resisted by Committee Republicans who backed him.
Hiss denied anything, he denied yet knowing Chambers. These lies were made public by Chambers after he revealed fabricated information about him and Hiss as Communist operatives in files known as the” Pumpkin Papers” because they were hidden on Chambers ‘ Maryland farm.  ,
Hiss was charged, but the astonishment that a person like Alger Hiss could be a liar led to the test being heard before a hung jury.  ,
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But the situation was not over. Hiss sued Chambers for libel, while being indicted for dishonesty. When Chambers was able to show that the two really did understand each other, the jury convicted Hiss, and on Jan. 25, 1950, a judge sentenced him to offer two five-year parallel words.
The test of Alger Hiss inspired a new generation of liberals, including William F. Buckley.
The Hiss test, according to historian George Nash, “forged the anti-Communist element in renewed conservatism” as much as any other occasion. Both conservatives and anti-Communists saw Chambers as a brave, upright man eager to “destroy himself” in an effort to “awaken the country to the Communist risk symbolized by the obstinate traitor Alger Hiss.” Nash’s analysis recalls that of Ralph de Toladeno, the journalist who covered the prosecution for , Newsweek , and befriended Chambers, who wrote that HUAC had “demonstrated, significantly and efficiently, that Socialists in government carefully looted the country of its strategies” . ,
Halls soon released his book of the test and his day as Russian spy, Witness , ( Random House, 1952 ), in 1952 and it rapidly became a best-seller. Conservatives like William F. Buckley Jr. found Chambers ‘ pencil beautiful and his analysis of the Marxist threat to the West sharp, negative, and completely truthful. Chambers was one of Buckley’s main target for an editor when he made the decision to start National Review in 1955, and he pursued him for years before joining the newspaper in 1957.  ,
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Many on the remaining still insist that Hiss was entirely innocent and a soldier despite the overwhelming evidence found in the Venona documents and Whittaker Chambers ‘ unassailable testimony.  ,
Chambers had his sorrow. In their early days as Russian agents, He and Hiss had forged a close connection. He lamented that” no day passes without my dying a little at the thought of what happened to them through me.” He claimed that because Hiss and his partner Priscilla were friends and that “history forced me to create experience”.
Prior to the Hiss test. Conservatism in America had no shape. The proper received a new task for the next 75 times: defending independence against all odds, which Chambers continued to support.  ,
