This book analyses the relationship between the USSR and various parts of the British left. The book shows how enthusiasm for the USSR was high during the 20s and 30s, with prominent leftist from Britain's Labour Party and trade unions given VIP tours of the glorious new workers' paradise. These tours of course only showed the side the Soviets wanted them to see; smiling, well fed 'workers' in Potemkin villages, whilst millions slaved and starved in the gulags. These delegations often returned with glowing reports of the USSR.
The Nazi-Soviet Pact temporarily dampened this enthusiasm, but with the Nazi invasion of the USSR in 1941, and Stalin joining the Allies, this enthusiasm soon returned, with gusto. This enthusiasm was at its peak in the 1945 election, with a landslide Labour victory on a manifesto of hard-line socialist transformation. The Communist Party itself even had MPs elected, largely due to the lionised image of communism the Soviet defeat of the Nazis had given it. This was however to soon change.
As the years went on, this began to change. The Soviet rigging of Eastern European post-war elections, its ruthless crushing of the Hungarian uprising and later the Prague Spring deflated the general public's image of the USSR, the left in general and communism in particular. For the Labour Party, the rest of the Cold War would be marked by Labour MPs who rejected the Soviets (such as Michael Foot), to some who had a worrying tendency to side-step its brutality with a fawning remark about is welfare system. The book also details the unrepentant 'fellow travellers', hardliners whose uncritical, canine-like obedience to the Moscow line came to dominate the most notorious elements of the British left.
In short, this book is a good overview for anyone interested in the British left.
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