Question

What connections did some Americans, including the Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, make between labor unrest and the Russian Revolution?

Answer 1

Causes communist revolutions and overthrow

The Russian Revolution took place in 1917 after years of revolt, riots, and strikes.

After Russia fell to communism the US made connections between worker strikes and communism. Palmer led what are now called the "Palmer Raids" which was a series of raids and arrests of high profile union leaders. Palmer's raids were part of the First Red Scare which contained anti-union policies, arrests of union leaders, and attacks on anyone speaking of or promoting socialist or communist ideology. By shutting down union activity, the US hoped to prevent a communist overthrow.

Answer 2

All through the First World War, there was a countrywide crusade in the United States against the real and imagined separated political allegiances of refugees and racial groups, who were frightened to have too much faithfulness for their nations of origin. Specific targets were Germans, with compassion for their motherland, and Irish, whose citizens were in revolt against America's ally, the United Kingdom. In 1915, President Wilson advised against hyphenated Americans who, he charged, had dispensed the poison of infidelity into the very veins of our national life. Such people of passion, infidelity, and lawlessness", Wilson continued "must be crinkled out. The Russian Revolution of 1917 added superior force to fear of labor activists and followers of philosophies like revolution and communism. The universal strike in Seattle signified a new progress in labor unrest that the war had blocked.