Last modified on June 17, 2020, at 16:34

Eugene Dennis

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Francis Xavier Waldron pseudonym : Eugene Dennis (b. Seattle 1905 - New York 1961) was a long-time leader of the Communist Party USA.

He fled to the Soviet Union in 1929.

Dennis was identified in the Venona project as being a source for Soviet intelligence during World War II. Dennis is referenced in the following Venona transcripts: 708 KGB Moscow to Mexico City, 8 December 1944; 1714 KGB New York to Moscow, 5 December 1944; 55 KGB New York to Moscow, 15 January 1945. In the transcripts, Dennis is referenced as a contact for a group of concealed Communists in the Office of Strategic Services and the Office of War Information. Harold Glasser was also another contact.

He became general secretary of the party until 1957.

On the morning of 20th July, 1948, Eugene Dennis, the general secretary of the American Communist Party, and eleven other party leaders, included William Z. Foster and Benjamin Davis, were arrested and charged under the Alien Registration Act. This law, passed by Congress in 1940, made it illegal for anyone in the United States "to advocate, abet, or teach the desirability of overthrowing the government". The case Eugene Dennis

Eugene Dennis also served as General Secretary of the of the party from 1959 until his death on 31 January 1961.


See also

References

  • John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).
  • Louis Budenz, Men Without Faces: The Communist Conspiracy in the USA (New York: Harper, 1948), 252.