Pedersen, Vernon L. 1955-

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PEDERSEN, Vernon L. 1955-

PERSONAL:

Born December 2, 1955, in Shelby, MT; son of David (an auto mechanic) and Luella (McClouth) Pedersen; married Kay Kreider, May 28, 1976 (divorced, January, 1981); married Kate Hopkins (a registered nurse), October 28, 1983; children: Gwendelyn Louise, Jacob Morgan. Education: Indiana State University, B.S., 1985, M.A., 1987; Georgetown University, Ph.D., 1993. Politics: Republican. Hobbies and other interests: History of the American West, spy novels, movies, collecting art.

ADDRESSES:

Home—942 Turner Ave., Shelby, MT 59474. Office—Great Falls College of Technology, Montana State University, 2100 16th Ave. S., Great Falls, MT 59406. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Shepherd College, Shepherdstown, WV, adjunct professor of history, 1991-94; American University in Bulgaria, Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, associate professor of history, 1994-2001, associate vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty, 2001-03; Montana State University, Great Falls, associate dean of academic affairs and student services, 2003—.

WRITINGS:

The Communist Party of Maryland, 1919-1957, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 2001.

Underfunded, Understaffed, and Underground: The History of the San Francisco Bureau of the Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat, Continuity, 2003.

Contributor to Labor History, Journal of American Studies, Turkey, and American Studies Today.

SIDELIGHTS:

Vernon L. Pedersen is a scholar of American communism whose book The Communist Party of Maryland, 1919-1957 draws on a wide range of sources, including Soviet archive documents, F.B.I. files, and interviews with former members, to present the history of the Maryland state organization of the Communist Party from its inception to its collapse. According to Myron I. Scholnick in the Journal of Southern History, "Pedersen's book is particularly important because the Maryland Communist Party was a microcosm of the national one." While admitting the party's role in the creation of unions and the push for civil rights, Pedersen also reveals "the duplicity of the Communists, who constantly followed their party agenda, used undemocratic methods, and considered the unions primarily 'political tools,'" Scholnick explained. Pedersen's book, Scholnick concluded, is a "wholly admirable study."

Pedersen told CA: "I write history from a desire to experience the lives of people in the past and to bring those lives vividly back to life so that my readers can appreciate the intensity and passions that filled the existence of so many almost forgotten individuals. I chose my primary subject, American Communism, because of initial ideological sympathy and because of the challenges involved in writing the history of a semi-concealed group. I still take great satisfaction in my research but nine years of living in a post-communist country (Bulgaria) and extensive access to the Communist party records in Moscow have convinced me of the bankruptcy of both communism and Marxism and placed me in the ranks of such anticommunists as John Haynes and Harvey Klehr."