''Partisan Review'' (''PR'') was a left-wing small-circulation quarterly "little magazine" dealing with literature, politics, and cultural commentary published in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. The magazine was launched in 1934 by the

Communist Party USA The Communist Party USA (CPUSA), officially the Communist Party of the United States of America, also referred to as the American Communist Party mainly during the 20th century, is a communist party in the United States. It was established ...

–affiliated John Reed Club of New York City and was initially part of the Communist political orbit. Growing disaffection on the part of ''PR''s primary editors began to make itself felt, and the magazine abruptly suspended publication in the fall of 1936. When the magazine reemerged late in 1937, it came with additional editors and new writers who advanced a political line deeply critical of

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

's Soviet Union. By the 1950s, the magazine had evolved towards a moderate

social democratic Social democracy is a Social philosophy, social, Economic ideology, economic, and political philosophy within socialism that supports Democracy, political and economic democracy and a gradualist, reformist, and democratic approach toward achi ...

and staunchly anti-Stalinist perspective and was generally supportive of American foreign policy. ''Partisan Review'' received covert funding from the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

(CIA) during the 1950s and 1960s as part of the agency's efforts to shape intellectual opinion during the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

. The journal moved its offices to the campus of

Rutgers University Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...

in 1963, then to the campus of

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. BU was founded in 1839 by a group of Boston Methodism, Methodists with its original campus in Newbury (town), Vermont, Newbur ...

in 1978. The final issue of the publication appeared in April 2003.

Publication history

Establishment

The literary journal ''Partisan Review (PR)'' was launched in New York City in 1934 by the John Reed Club of New York — a mass organization of the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA). The publication was published and edited by two members of the New York club, Philip Rahv and William Phillips. The launch of the magazine was assisted by the editors of '' New Masses,'' the Communist Party's national artistic and literary magazine, including Joseph Freeman. Early issues of the magazine included a mixture of ostensibly proletarian literature and essays of cultural commentary — the latter of which became a hallmark of ''PR'' for the whole of its nearly seven decades of existence. Rahv and Phillips were strongly committed to the idea that radical new artistic forms and radical politics could be successfully combined and were critical of much of the form and hackneyed content of much of what passed as "proletarian literature". This critical perspective brought the pair into conflict with party stalwarts at the ''New Masses'' such as Mike Gold and Granville Hicks but was not sufficient to break ''Partisan Review'' from the

(CPUSA) orbit. In 1936 as part of its Popular Front strategy of uniting Communist and non-Communist intellectuals against

fascism Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hie ...

, the CPUSA launched a new mass organization called the League of American Writers, abandoning the John Reed Clubs as part of the change. ''PR'' editors Phillips and Rahv were disaffected by the change, seeing the new organization as a watering down and mainstreaming of the party's commitment to a new, radical, proletarian literature. Intellectual interest turned to events abroad and interest in ''PR'' faltered to the point that effective with its October 1936 issue, publication of the magazine was suspended.

1937 relaunch

While ''Partisan Review'' was relaunched by Rahv and Phillips in December 1937, it was changed at a fundamental level. News of the

Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...

in the Soviet Union and of Soviet duplicity in the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...

pushed the pair of editors to a new outspokenly critical perspective. A new cast of editors were brought on board, including Dwight Macdonald and literary critic F. W. Dupee, and a sympathy for

Trotskyism Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...

began to make itself felt in the magazine's editorial political line. The CPUSA press was hostile, claiming that a party asset had been stolen. A new group of left-wing writers deeply critical of the Soviet Union began to write for the publication, including

James Burnham James Burnham (November 22, 1905 – July 28, 1987) was an American philosopher and political theorist. He chaired the New York University Department of Philosophy. His first book was ''An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis'' (1931). Bur ...

and Sidney Hook. The new period of independence had begun. Effective with the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, the magazine began to divorce itself from the Communist movement altogether, including its dissident Trotskyist wing. Rahv and Phillips gave qualified support to the campaign for American rearmament and the country's preparation for war, opposed by Macdonald and another editor at the time, Clement Greenberg. A tentative truce between the editors averted a split, with Macdonald finally departing in 1943 to form the

pacifist Pacifism is the opposition to war or violence. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campaigner Émile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress in Glasgow in 1901. A related term is ''a ...

magazine ''

politics Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...

''. Anti-Communism began to loom in the ''raison d'être'' of ''Partisan Review'' in the post-war years and bolstered by the contributions of such writers as Hook, James Farrell,

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to a ...

, and

Arthur Koestler Arthur Koestler (, ; ; ; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was an Austria-Hungary, Austro-Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest, and was educated in Austria, apart from his early school years. In 1931, Koestler j ...

, the political trajectory of ''PR'' moved rightwards. Increasingly conservative and

nationalist Nationalism is an idea or movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, it presupposes the existence and tends to promote the interests of a particular nation,Anthony D. Smith, Smith, A ...

, by the early 1950s the magazine had become devoutly supportive of American virtues and values, although critical of the country's biases and excesses. Orwell had been the ''Partisan Review''s London correspondent.

Funding by the CIA

Although vehemently denied by founding editor William Phillips, following the

fall of the Soviet Union The Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration No. 142-N of the Soviet of Nationalities, Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. :s: ...

it was revealed that ''Partisan Review'' was the recipient of money from the

as part of its effort to shape intellectual opinion in the so-called "cultural cold war". In 1953, the magazine found itself in financial difficulties, when one of its primary backstage financial backers, Allan D. Dowling, became embroiled in a costly divorce proceeding. The financial shortfall was made up by a $2,500 grant from the American Committee for Cultural Freedom (ACCF), a CIA front organization on the executive board of which editor Phillips sat throughout the decade of the 1950s. Additional CIA money came later in the 1950s. When the ACCF terminated its operations, half of the money remaining in the organization's coffers was transferred to ''Partisan Review.'' Additional funds came to the magazine to alleviate its financial problems in the 1950s in the form of a $10,000 donation from ''Time'' magazine publisher

Henry Luce Henry Robinson Luce (April 3, 1898 – February 28, 1967) was an American magazine magnate who founded ''Time'', ''Life'', '' Fortune'', and ''Sports Illustrated'' magazines. He has been called "the most influential private citizen in the Amer ...

. Luce seems to have been instrumental in expediting contacts between ''PR'' publisher Phillips and Director of Central Intelligence

Walter Bedell Smith General (United States), General Walter Bedell "Beetle" Smith (5 October 1895 – 9 August 1961) was a senior officer (armed forces), officer of the United States Army who served as General Dwight D. Eisenhower's chief of staff at Allied Forc ...

. A successor organization established by the CIA to funnel money to sympathetic groups and individuals, the

Congress for Cultural Freedom The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was an anti-communist cultural organization founded on 26 June 1950 in West Berlin. At its height, the CCF was active in thirty-five countries. In 1966 it was revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency w ...

, stepped up to assist the magazine in the early 1960s, granting ''PR'' $3,000 a year for a three-year period in the guise of foreign magazine subscriptions.

Moves to Rutgers and Boston University

In 1963, William Phillips negotiated a move of the editorial offices of ''Partisan Review'' to the campus of

New Brunswick New Brunswick is a Provinces and Territories of Canada, province of Canada, bordering Quebec to the north, Nova Scotia to the east, the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the northeast, the Bay of Fundy to the southeast, and the U.S. state of Maine to ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...

. The university agreed to provide not only free office space and utilities, but also to cover the salary of an editor, an assistant editor, a secretary, and various graduate assistants to help with office tasks. In return, the university would gain prestige from association with the well-regarded literary journal and make uses of the services of the editor and assistant editor as lecturers in the school's English Department. This arrangement proved satisfactory for both parties until June 1978, when Phillips approached the University's then-mandatory faculty retirement age of 70. Learning that no exception would be made for him, Phillips began shopping for a new home for ''Partisan Review''. The decision was ultimately made to relocate the magazine's editorial offices to

, where publication would be continued under the editorship of Phillips and Steven Marcus, with Edith Kurzweil remaining as the magazine's Executive Editor. Under terms of the new hosting agreement, ownership rights of ''Partisan Review's'' extensive archive were to be transferred to the new institution. Having invested more than $1 million in ''Partisan Review'' over the years and stored the publication's archive since 1963, Rutgers physically blocked the transfer of ''PR's'' files to the new institution. A standoff resulted and attorneys for both parties hastily came to an agreement by which Phillips was allowed to remove back issues, financial files, and current documents necessary for the magazine's publication to Boston University with Rutgers holding the archival originals until the matter could be legally settled. An inventory of the magazine's papers was conducted and photocopies of critical documents made and the matter headed for court. In the lawsuit which followed, Phillips ultimately prevailing based on his contention that the magazine's records had been housed at Rutgers merely as a revokable "deposit" rather than a permanent gift. Rutgers was allowed to microfilm the magazine's pre-1978 records with the originals were transferred to Boston University. The magazine's circulation was 8,150 in 1989.

Termination and legacy

Phillips died in September 2002 at the age of 94. The journal continued under his wife, Edith Kurzweil, at Boston University, until ceasing publication in April 2003.

Notable contributions

* James Baldwin's "Everybody's Protest Novel" (1949) and also " Sonny's Blues" (1957). *

Saul Bellow Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; June 10, 1915April 5, 2005) was a Canadian-American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only write ...

's first published work "9 a.m., without Work" in 1941. * Two of T. S. Eliot's "

Four Quartets ''Four Quartets'' is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published over a six-year period. The first poem, ''Burnt Norton'', was published with a collection of his early works (1936's ''Collected Poems 1909–1935''). After a fe ...

" * Clement Greenberg's " Avant-Garde and Kitsch" *

's " Such, Such Were the Joys" * Delmore Schwartz's " In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" *

Susan Sontag Susan Lee Sontag (; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, critic, and public intellectual. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay "Notes on "Camp", Notes on 'Ca ...

's " Notes on 'Camp' " * Philip Roth's "His Mistress's Voice" (1986)Partisan Review Vol. 53, No. 2
Boston University, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center

References

Citations

Sources

* * *

External links

''Partisan Review'' online archive
Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University. {{Authority control 1934 establishments in the United States 2003 disestablishments in the United States Central Intelligence Agency domestic surveillance operations Congress for Cultural Freedom Political magazines published in the United States Quarterly magazines published in the United States Anti-communism in the United States Communist Party USA publications Defunct literary magazines published in the United States Defunct political magazines published in the United States Magazines established in 1934 Magazines disestablished in 2003 Magazines published in New York City Social democracy Communism in New York (state)