An American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school, Theodore Dreiser won national fame for such works as Sister Carrie (1900), The Genius (1915), and especially An American Tragedy (1925). You can learn more about him at the The International Theodore Dreiser Society website.

The Cyber-USSR is especially grateful, however, for his support against the lies of Trotskyites, British imperialists, and other enemies of progressive humanity.

On Trotskyism

From testimony by Earl Browder1 before the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) Secretariat, Moscow, 4 April 1937:

Opposing the January trial of the Trotskyists in Moscow, the attempt was made by the Trotskyites to organise a counter-offensive with the Committee for the Defense of Trotsky. ... To counteract [a] newspaper campaign [in the USA], a group of 88 outstanding public figures issued an open letter to American liberals condemning this Committee for the Defense of Trotsky. In their open letter, they reaffirmed their faith in the Soviet Union, their confidence in the Soviet government, and their friendship for the Soviet people. Among these 88 names ... were such outstanding figures as Heywood Broun, President of the American Newspaper Guild, several editors of the liberal weeklies, "The Nation" and "The [New] Republic," Mary Van Kleek, outstanding economist, Theodore Dreiser, the most prominent American novelist, Corlis Lamont, a very prominent liberal ...2

In support of the peace policy of the Soviet Union (1939-1941)

Letter from Nat Ross3
to Comrade Yovchuk and the Marty Secretariat⁴
December 20 1940.

With regard to prominent Americans (non-Communists) who would write effective brochures explaining and defending the peace policy of the Soviet Union⁵ and answering the arguments of the enemy, the following three stand out:

1. Theodore Dreiser. He would be the best choice because a brochure by Dreiser would reach and influence wide circles of the labour movement and the middle class. The question is whether Dreiser would undertake to write such a brochure since he has not written at length on such a question before. I am inclined to believe he would write it and undoubtedly with the assistance of the Party. ...6

Indeed, Theodore Drieser did oblige them in early 1941, with a full-length book America Is Worth Saving, Modern Age Books, New York,
Copyright © 1941 by Theodore Dreiser
(Copyright may or may not be expired in USA, depending whether US Supreme Court upholds or voids recent Congressional copyright extension.)

Dreiser argued that America should not join Britain (and exiles from occupied countries) in fighting Hitler, because Britain, especially the British Empire, was as bad as Hitler.

Some items from America Is Worth Saving--

P. 46
The Russo-Finnish War (Dec 1939 - Mar 1940) represented
England driven out of Finland

P. 125.
Chapter 10. Has England Done More for Its People Than Fascism or Socialism?
This is a heretical question. Let no one think I do not appreciate the enormity of my crime in even asking it -- still more in answering it. Under present conditions of American liberty I am offering myself for public hanging, drawing, and quartering by the Dies Committee.

The new "American" code earmarks Nazism and Communism together as "alien isms," even to discuss which with attempted detachment is more heinous than for a nineteenth-century schoolgirl to discuss sex. But Imperialism, the system in implacable opposition to which our forefathers placed our Constitution, is apparently not an "alien ism."

P. 129.
The most important of all human rights in industrial society is the right to a job, to a self-respecting place in the social structure, though to my concept of civilization both vote and job are essential. Leaving aside for a moment the anti-Semitic savagery and the concentration camps, which do not affect the majority, a wage-earner might sum up the picture by saying that Germany gives him a job, England gives him a vote. The English masses have theoretical civil rights and may vote for the nominee of one of two political machines every five years or so. The German masses have a guarantee of work under dictated conditions, provided they submit. The total of English unemployment in 1938 is probably about the same as the total "non-Aryan" and concentration-camp population of "Greater" Germany in the same year. Whether it is better to die quickly by torture or slowly by hunger -- and unemployment in England means nothing less -- is a question on which there will be difference of opinion.

P. 130.
To fight for England is inevitably to fight for the [British] Empire as it exists now. ...

We find anti-Semitism rampant in Palestine, anti-Hinduism rampant in India. No, of course the English are not officially anti-Semitic or anti-Hindu -- it's the Arab and Moslem minorities. But try as they will, the English cannot find evidence of such rioting in Palestine before the British mandate, or in India before the East India Company.

Editor's remark -- In fairness to Dreiser, I must note that he condemned the British Empire far more for poverty than for the patently silly charge (considering who Britain was at war with in 1941) of anti-Semitism.

Pp. 135 - 144:
The USSR is much better managed than capitalist countries -- statistics prove it!

P. 135.

I am not rising to proclaim that Russia is Utopia. I have already stated that Utopias do not exist, and I would not care for them if they did. All I intend to do is quote the most reliable statistics we have -- and I rate them just as reliable as those given for Germany and England -- about the actual results of the regime in Russia during the past two decades, as far as the ordinary citizen of that country is concerned.

P. 136.
Groups of scientists have been sent to every corner of the Soviet Union to study production conditions and see how they can be improved. By these groups, no less that 30,000 kinds of wheat have been classified, in order that the kind most suited to any given district may be discovered.

P. 244.
The Bullitt and Simms theories are based on the proposition that Communism and Nazism are identical and were in an alliance against French democracy. To this we must oppose that (a) France was not democratic; (b) Dies and all other philosophers to the contrary notwithstanding, every line of official Communist and Nazi theory plus the material results obtained in Russia and Germany show the two concepts to be exactly as much alike as plenty and scarcity; (c) Russia and Germany are not allies against France or anyone else -- they merely agreed not to attack each other.

Postscript

It was not Theodore Dreiser's fault that the "peace policy of the Soviet Union" was rendered inoperative a few months later by Hitler's treacherous attack on 22 June 1941. In view of the new urgencies of the world situation, America Is Worth Saving was allowed to go out of print.

What motivated Hitler, who had occasionally shown progressive tendencies, to destroy a diplomatic configuration that offered so much hope against the oppression of Western plutocracies?
Comrades in our secret diplomatic archive suggest the key event may have been the execution of the unspeakable L.D. Trotsky by Mexican workers on 20 August 1940. Since Nazism was simply a branch of Trotskyism, this event so outraged Trotskyites in the German government that they lobbied Hitler incessantly until he finally broke his Soviet alliance.
If this is true (we have not completed our research yet), the execution of Trotsky, though morally justified, must be condemned as inopportune.

Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Kyrill M. Anderson, The Secret World of American Communism, Yale University Press, New Haven and London,
Copyright © 1998 by Yale University.

Copyright © 1999 by Hugo S. Cunningham
Italicized portions copyright Klehr et al., or Theodore Dreiser.