Walker, however, had personal reasons for not wanting to leave Portland. So he requested me to accept the assignment to Seattle. And I was perplexed as to what to do. I was in the middle of a school teaching year, but I was becoming more convinced all the time that there was no future in teaching--at least the way I wanted to do it. So I accepted, under a great deal of pressure, the assignment to come to Seattle. And that was, I say, under a great deal of pressure, too, because the way I was approached on it was that “Well, now you are a member of the party. You do what the party tells you to do, and you go where the party wants you to “go.”
Mr. MOULDER. May I interrupt at that point before you start on your Seattle testimony?
I am curious to know, during that period of time when there were no laws prohibiting membership in the Communist Party, why there was direction that you operate underground or under false names?
Mr. DENNETT. You remember I spoke about the criminal syndicalism prosecutions in Oregon. The members of the party were being accused of violating the criminal syndicalism statute.
Mr. DENNETT. In Oregon, yes. And they considered that they were under attack for illegality.
Mr. VELDE. I would like to know at the time you joined the Communist Party, I believe it was in 1931, if you had any idea at that time that the policy of the Communist Party of the United States of America was being dictated by Soviet Russia?
Mr. DENNETT. Well, there is a sort of mixed answer to that.
I had been reading the Daily Worker. I had been reading the Butte Daily Bulletin. I was somewhat familiar with the international politics in which there was conflicting interest between the United States and the Soviet Union. But it was reconciled in my thinking with the firm conviction that the Communist Party was attempting to serve the interests of the working class all over the world and that in doing so there would be no conflict so far as we were concerned. Now that was the way it was resolved in my mind at that time.
Mr. VELDE. I think that is true of many early Communist Party members.
Mr. TAVENNER. Without going into detail, did your views continue to be the same or were they altered as time went on in the course of your Communist Party work?
