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you were a student, it would still stick someplace in the back of your mind where you would be fearful to even raise it. Or if you read the Nation and the New Republic, which I continued to read through all these periods, I even read them today, terrible.

Do you even read the New Republic?

The New Republic today because occasionally they have very good stuff in there. No, but it's almost like a habit. Sometimes it's like a drug. You feel that it's that old one-upmanship. If I don't read that, my gosh, somebody's going to know more than I know if I don't read it. I've got to know this. So it becomes that kind of thing. But I know what happened in terms of blocking it out. In other words, you're not really thinking anymore; that was the major weakness of the Communist Party. Remember, I lived through the Pact and I was very wise and understanding in explaining that away. I lived through the Finnish War, and I remember putting out questions and answers on the Finnish War, with answers obtained from The New York Times. See, one thing you learn, you can find in The New York Times anything to prove anything, and people use it that way. You can find a fact to prove anything five times over. And that's what we did.

Why did we suspend belief? I don't know. You know, it's one thing to suspend belief for a short time, but I didn't leave the Communist Party until after the Khrushchev revelations, although by that time, even before then, I was very, very cynical about it. Not only that, but in the dispute inside District 65, which I left and went to 1199 in '54, the dispute hinged around a fight between the party and the leadership of the union. And I felt that the party was wrong, that the party was crazy in its position. It's hard for me now to remember what the dispute was about.

We'll come back to that a later on.

Okay.

So it's 1935, '36. You graduated from college.

Yes.

And you're working full-time at City College.

Full-time at City College uptown, and then I'm transferred to work full-time downtown. In this period I'm active with student organizations.