Robert Service - Spies and Commissars

Soviet leaders hoped for better luck with their efforts to influence the British political left. On 10 December 1919 the Trades Union Congress demanded ‘the right to an independent and impartial enquiry into the industrial, economic and political conditions of Russia’, aiming to send a joint delegation of the TUC, the Labour Party and the Independent Labour Party to see things for themselves. 5The Supreme Allied Council decided that no harm would be done, and on 27 April 1920 the delegation left for Scandinavia en route for Petrograd. 6Lenin remained unconvinced that this was a good idea and called for a press campaign to denounce the projected ‘guests’ of Soviet Russia as ‘social-traitors’. Chicherin pleaded for the trip to happen without any molestation, and Lenin for once gave way. 7

The British Labour delegation reached Petrograd on 11 May for their six-week trip. 8Off the train stepped Margaret Bondfield, H. Skinner and A. A. Purcell for the TUC; Ben Turner, Mrs Philip Snowden and Robert Williams for the Labour Party; and Clifford Allen and R. C. Wallhead for the Independent Labour Party. Dr Leslie Haden Guest and C. Roden Buxton travelled as secretaries and interpreters. 9Bertrand Russell joined them later after undergoing a special interview by British officials in London and overcoming Litvinov’s initial reluctance to issue him a visa in Stockholm. 10The delegates felt they were breaking through to a different world. As Ethel Snowden put it: ‘We were behind the “iron curtain” at last!’ 11It is widely assumed that this phrase was coined by Winston Churchill, in his speech at Fulton, Missouri in 1946, as the Cold War started between the USSR and the USA. Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels had in fact used it a year earlier as the Red Army swept into Romania. 12But though it was she who had coined it, Mrs Snowden’s meaning was quite different from Churchill’s. She believed that a curtain of ignorance separated the countries of the West from Soviet Russia. She denied that the Russian communists were a threat to Britain’s security — and she opposed any project to renew British armed intervention or giving material assistance to the enemies of Bolshevism. 13

She and her companions were alert to the risk of being treated like a ‘royal family’ and manipulated for Bolshevik purposes. 14Chicherin made a prediction at a banquet of welcome: ‘We instructed ourselves whilst the process of creating a new Russia was going on. When you return to England you also will have to learn while building, and then, in the near future, you will be able to greet us as we greet you tonight.’ 15Mrs Snowden tartly noted: ‘As propagandists there is surely no race and no class to surpass the Russian Communists.’ 16The repeated singing of the Internationale at the banquet got on her nerves. 17She also disliked the pomposity of official gatherings. Propaganda was unconvincing on the lips of ill-fed youngsters and she found it ‘unspeakably funny tripping from the unaccustomed lips of sober-speeched Britons, anxious not to be outdone in the delivery of explosive perorations’. 18

John Clarke, travelling with fellow Scot Willie Gallacher in July 1920 to the Comintern Congress, recorded a conversation on the slow train journey south from Murmansk to Petrograd. It was a time when the Red Army and the Polish Army were fighting for supremacy in Ukraine and Poland:

Gallacher: ‘Poles, Poles, are they defeated?’

Red Army soldier: ‘Ne upony mio!’ (I don’t understand.)

Gallacher: ‘Poles — defeated?’

Soldier: ‘Ne upony mio!’

Gallacher: ‘Poles — beaten — defeated — beaten?’ (A little fisticuff display.)

Soldier (stoically): ‘Ne upony mio!’

Gallacher: ‘Poles beaten! y’ken, beaten — washed oot — up the pole?’

Soldier (with loud guffaw): ‘Ne upony mio!’

And so on, ad infinitum. 19

Clarke was known for his humour, but he could see that his efforts were lost on an audience of four hundred peasants near Kandalaksha. His political minder had to interpret for them. Although Clarke spoke hardly any Russian, he astutely noticed that the Kandalaksha peasants spoke a dialect so distant from standard Russian that they probably could not understand even the minder. 20Gallacher and Clarke took over for themselves and simply used ‘prehistoric gesture-language’. 21

Generally the Soviet leadership was keen to keep visiting foreigners away from any Western resident who might puncture their warm illusions about Soviet Russia. Associated Press correspondent Marguerite Harrison, for example, was told to stay away from H. G. Wells. 22But Bolshevik connivances were erratic, and Harrison was allowed to consort with Bertrand Russell. 23She tagged along on the Labour delegation’s trip to the Volga region:

Our tour was a most luxurious one throughout, giving no idea of the ordinary hardships of travel in Russia at the present time. We had a special sleeper, with all the former comforts including spotless linen, and electric lights, a dining car where we had three good meals a day, service and appointments being very nearly up to peace time standards. 24

The cosseting of body and mind worked with Robert Williams, who declared that the experiences of the delegates would encourage them to argue for the removal of the economic blockade of Russia. 25In Samara, he stated that the British working class was pleased by every Red military triumph. 26The delegation’s interim report claimed that the ills of Soviet Russia — malnutrition and disease — were all the product of external factors. Policies of blockade or intervention should be put aside and official recognition granted.

Most of the other Britons resisted the blandishments and manipulation. Tom Shaw MP and Ben Turner bridled at the suggestion that the government of the United Kingdom was actively supporting the Polish invasion; 27and when Mrs Snowden disparaged the Soviet order, the Russian hosts downgraded her from ‘Comrade’ to ‘Madame’. 28The disappointment of the British delegation was summed up by one of its members who composed an irreverent new stanza for ‘The Red Flag’ as an antidote to Soviet boastfulness:

The people’s flag is palest pink,

It’s not so red as you may think;

We’ve been to see, and now we know

They been and changed its colour so. 29

Lenin gave up an hour and a half of his time to some of the visitors despite his long-felt contempt for the leaders of British labour. While living in London, he said that George Bernard Shaw was ‘a good man fallen among Fabians’. 30About Sidney Webb he offered the opinion that he had ‘more industry than brains’. 31Lenin predicted that when British workers set up soviets, Ramsay MacDonald would do his utmost to halt the revolution in its tracks. 32His attitude to Bertrand Russell is unlikely to have been any different. For his part Russell was repelled by Lenin’s passion for violence while Ethel Snowden was shocked by his ignorance about Britain; she explained to him that communism in England was constituted by ‘only a handful of extremists’ who had abandoned the older socialist organizations. 33Trotsky was too busy with his military duties for the delegates to be granted an interview with him, but he was present when the delegates were treated to a performance of an opera by Borodin. Russell managed a brief chat with him in the interval and formed a poor impression. He never explained the reason for this. But Mrs Snowden revealed that one of the delegates was introduced to Trotsky as a conscientious objector who had spent the Great War in prison. Trotsky commented: ‘We can have nobody here who preaches peace and wants to stop the war.’ 34He can only have been talking about Russell. Until that moment Mrs Snowden had envisaged Trotsky as ‘the greatest of pacifists’ in the Great War. She now knew better. 35