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except Carl Freyman. A radical from Kansas who wore his prison term as a badge of honor, Browder served as the primary American agent of the Communist International (Comintern) established by the Soviets to control foreign communist parties. His wife, a Russian, still lived in Moscow; in the factional fights rending international communism, he ardently supported Josef Stalin; and the Soviets trusted him totally. Perhaps seeing in Morris something of his younger self, Browder favored him with enduring patronage and friendship.

    The Comintern dispatched Browder to China on what amounted to espionage assignments. Other American party members who were sent had failed to return, and so before leaving Browder entrusted prized books and memorabilia to Morris. “If I don’t come back, they’re yours.” On his return, Browder’s accounts of adventures in China fascinated and excited Morris. He told of visiting a park in the former British extraterritorial zone near Shanghai and seeing signs that said “No Dogs Or Chinese.” Browder told Morris that the Chinese liked Americans in part because the United States never exercised treaty rights to extraterritorial privileges and also because of the good works of missionaries.
    Under the sway of Browder, Morris aligned himself with the Stalinists and against American party leader Jay Lovestone, who had made the mistake of propounding a thesis some dubbed “American Exceptionalism.” It argued that because capitalism was flourishing in America, capitalism’s demise would occur later than in European nations and consequently party tactics in the United States and Europe might have to differ. Lovestone compounded his mistake by traveling to Moscow to gain formal Soviet approval of his thesis, which Stalin regarded as rankest heresy.
    Browder told Morris that Stalin ordered Lovestone detained in Moscow, but Trotskyites alerted him and with the connivance of foreign diplomats Lovestone escaped and was en route to the United States. At Browder’s instructions, Morris led a group of Stalinists who physically seized national party headquarters in Chicago and stood guard to prevent Lovestone and his followers from reoccupying the building. After the party moved its headquarters to New York, the Comintern expelled Lovestone from the party and anointed Browder as the new leader of American communism.
    Meanwhile, Morris helped unmask an industrial spy in Chicago, a private detective infiltrated into the party by a utility company, which blamed communists for strikes bedeviling it. Some comrade beat up the detective, who turned to police friends for revenge and apparently named Morris as one of those responsible for his undoing. Warned that the police were hunting Morris, the party hid him in a safe house and arranged to spirit him away to Moscow. At age twenty-six, Morris took all this melodrama
seriously when, viewed only in the light of circumstances in Chicago, it was silly. Morris had committed no crime, and the police, upon questioning the oaf who hit the detective, released him. Real gangsters interested them more. Years later, Browder explained the theatrics. He deliberately exaggerated the gravity of the incident and the danger to Morris so the Soviets would grant his protégé sanctuary at the Lenin School, which trained future leaders of worldwide revolution.
    The party equipped Morris with a false passport and identity papers, a ticket aboard the Ile de France , two hundred U.S. dollars, some French francs, and a new overcoat. Sewn on the lining was a small red patch that would tell any Comintern representative that he was bound for the Lenin School. He crossed Europe by train and reached Moscow in January 1929. A carriage mounted on a sled took him through caverns of snow to the school housed in the former palace of a Russian nobleman.
    There he joined men drawn from all continents and from similar backgrounds. All were under thirty-five, came