Americanization as a Cure for Bolshevism: Anti-Revolutionary Popular Song in 1919

By Brian Holder

With the Armistice of November 1918 came a shift from the national vilification of the German people to a focus on the recent bolshevik revolutions (February and october 1917) in moscow. The Socialist call for a world industrial revolution concerned many in the united States. As the russian Civil War (1918­21) raged on, the ideology of social revolution seemed to be spreading into eastern europe. Amidst national fear that revolution could infest the united States—the so-called red Scare—the American entertainment industry had to make fresh choices about the political content of its products. At the same time, the industry had internal problems of its own, organized labor being perhaps the most threatening.