Canadian Communism at the Crossroads, 1956–1957: An Introduction

Jim Laxer, a teenager in Toronto in the 1950s, lived through the year 1956 quite differently than most Canadian youths of his time. Many boys would have been fixated on the Montréal Canadiens, who won the first of five consecutive Stanley Cups in that year. Raised in a Communist family, Laxer certainly shared some of the concerns of other adolescents his age. But unlike most of his cohort, Jim was taken aback by the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, his father, Robert, lamenting that the beloved leader of the Soviet Union would "not be able to finish his work." Four years later, Bob Laxer sombrely announced to his family, "We are leaving the Party. We're going to do it very quietly. There will be no formal resignation." Discretion notwithstanding, a young Jim Laxer thought the events of 1956–57 a "bombshell," a personal political detonation that brought the "pillar that had defined my existence from the moment of my birth" crumbling down.¹ What had happened between Stalin's death in 1953 and a series of developments in 1956–57 that saw the Laxer family and hundreds of others like them relinquish their affiliation to the Communist Party?

In a 1956 speech before a closed session of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (cpsu), Nikita Khrushchev announced that crimes against socialism had been committed by the once-revered "Uncle Joe" and that Stalin had encouraged a destructive "cult of the personality." All of this, as well as disturbing reports of the repression of dissident mobilizations in Soviet-controlled parts of eastern and central Europe, gave rise to a series of recriminations and reassessments. Laxer's father, recently returned from an eye-opening trip to the Soviet Union, joined other Canadian Communists in an opposition movement, insisting that revolutionary socialists had to right the wrongs of the past and ensure that their party, led by Tim Buck, strike out in new directions. Gérard Fortin describes one meeting in Toronto, conveying something of the tense, combative atmosphere of the times:

Buck's face was like thunder as we criticized the Party for slavishly copying the Soviet Union, told them that the situation had changed and we now needed a Communist Party concerned primarily with Canada and the Canadians (while, of course, maintaining all respect for the Soviet Union and its great achievements). Our statement was received in dead silence. As we walked out of the meeting I remember Stanley Ryerson, one of the few members from English Canada who could speak French, hissing at us as we passed, "Traîtres!" (Traitors!)²

In the end, no consensus could be reached among Canadian Communists in 1956–57. Those resistant to change carried the political day. The year 1956, a long time coming, revealed fault lines in Canadian Communism's project. Such political fissures, like so much of the history of communism, had their origins in international developments that would reverberate within the local, regional, and national peculiarities of Canada.

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The history of international communism in the 20th century, like that of the capitalism it sought to overturn, is replete with crises. Vladimir Lenin's death in 1924 and the leadership struggle that ensued, culminating in Stalin's consolidation of power within the cpsu and the Communist International, was undoubtedly an early crisis, albeit one that defied easy understandings. It set the stage on which others would unfold. These would include the 1937–38 Moscow Trials and their revelations of how far Stalin and his prosecutors were willing to go in slandering and killing off potential critics.

A number of abrupt...