What primary sources did W. Cleon Skousen cite in The Naked Communist and how accurate are those citations?

1. What Skousen said he used: dozens of primary communist writings and leaders’ statements

Skousen repeatedly framed The Naked Communist as the result of direct reading of communist literature — claiming to have distilled analysis from over a hundred communist books and treatises and to have “gone back to what communist leaders actually wrote and said,” a claim repeated in publisher descriptions and later editions ^{[1] [2] [3]}. The book’s structure treats historical Marxist theory, Soviet practice, and party literature as primary fodder for his conclusions and appendices, including the famous 45 goals that Skousen compiled as a pattern of communist tactics ^{[2] [3]}.

2. The 45 Goals: compilation, citation style, and political afterlife

Skousen presented the 45 Goals as a readable checklist of communist aims that he said reflected themes across primary materials; the list became widely circulated and was later quoted into the Congressional Record, which cemented its political resonance ^[4]. Publishers and endorsers highlighted the list in reprints and updates — the 2017 edition even emphasizes how many goals Skousen claimed had been realized in the U.S. — but those editions do not substitute for archival footnoting tying each numbered goal to a single original document ^{[6] [3]}.

3. Scholarly and critical pushback: conflation, exaggeration, and contested provenance

Scholars and critics cited in secondary sources charge Skousen with combining passages and themes from multiple sources into single, prescriptive "goals" in ways that produce an agenda-like appearance unsupported by any one primary communist manifesto or party directive; this critique is explicitly recorded in critical summaries of the book and reference entries that say the 45 goals are challenged as fabrication or exaggeration ^[4]. Academic treatments place The Naked Communist in a Cold War genre alongside works like Hoover’s Masters of Deceit, noting its polemical intent and selective reading of communist modernism rather than neutral archival scholarship ^{[5] [7]}.

4. What can and cannot be verified from available reporting

Available summaries and publisher material consistently report Skousen’s claim to primary-source grounding and his compilation method, and they document the social and political influence of the book — sales, reprints, and endorsements by conservative figures — but they do not provide a documented, indexed concordance tying each specific Skousen citation or each of the 45 goals to exact primary-source passages in a way a modern historian would demand ^{[2] [3] [1]}. Where critics say the 45 goals are not verbatim communist doctrine, the sources report that dispute but do not supply a comprehensive forensic audit of Skousen’s footnotes, meaning a definitive, source-by-source accuracy score cannot be derived from the materials provided ^[4].

5. Motives, genre and the consequence for accuracy assessment

Skousen wrote as an anti-communist polemicist with a clear political project and audience, and his publisher and later advocates promoted the book as a practical warning text rather than an academic monograph, which helps explain choices about synthesis, emphasis, and rhetorical framing that critics label exaggeration ^{[5] [3]}. The combination of genuine citations to Marxist and Soviet literature with selective synthesis and partisan framing produces a mixed legacy: many of Skousen’s general claims reflect themes present in communist writings, yet the provenance and literal accuracy of several specific items — most famously the 45 Goals presented as a coherent, single communist program — remain disputed and not conclusively proven by the sources reviewed ^{[4] [2]}.