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History and the Republic · Module 113 · Companion to module 81

🔍 McCarthy Module Companion™

People, Groups, Timeline of World Communism and Glossary

The reference shelf for module 81. A timeline of world communism from the Communist Manifesto of 1848 to the five states still ruled by a communist party in 2026, a year-by-year American timeline from 1919 to 1991, about 150 people from Elizabeth Bentley to Mark Zborowski with each main claim about them rated against the evidence, the Soviet services from the Cheka to the KGB, the Comintern and the fronts, the CPUSA and the anti-communist organizations, the spy networks with a Venona cover-name table, a glossary of 189 terms, and the numbers, with their ranges and sources.

14 lessons · about 15.0 hours · about 162,500 words ·

Updated November 6, 2026

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How to read this module

This is the companion and reference volume to Joseph McCarthy, the Committees and the Communist Threat (module 81). Module 81 tells the story and rates McCarthy's claims; this module is the shelf beside it. Lessons 1 to 4 give the timeline of world communism from 1848 to 2026, lesson 5 the American timeline year by year, lessons 6 to 9 the people A to Z, lessons 10 and 11 the groups, lesson 12 the spy networks and Venona cover names, lesson 13 the glossary and lesson 14 the numbers, pictures and sources.

The stance is the same as module 81's: the threat was real. Soviet intelligence recruited Americans inside the government in the 1930s and 1940s, the Communist Party of the United States was funded and directed from Moscow, and communist governments killed millions of their own people. Every specific claim about a person or group is still tested against the evidence available in 2026 and rated Supported, Partly supported, Unsupported, Refuted or Unresolved. Party membership, espionage, sympathy and association are kept apart as four different claims. Death tolls and other large numbers are given as ranges, with who estimated them and how.

Related courses: the economics of communism are taught in Economic Systems, lesson 7; Pierson's framework of legitimate authority is in Ordered Liberty; Idaho's part is in lesson 4 and lesson 6 of Idaho's Radicals and Extremists.

Status: built and fact checked November 6, 2026. Items that could not be confirmed against a primary source are listed at the end of each lesson under "Still open."

  1. 1How to Use This Companion, and the Roots of World Communism, 1848 to 1917How this companion to module 81 is organized, how to read its entries and ratings, and how it keeps party membership, espionage, sympathy and association apart. Then the first seventy years of the movement, from the Communist Manifesto of 1848 through the First International, the Paris Commune, German Social Democracy, the Second International and Russian Marxism, to Lenin's return to Petrograd and the April Theses in 1917, told from the texts themselves with every claim rated.55 min
  2. 2World Communism, 1917 to 1945: Revolution, the Comintern, Stalin and the WarThe reference timeline for world communism from the February Revolution of 1917 to the Yalta Conference of 1945, with both Russian calendars for 1917 and 1918. It quotes the founding documents (the Red Terror resolution, the Comintern's Twenty-One Conditions, Lenin's testament, the Nazi-Soviet Pact's secret protocol, the Comintern's dissolution) and sets out the famine, Gulag, Terror and Katyn figures as ranges with their sources. Popular claims from every side are rated against the evidence available in 2026.75 min
  3. 3World Communism, 1945 to 1991: From Yalta to the Soviet CollapseA dated, footnoted reference timeline of world communism from the Yalta conference of February 1945 to the end of the Soviet Union in December 1991: the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe, containment, Berlin, NATO, China, Korea, Khrushchev's secret speech, Hungary, the Berlin Wall, Cuba, the Great Leap famine, the Cultural Revolution, Prague 1968, Vietnam, the Khmer Rouge, Afghanistan, Solidarity and 1989. Death tolls are given as ranges with their authors, and popular claims about the period are rated against the record.60 min
  4. 4World Communism, 1991 to 2026: The Five Remaining States, the Opened Archives and the Count of the DeadThe Soviet Union ended in December 1991, but five states with about 1.55 billion people are still ruled by a communist party written into their constitutions: China, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba and North Korea. This lesson profiles each state and its leader as of November 2026, traces how the Russian archives, the Mitrokhin notes, Venona and the Vassiliev notebooks came out and how Russia closed Memorial in 2021, and sets out the count of the dead as ranges with their sources and methods.50 min
  5. 5American Communism and Anti-Communism Year by Year, 1919 to 1991A year-by-year chronology of the Communist Party of the United States and the American response to it, from the two founding conventions of September 1919 to the end of Soviet funding in 1989 and the Soviet collapse in December 1991. Each entry gives the date, the source and the module 81 lesson that tells the story in full, with charts of the party's membership, its changes of line and the Supreme Court's rulings.45 min
  6. 6People A to F: Spies, Officials, Accusers and the AccusedThirty-six entries, from Dean Acheson to Klaus Fuchs: Soviet sources such as Lauchlin Currie, Laurence Duggan and Judith Coplon, the defectors Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers, CPUSA and Comintern leaders, Soviet intelligence chiefs, investigators such as Martin Dies and Roy Cohn, and officials who were accused or who governed. Each entry separates party membership, espionage, sympathy and association, quotes the person's own words where a document preserves them, and rates the main claim against the evidence available in 2026.80 min
  7. 7People G to L: Spies, Officials, Accusers and the AccusedForty reference entries, from Benjamin Gitlow to Jay Lovestone, on the people of Soviet espionage, the American Communist Party and the investigations, with Soviet officers and world communist leaders. Each entry separates party membership, espionage, sympathy and association, names the evidence (Venona, the Vassiliev notebooks, confessions, trials and testimony) and rates the main claim. Covers Harry Gold, the Greenglasses, Theodore Hall, Alger Hiss, J. Edgar Hoover, Harry Hopkins and source 19, Owen Lattimore, Duncan Lee, the Hollywood writers and more.75 min
  8. 8People M to R: Spies, Officials, Accusers and the AccusedThirty-three reference entries from Donald Maclean to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, covering the investigators (McCarthy, McCarran, Mundt, Nixon, Rankin), the Soviet sources the archives now confirm (Perlo, Remington, Robert T. Miller, Mary Price, J. Peters, Julius Rosenberg), the accused whom the evidence does not show to be agents (Marshall, Moss, Peress, Oppenheimer, Arthur Miller, Robeson) and the informants (Markward, Philbrick, Matusow). Each entry keeps party membership, espionage, sympathy and association apart, gives the Venona and Vassiliev cover names with their basis, and rates the main claim.75 min
  9. 9People S to Z: Spies, Officials, Accusers and the AccusedThirty-nine entries from Alfred Sarant to Ralph Zwicker: the Silvermaster network and Harry Dexter White, Morton Sobell, William Weisband and Mark Zborowski, the KGB officers who ran them, and the senators, congressmen and lawyers who investigated or resisted Joseph McCarthy, from Margaret Chase Smith and Millard Tydings to Arthur Watkins and Joseph Welch. Each entry separates party membership, espionage, sympathy and association, cites the Venona and KGB-notebook evidence, and rates the main claim about the person.75 min
  10. 10Soviet and International Organizations: The Comintern, Cheka to KGB, the GRU, the Cominform and the FrontsA reference guide to the Soviet and international bodies behind the American Communist Party: the Comintern and its Executive Committee, liaison service, schools and auxiliaries; the security police from the Cheka of 1917 to the FSB, with every renaming and chief; the GRU and SMERSH; the Cominform, Warsaw Pact and Comecon; and the postwar fronts such as the World Peace Council. Each entry is checked against the opened archives and published texts, and popular claims about these organizations are rated.55 min
  11. 11American Groups: The CPUSA, Its Fronts and Unions, the Committees and the Anti-Communist OrganizationsA reference guide to the American organizations of the communist era: the Communist Party USA (its structure, secret apparatus, membership, Moscow money, the Smith Act and registration cases and the 1956 to 1958 collapse), the fronts on the Attorney General's list, the eleven unions the CIO expelled, the committees and executive bodies that watched the party, and the anti-communist organizations from the ACLU and ADA to Red Channels and the John Birch Society. Each group's main claim is rated against the evidence available in 2026.60 min
  12. 12Spy Networks and Venona Cover Names: Who Ran WhomThe Soviet spy networks in the United States, network by network: the Ware group, the Golos and Bentley line, the Silvermaster and Perlo groups, the Rosenberg ring, Fuchs and Gold, Theodore Hall and Saville Sax, the Cohens, Amerasia, the Canadian ring exposed by Gouzenko and the Cambridge Five. For each: members, handlers, years, what was passed, how it was exposed and who was prosecuted. A table of about 70 Venona cover names gives each identification, its basis and its strength, including the four identifications the KGB notebooks corrected and the disputed case of ALES.75 min
  13. 13Glossary A to Z: Terms of the Movement, Espionage, the Investigations and the LawAn alphabetical glossary of about 190 words a reader meets in the record of communism and anti-communism: the movement's own vocabulary, the Soviet and world communist bodies, the tradecraft of Soviet espionage, the terms of the American investigations and the law, and the slang of the era. Each entry gives a definition, a dated origin where one can be documented, a footnoted source and a link to the lesson of this module or of module 81 where the term matters. A diagram sorts the words by the four separate claims of membership, espionage, sympathy and association.75 min
  14. 14Numbers, Pictures and Infographics, Sources and a Reading GuideThe reference desk of the companion: the key numbers of communism and anti-communism in one place, each with its source, span and method, from Venona totals and party membership to the loyalty program, the censure vote and the ranges of the dead. A gallery of the most important photographs, a map of the archives and what each holds, the books by school, and a reading guide that ends with a line-by-line reading of a real Venona decrypt.45 min