Editing Partisan Review (section)

===1937 relaunch===
While ''Partisan Review'' was relaunched by Rahv and Phillips in December 1937, it was changed at a fundamental level. News of the [[Great Purge]] in the Soviet Union and of Soviet duplicity in the [[Spanish Civil War]] pushed the pair of editors to a new outspokenly critical perspective. A new cast of editors were brought on board, including [[Dwight Macdonald]] and literary critic [[F. W. Dupee]], and a sympathy for [[Trotskyism]] began to make itself felt in the magazine's editorial political line. The CPUSA press was hostile, claiming that a party asset had been stolen. A new group of left-wing writers deeply critical of the Soviet Union began to write for the publication, including [[James Burnham]] and [[Sidney Hook]].{{sfn|Gilbert|1974|p=550}} The new period of independence had begun.

Effective with the [[Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact|Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939]], the magazine began to divorce itself from the Communist movement altogether, including its dissident Trotskyist wing. Rahv and Phillips gave qualified support to the campaign for American rearmament and the country's preparation for war, opposed by Macdonald and another editor at the time, [[Clement Greenberg]]. A tentative truce between the editors averted a split, with Macdonald finally departing in 1943 to form the [[pacifism|pacifist]] magazine ''[[politics (magazine 1944-1949)|politics]]''.{{sfn|Gilbert|1974|p= 552}}

Anti-Communism began to loom in the ''raison d'être'' of ''Partisan Review'' in the post-war years and bolstered by the contributions of such writers as Hook, [[James T. Farrell|James Farrell]], [[George Orwell]], and [[Arthur Koestler]], the political trajectory of ''PR'' moved rightwards.{{sfn|Gilbert|1974|p= 552}} Increasingly conservative and [[nationalism|nationalist]], by the early 1950s the magazine had become devoutly supportive of American virtues and values, although critical of the country's biases and excesses.{{sfn|Gilbert|1974|p= 553}} Orwell had been the ''Partisan Review''{{'}}s London correspondent.<ref>{{cite magazine|title=Contributors |work=Partisan Review |volume= 16|number= 1 |date=January 1949|quote=[[George Orwell]], formerly ''PR''{{'}}s London correspondent and author of ''Animal Farm'' and other books, is at present living in the Hebrides where he is writing a novel.}}</ref>