Supporting the Soviets in 1917 was the right side of history. Supporting the USSR in 1937, not so much. By the time the purges came around, ethical and well informed leftists should have become anarcho-syndicalists, left-communists, or at least Trots. Perhaps one of the reasons good people found it so hard to leave the US CP was that during the Third Period (late 20s and early 30s) it was further left and more militant than most of its opponents. Ending the NEP, collectivizing agriculture, investing in industry, supporting black liberation, building independent communist trade unions outside the AFL, opposing reformism, planning for actual revolution, all made Stalinism look super radical and inspiring. The CP had built up enough far left credibility, particularly in contrasts to the West’s state of economic depression, to maintain members through the popular front gestures toward reformism and liberal/nationalist alliances, the purges, and even the Hitler-Stalin pact and the insane flip-flops in Party Line.
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