Anticommunists and Death Narratives

Abstract

Chapter 5 focuses on how anticommunists used Adamic’s death, which the coroner ruled a suicide, to claim that Stalin murdered him. Anticommunists collectively constructed a version of his life intended to mute his antifascism and his criticisms of them, including his criticism that they embraced the fascist ethos. Anticommunists feared that Adamic’s repeated opposition to the communists could result in the public listening to his calls for a foreign policy that rejected colonialism and promoted peace. They smeared him before congressional committees and in the press. Some South Slavs helped advance the “Adamic as communist” narrative as a means of repenting their radical pasts. The chapter explores who else might have killed Adamic.