Editing Third Period (section)

==North America==

Historians of the left have debated the contribution made by Communist activism in [[North America]] during the Third Period. Some  authors like [[Robin Kelley|Robin D. G. Kelley]] and John Manley have penned local histories that portray Communist Party members as effective activists, heroic in many cases because their revolutionary zeal helped them confront extremely adverse circumstances. Despite the shadow of [[Stalinism]], in this perspective, the important positive contributions Communist organizers made in working class history should not be discounted.

Critics of this perspective argue that these histories gloss over or ignore both the horrors of Stalinism and also the devastating consequences of the Third Period inasmuch as it facilitated the rise of [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] and alienated the working class writ large from the left because of its sectarianism and adventurism.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Roediger|first1=David|title=Where Communism was Black|journal=American Quarterly |volume=44|issue=1 |pages=123–128|date=March 1992|doi=10.2307/2713184|last2=Kelley|first2=Robin D. G.|jstor=2713184}}; {{cite journal|last=Manley|first=John|title=Canadian Communists, Revolutionary Unionism, and the "Third Period": The Workers' Unity League, 1929-1935|journal=Journal of the Canadian Historical Association |volume=New Series 5|pages=167–191 |year=1994|doi=10.7202/031078ar|doi-access=free}}; {{cite journal|last=McIlroy|first=John|author2=Alan Campbell
 |title="Nina Ponomareva's Hats": The New Revisionism, the Communist International, and the Communist Party of Great Britain, 1920-1930|journal=Labour/Le Travail|issue=49|date=Spring 2002|volume=49|pages=147|doi=10.2307/25149217|jstor=25149217|s2cid=142809743 }}</ref>