Immersed In Red Read online

  In addition, I have gleaned valuable information from Tim Tzouliadis’ book, The Forsaken, the tragic saga about American automobile workers, their families and others, who moved to Russia in the 1930s to help build the Russian equivalent of Detroit. My love of Model A Fords and my penchant for research led me to this riveting story. Many of these autoworkers were simply in desperate search of work during the Depression, but most believed they would be building and living in the new Soviet worker’s utopia, as promised by Joseph Stalin. Almost all of them perished, either in slave labor camps, or were executed as enemies of the state after their usefulness ran out.

  All of the writers I have mentioned are steeped in communist research in the twentieth century, and particularly the era from the late 20s to the 80s, which were the years that formed the basis for the political movement embraced by my stepfather Orville, my mother, and all of their friends who so impacted my formative years and beyond.

  Uncovering the facts. My goal in writing about my early political exposure was not to produce a heavily footnoted history of American communism, but rather to concentrate on, in a far more personal manner, my eyewitness experiences and perspectives of the events of my younger life, and offer referenced historical background as required. In order to produce the work, I also relied on conversations with my stepfather and mother over many years, as well as their taped interviews, multiple books, periodicals, internet background research, references by researchers from the 25,000-page Mitrokhin Archive, the extensive Index and Concordance to the Vassiliev Notebooks, and the Venona Decrypts. The decryption documents are from the 1940s program released by the National Security Agency in 1995, which involved intercepting and decoding Soviet intelligence communications between Moscow and NKVD officers in the US. These are some of the American and Soviet documents that were made available for study and translation during the 1990s. The names of my stepfather and our family friends and associates are profusely sprinkled throughout them.

  I have also spent some time documenting my parents’ early background so that people might understand their psychological frame of mind which, in my opinion, helped propel them into the angry, dogmatic, and strange world of communism.

  My involvement in this topic lay dormant for many years. It was the lead up to, and culmination of, the election of Barack Obama, and the increasing presence of the left-leaning Democratic Party which facilitated that event, that made me recognize that what I had grown up with was alive and thriving, and affecting whole new generations who have little education or understanding of this critical political movement.

  What is alarming is the fluid nature of the labels and rhetoric that has allowed the far left ideology to work its way into the mainstream. And there are some very interesting factors that contribute to this chameleon-like movement. David Horowitz described the communist movement after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 as being freed from their traditional role of having to defend the Soviet government, complete with the growing backdrop of the atrocities of Stalin and the gulags. On the one hand they had been defeated; their reason for being no longer seemed viable. But as Horowitz so aptly observed, they were actually able to revamp and remold. By persistently continuing the push, they usurped, in essence, the traditional Democratic Party. By 2008 they emerged at the top of the political heap with an adoring media and academic force leading the charge.

  Today, the modern Democratic Party is better described as the descendants of the Progressive Party of 1948, the far left faction whose roots were mired in a cloaked Marxist orthodoxy that promoted populist government. In fact, the term Progressive has become almost interchangeable with Democrat.

  My political indoctrination was a direct outgrowth of this same movement. Leaving it behind had the effect of liberating me from a rigid set of rules that confined the soul. My life began anew when I began to see the world differently. The oppressive gloom of the left was suddenly at an end. The windows opened, and a fresh breeze was allowed to pass through the space. I felt free to prop up a Reagan sticker in the rear window of my car with pride, an immense load lifted from my shoulders.

  What is painfully evident from all of my experience and research is that my step father, Orville E. Olson, was deeply involved in clandestine and subversive political activities whose aim was to replace American capitalism and democracy with Stalinist communism. Thus, he considered himself a righteous American patriot, following in the footsteps of Tom Paine and the American revolutionaries. My mother was also involved at a far less intensive, although naïve, degree. Nevertheless, her strident leftist views and support of Orville’s political positions were indelibly etched in my young mind.

  My hope, in the end, is to communicate the importance of learning about the roots of the modern left and persuading readers to understand the dire consequences of the natural progression of such an ideology in actual practice. At the same time, I will offer the reader a taste of the madness of the left and the politicization of every facet of life in their quest for control. I also wish to prompt conservatives to understand, as Horowitz puts it, “what they are up against.”

  * * *

  PART I

  PARENTS’ FAMILY BACKGROUNDS, THE DEPRESSION, AND LEFTIST SYMPATHY

  CHAPTER 1

  MOTHER, FATHER AND GRANDPARENTS

  I was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in November, 1942, eleven months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into World War II. My parents remained married until I was about five years old. Within two years of their divorce, my mother remarried, which resulted in the beginning of my exposure to Marxist ideology.

  My father, Henry Titus Shotwell, grew up on Long Island, NY, and my mother, Elisabeth Louise “Betty” Vonderleith, in Darien, CT. They met while students at Pratt Institute in New York City. My father graduated with a war- shortened degree in architecture, and my mother with a war-shortened degree in commercial art. They married in 1939 and, in June 1941, my older brother, Peter, was born; sixteen months later, I came into the world.

  Mother’s background. My mother always characterized her childhood as unhappy, stemming from having been adopted by her great-aunt and uncle at the age of three. She described them as quite cold and demanding; plus, they were of an advanced age and ill-equipped to be parents to a toddler.

  The story of my mother’s birth and first few years is something comparable to a star-crossed novel. In December 1916, my grandmother, Marion Lyon, an elegant 18-year-old girl, became the mistress of a 50-year-old Russian/German Baron, Edgar DeCramm (Von Cramm). DeCramm had recently arrived in the United States in order to pursue Russian government business interests. His official title was Councilor of State for the Romanov government. Besides his Russian home in St. Petersburg, he had estates in Latvia.

  DeCramm was married, and his wife, Matilda, had two sons by her previous marriage, both serving at that time in the Russian navy. DeCramm also had an adult son from a previous marriage. The son and his wife were being held prisoner in Germany, where they were living when the war broke out. Matilda gained notoriety for striking up a friendship with the first American ambassador to Russia, David Francis. Her close relationship with him brought considerable scrutiny from the US State Department. DeCramm was also being investigated by the Russian authorities regarding his activities during the war. His general classification might have been that of a WWI German spy, but there is also evidence that he worked both sides, facilitating financial transfers out of Russia for both Russians and Germans.

  In early 1917, DeCramm “adopted” Marion, no doubt to avoid the US Mann Act, intended to stop the trafficking of young women across borders “for immoral purposes.” The two traveled to Central and South America, eventually arriving in San Francisco in early 1918. DeCramm had gained the notice of the American State Department, partly due to his wife’s ongoing situation, and he came under further scrutiny in San Francisco. He was soon arrested and detained at the Hotel St. Francis. His story was covered in the loca
l papers, including the detail that Marion was in “a family way,” as the San Francisco Examiner delicately worded it. He was eventually sent out of the country, likely due to an agreement to not reveal information about his wife’s close relationship with the American ambassador. Marion, in turn, went to Los Angeles, where my mother was born at the end of April 1918. After a year or so, Marion heard little from “the Doctor,” as DeCramm was referred to in letters to her aunt that are in my possession. From the West Coast, she moved back to New York. There, abandoned by the father, and with seemingly few prospects, Marion placed her daughter in foster care. Marion’s letters hint at a harsh existence, but it is a bit difficult to discern, because in 1920, records show she traveled by ocean liner “to visit friends” in Rio de Janeiro, and also ventured to Cuba. Such travel was not inexpensive.

  While her daughter was still in foster care, Marion traveled to Paris looking for work in the movie industry. When it became clear that she could not support her daughter, she made the decision to follow up on her aunt’s prior offer to adopt the three-year-old, and the arrangements were made. In keeping with the norms of the time, the adoption signaled a new beginning, and my mother’s name was changed from Leila Lyon to Elisabeth Louise “Betty” Vonderleith. When I was growing up, Walter and Margaret Vonderleith were always recognized as my grandparents; I knew nothing of the adoption until many years later.

  My mother railed her entire life against her adoptive German-American parents, about their severity, their demands on her to perform endless housework, and their lack of understanding of her emotional needs.

  Her adoptive father, Walter Vonderleith, had an inward personality. He amassed an unruly collection of 40,000 volumes of books and a half-million prints during his life. But the collection was more a result of a hoarder’s mentality than the product of a strict scholar. Books were stacked up six feet high throughout the three-story house in Darien, CT, and the beams of the vintage 1840 home sagged under the load. In one room, the stacks collapsed and the room became inaccessible for more than thirty years. I remember staying there during summers and following the narrow, crooked pathways through the stacked books with windrows of dust all about.

  Grandfather Vonderleith, born in 1883, was always kind to me, although he was a stoic, somewhat distant, individual. I did not experience him with the same emotional baggage my mother carried. In 1961, some years after my grandmother died, he moved from Connecticut to California to live with my mother and younger brother. My older brother and I had both left for college. My grandfather handed over all his money from investments and the sale of his house in Darien to my mother, greatly relieving her of her precarious financial situation as a single mother. For this gift, however, she was quite unappreciative. She felt entitled to the money for all the perceived misery of her past. For about two years, she kept her small two-story apartment, requiring my grandfather and younger brother, Bjorn, age 10, to share the second bedroom. It was a painful experience for them both.

  My mother always told me that while growing up she was clothed in ill-fitting, hand-me-down clothes for which she was still angry. I uncovered her Darien, CT, high school yearbook for 1935 in her belongings, which told a bit of a different story. She was named “The Most Popular, the “Most Attractive,” the “Cutest,” the “Most Original,” the “Class Chiseler,” the second choice for the “Best Figure,” the “Best Dresser,” the “Cleverest,” and the “Second Best Looking.” The yearbook also contained a prophecy that the young man named “The Most Dashing” would take “The One and Only” (my mother) to the Olympics. But the most complimentary description of her was that she was, “The Fairest of all the Flesh on this Earth.” Photos of my mother growing up, with my grandparents and later during her college years, always showed her dressed very well, but there always seemed to be a hint of melancholy on her face. Of course, these were the Depression years, and the resulting financial strain on the family undoubtedly contributed to her outlook.

  The Vonderleiths were able to hang onto their beautiful home on Five-Mile-River-Road in fashionable Darien, even when my grandfather lost his job on Wall Street in the early 30s. However, for several summers, the family relocated to my great-grandparent’s home in Pulaski, Illinois, while renting their home to a wealthy couple from New York. Through all of it, they were able to clothe and feed my mother, and send her to college. Despite these efforts, my mother remained staunchly unappreciative for the rest of her life.

  In contrast, my grandfather arranged for his brother Henry, who was quite financially successful, to pay for the bulk of mine and my two brothers’ college educations, to relieve that burden from my mother, who had little in the way of savings. Prior to my grandfather moving in with my mother in California, he had periodically sent her money for trips back east during the summers, and also helped out here and there during our family’s many difficult financial stages.

  Despite the era in which my mother grew up, it sounds as if she had far more going for her than she felt; from the entries in her high school yearbook, indicating she was popular and had a lot of friends, to marrying my father, who was the popular, good-looking class president of the School of Architecture at Pratt Institute. But she always characterized her youth as just the opposite; that she had been dealt a bad hand throughout her life. She expended a lot of energy blaming others for her perceived troubles and entangled relationships. I experienced her as being enormously self-centered and not interested in accepting responsibility for her choices and actions. In total, my mother’s account of her childhood didn’t entirely add up to me.

  Memories of my grandmother are clouded, as she had frequent mini-strokes in her later years, which didn’t allow me to accurately assess her true personality. By my mother’s accounts, both grandparents were woefully unfit and unprepared for parenthood. She often stated that the most joyful times spent at home were being alone in her third-floor spacious attic bedroom, far away from her adopted parents. She repeated often that the happiest day of her young life was on her tenth birthday when they informed her that she was adopted. She also learned that her “Aunt Marion,” who occasionally came to visit, was her birth mother. Her memory of being taken to speakeasies by her mother seems somewhat inappropriate today, but resonated in my mother’s mind throughout her life as being colorful and fun. She also recalled the visits of her “aunt” in a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce, and the elegant lady sitting with a parasol in the garden watching my mother play. My mother’s memories as a three-year-old always incorporated a mysterious and romantic quality, and had little to do with the reality that her mother, abandoned by DeCramm, had moved to France and abandoned her as well. All of this now seems a perfect recipe for my mother’s future decisions and travails.

  In 2013, genealogical research revealed that Marion died in 1951 at 52 years of age. From the information obtained on her death certificate, under the name Ruth Marion MacDuff, Marion had been a homemaker married to a James F. MacDuff, and living in Oxnard, CA. She died of “alcoholism and barbiturate poisoning.” In an ironic twist, our family moved to Hermosa Beach, CA, from Minnesota, about six months before Marion’s death. Oxnard was only a couple of hours away. In some respects, I’m glad my mother never learned of her mother’s fate, and was able to keep her mysterious and exciting fantasies alive. She would have been crushed to confront the hard reality of her mother’s last years.

  As for DeCramm, if he returned to Russia and his family, it’s likely his properties would have been confiscated and he and Matilda would have met their fates during the revolution in a similar manner to other members of the Russian aristocracy under the brutal direction of Lenin and Stalin.

  Parents’ marriage. My mother and father were married in 1939, after college graduation. Their time together was short and tumultuous, complicated with, among other things, my father’s emerging alcoholism, which he described as beginning at the age of twenty-seven.

  In 1940, prior to the birth of my brother, Peter, my father was ab
le to arrange an artistic endeavor for my mother, obtaining a commission through FDR’s private secretary, Marguerite “Missy” LeHand, to create caricature illustrations of the president’s travels, which were presented to him on his birthday. It was exciting for my mother to go to the White House more than once. Apparently, FDR was delighted with the product.

  I remember small pieces of early childhood with my parents, including trips to the St. Louis Zoo to visit “Joe” the gorilla. This was during the strain of the WWII years, when my architect father traveled extensively in connection with his work for President Roosevelt’s Rural Electrification Administration, a creation of the WPA (Works Progress Administration). Although lost now, I remember seeing artwork that I created as a child, drawings of the skies filled with bombers and ribbons of bombs falling from their fat bellies.

  I also have faint memories of Minnesota, after my parents moved there when I was about four. We lived for a period in the Francis Drake Hotel in Minneapolis. I remember visiting the Excelsior amusement park, fishing with my father on various lakes, and going downtown at Christmastime to see the decorated storefronts. My father loved the glitz of living in the hotel, and driving up to the fancy entrance with its well-dressed doorman. I also remember having dinner many times at a fancy restaurant (I think it might have been called “Charlie’s”) with its bar and white tablecloths. There, my brother Peter developed a taste for Lobster Bisque, and we carried live lobsters around, with bands on their claws, to show them off to the patrons. My father wanted to live at the hotel permanently. He spent time in the bar playing piano and enjoying the cocktail hours. He was self-taught on the piano but became extremely proficient during his college years playing afterhours with many of the better-known bands in Harlem night clubs. He told me he would have loved to have been a full-time musician rather than an architect.