How communists (briefly) ran St. Louis
Mark Kruger’s new book — the first he’s written since his dissertation was published decades ago — has its roots in his curiosity about a long-forgotten piece of local history.
“Twenty-five years ago, I was reading something and there were a few sentences talking about how, at the end of the railroad strike of 1877, the workers of St. Louis took over the city,” he recalled. “I thought, ‘That’s interesting. Why has nothing been written about it?’”
The thought stayed with Kruger. And when he retired six years ago after a long career as both a lawyer and a professor (he taught at St. Louis Community College-Forest Park and ran St. Louis University’s criminal justice program), he found himself thinking about those questions much more seriously. He learned there was one book on the subject (“Reign of the Rabble,” which he calls “excellent”). But not only was the 1966 book out of print, it failed to answer some of his big questions, namely: Where did the people come from? Who were they?
Kruger’s answers can be found in “The St. Louis Commune of 1877: Communism in the Heartland,” his engagingly written history of how Marxism in Europe, mass German migration to Missouri and exploitative railroad companies set the stage for an unprecedented attempt at American socialism. The book was published by the University of Nebraska Press this fall.
https://news.stlpublicradio.org/show/st-louis-on-the-air/2021-12-09/how-communists-briefly-ran-st-louis
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