Session: 123456789101112131415161718192021222324         Page 39404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566 of 592

I'm thinking of Maia, a close friend who died recently. This past summer we came out to the island with friends and they brought out a videotape camera and they deliberately had it there because we knew how ill she was. We spent most of the afternoon in a friendly way asking her questions.

Who is this woman?

Maia Turchin Scherrer, a woman who died. We sensed that something was going to happen. She was feeling rather well, and so my wife, Anne, and others were serving as foils, questioning her about her background. On this question, she said, “You know, I remember I was in high school and a friend and I went to the Socialist Party because we were very incensed that the Communists were active and there was no Socialist Party, and we didn't like the Communists. We went to the Socialist Party and we said, ‘You know, if you'll only come here, there are a lot of people who will join you.’ They never came, so I joined the Communists.” I guess it's pretty much that, who your friends were. And then you found a theoretical rationale as to why you were a Communist, not a Socialist. As a matter of fact, you'll probably find that the socialists operated the same way, the Trotskyites, although there was a moving in and out.

I think what another thing the movement did is that it made people feel that life was worth -- that they were contributing something to life, that is was more important that they do this. You know, not everybody did this, you know. Most students were involved in fraternities and sororities and the traditional football games, etc. But we were the thinkers, not that the others weren't thinkers, you know. You tend to be very snobbish after a while and think that only we know anything. There were many, many terrible things that we learned in this movement.

Like what, for example?

Well, remember when we studied the world affairs and the role of the Soviet Union, I remember reading, after graduating, when I would work at City College, I would go there from Brooklyn and I had a forty-five minute ride in the Independent subway, and I would get a seat because it was the last stop. By the time I arrived at work, I had read The New York Times, the Tribune and the Daily Worker. So we did a lot of reading. Now, if you read the Times and the Tribune, you came across reports that were contrary to what you were being told about the Soviet Union. You would dismiss it from your mind, but you would read about -- 1936, there were trials, there's the Trotsky -- you would read about that thing and you would dismiss it, and yet because