CPUSA leader ousted by Stalin in 1929, later a Cold War anti-communist labour diplomat
Born to a Lithuanian Jewish family in Grodno Governorate of the Russian Empire, he emigrated to the United States in 1907. From the Socialist Party left he helped found the American communist movement, led a faction with Ruthenberg in the 1920s and rose to party secretary. Close to Bukharin, he resisted the Comintern's demand in 1929 that he hand over the leadership, was expelled, and led the "Lovestoneites" of the Right Opposition in the 1930s. From the 1940s he directed international anti-communist labour operations for the AFL and the CIA.
Also known as: Jacob Liebstein · Yakov Libshtein
Activities and affiliations
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1915–1919
Social movements and organizing
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1919–1929
Communist Party USA (CPUSA)Main
Political and party leadership -
1929–1941
Political and party leadership
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1944–1974
Social movements and organizing
Career Timeline
- 1907.09.15Arrived in the United States with his family.
- 1919.02Changed his name to Jay Lovestone; on the left wing's Committee of 15.
- 1929Resisted the Comintern's demand to step down; expelled.
- 1929–1941Led the Lovestoneites of the Right Opposition.
- 1944Joined the AFL's Free Trade Union Committee.
- 1963–1974Director of the AFL–CIO International Affairs Department.
- 1990.03.07Died in New York.
The 1929 confrontation with Stalin and expulsion
In the 1920s the American Communist Party was split between the Ruthenberg–Lovestone and Foster–Cannon factions, and the Comintern envoy John Pepper (József Pogány) was Lovestone's "gray eminence". As party leader Lovestone supervised the expulsion of Trotsky's supporters in 1928. But he was close to Bukharin, and when Stalin purged Bukharin from the Politburo in 1929 Lovestone felt the consequences. A visiting Comintern delegation asked him to hand the post of party secretary to his rival William Z. Foster. He refused, insisting that the great majority of the party backed him, and went to Moscow to argue his case.
Stalin answered that the Lovestone leadership had a majority only because the party regarded them as determined supporters of the Comintern. The theses of the Tenth Plenum of the ECCI that year welcomed the liquidation in the American party of the divisive influence of "opportunist factional leaders (Lovestone, Pepper)". Lovestone was expelled, and in the 1930s he led the "Lovestoneites", the American section of the Bukharinist international Right Opposition.
The group survived until about the Second World War. Lovestone then turned into a fervent anti-communist: in 1944 he joined the AFL's Free Trade Union Committee, and after the CIA's creation in 1947 he fed the counter-intelligence chief James Jesus Angleton information on Communist unions while building anti-communist unions in Europe and Latin America. He was director of the AFL–CIO International Affairs Department from 1963 to 1974.