Russian immigrants and the U. S. labor movement at the beginning of the cold war

The article examines the participation of Russian emigrants from in the US labor movement of the second half of the 1940s - early 1950s. The main labor organizations created by Russian emigrants, socialists in their beliefs, and their influence on American trade unions are characterized. The article is based on documents that are stored in the archives of the United States and therefore have not been widely used in Russian historical literature so far. Special attention is paid to the activities of D. Dubinsky, a long-term president of the International Women’s Trade Union of Garment Workers, who was the most prominent figure among Russian immigrants involved in the trade union movement in the United States. In the author’s opinion, D. Dubinsky and his associates who immigrated from the Russian Empire to the USA in the early 19th century largely determined the social reformist trend in the US labor movement. These mature Russian socialists enjoyed the support of those immigrants from Russia who long ago, even before the revolution of 1917, had moved to the United States, successfully underwent social adaptation and integrated into the political system of the country. The opponents of the Russian socialists were left-wing intellectuals who sought to control the associations of labor immigrants from Russia, that maintained independence from official trade unions. Left-wing intellectuals actively interacted with the USSR Embassy in Washington and were perceived by the anti-communist press as “Soviet agents” in the USA.