Stalin Digital Archive

Back to Search

Stalin digital archive

Back to Search

Table of Contents

< Previous document Next document >

12 November

- Export Citation
- Export Annotation

View:

By Liakhovetsky, Ivan Mikhailovich (Maisky)

The Complete Maisky Diaries: Volume 1

Image view

Print
Save
Share
Cite

Translation Transcription

Translation

12 November

I met Jennie Lee

Baroness Janet (Jennie) Lee of Asheridge.

and her husband, the Labour MP Aneurin Bevan,

Aneurin Bevan, Labour MP, 1929–60.

at Naomi Mitchison’s

Naomi Mitchison, Scottish social activist and author of more than 70 books for adults and children.

literary soirée. They were in a foul mood. Jenny was particularly displeased. She is thought to be so far left as to be all but a communist, but now she is utterly depressed: the working masses have moved left, but they don’t even listen to the ‘left’. They believe in Labour, pin great hopes on a third Labour Cabinet which could rely on its own majority, and surrender all their sympathies and votes to Labour. The left, according to Jenny, is out of a job.

‘It’s all right for you in Russia,’ she finally said. ‘You’ve already entered the formative stage of socialism, you can work. But what about us?… I’d like to fall asleep now and wake up when it’s easier to serve the cause.’

How do you like that?! Of course we’re happy in the Soviet Union. We really are building socialism. But think what this happiness has cost us! If we had whined like Jennie at difficult moments, what would have remained of us? What would have happened to the revolution?…

I also saw Pritt

Denis Nowell Pritt, Labour MP, 1935–50, president of the British Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR, 1933–69; expelled from the Labour Party in 1940 for supporting the USSR’s war against Finland. On his close relations with Maisky, see VSD, pp. 211–14.

(a prominent left-minded Labour lawyer) at the party. He was in low spirits as well. He spoke of the ‘catastrophe’ of the Socialist League

After the split in the Labour Party, the Socialist League was organized by Sir Stafford Cripps (Beatrice Webb’s nephew) on its left fringes. It tended towards Marxism and used Tribune as its vehicle. Early in 1937, the Socialist League launched a campaign for a united front with the Communist Party, which led to the expulsion of Cripps from the Labour Party in 1939. See P. Clarke, The Cripps Version: The life of Sir Stafford Cripps 1889–1952 (London, 2002), pp. 55–6.

and of Morrison’s

Herbert Stanley Morrison (Baron Morrison of Lambeth), Labour MP, leader of the London County Council, 1934–40, minister of supply, 1940; home secretary and minister of home security, 1940–45; member of the War Cabinet, 1942–45.

domination in the Labour Party.

Transcription

Document Details

Document Title12 November

AuthorLiakhovetsky, Ivan Mikhailovich (Maisky)

RecipientN/A

RepositoryN/A

ID #N/A

DescriptionN/A

Date1934 Nov 12

AOC VolumeThe Complete Maisky Diaries: Volume 1

Login Required

Your subscription has expired.