Partisan Review

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Partisan Review was a small, left-leaning New York quarterly about literature, politics, and culture. It began in 1934, started by the John Reed Club, a part of the Communist Party USA. Editors Philip Rahv and William Phillips mixed proletarian literature with cultural essays and argued that bold art and political ideas could go together, often challenging party orthodoxy.

In 1936, the CPUSA shifted to a Popular Front approach, and Partisan Review suspended publication. It came back in December 1937 with new editors, including Dwight Macdonald and F. W. Dupee, and moved toward a more independent stance that criticized the Soviet Union. The magazine drew in writers such as James Burnham and Sidney Hook and, at times, showed Trotskyist sympathies. After the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939, PR gradually distanced itself from the Communist movement.

During and after World War II, Partisan Review supported American rearmament and adopted a broadly anti-Communist, liberal viewpoint. In the 1950s and 1960s, it received funding from CIA-linked groups as part of Cold War cultural efforts. Henry Luce helped with donations, and later the Congress for Cultural Freedom provided support as well. In 1963 the magazine moved its offices to Rutgers University in New Jersey, and in 1978 to Boston University. A dispute over the archives led to current materials moving to BU while Rutgers kept the originals, and a legal settlement arranged the transfer of records. The magazine’s circulation was about 8,150 in 1989. Philip Rahv’s successor, his wife Edith Kurzweil, continued publishing Partisan Review at Boston University until its final issue in April 2003.