What is the "Red Decade"?

Question

Anyone know what the RED DECADE is?

Answer 1

The Red Decade is a term coined by journalist and historian Eugene Lyons to describe a period in American history in the 1930s characterized by a widespread infatuation with communism in general and Stalinism in particular. Lyons believed this idolization of Stalin and exultation of Bolshevik achievements to have reached its high point in 1938, running deepest amongst liberals, intellectuals, and journalists and even some government and federal officials.

Lyons argues that American intellectuals gave the then-Stalinist Soviet Union (and by extension, Stalinism), a certain international goodwill and respectability that, in his opinion, it did not deserve.