Communist Party USA (CPUSA) is a Marxist-Leninist and communist political party in the United States that was founded in 1919. The party was established after the Bolshevik sympathizers within the Socialist Party of America decided to form their own communist party based on the ideals of Vladimir Lenin, and the CPUSA was persecuted during the First Red Scare of the 1920s. The party was weakened by internal divisions and by international events; from Joseph Stalin's rise to power 1928 to 1932, party membership dropped from 24,000 to 6,000 members, as Joseph Stalin labelled all Western socialists "social fascists". In 1935, CPUSA pushed for the formation of a popular front against fascism, and it supported African-American civil rights and raised money to fund the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War (in which many American volunteers fought). From 1939 to 1941, CPUSA was opposed to World War II due to Nazi Germany's alliance with the Soviet Union, but the party would return to its anti-fascist views in 1941 after Operation Barbarossa. The party would suffer from more persecution after the war's end, with its membership of 100,000 (plus around 1,000,000 sympathizers, according to Brian Becker) in 1945 dropping to 5,000 people in 1955. CPUSA became a very minor party, and it had around 2,000 members in 2017.
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