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8 July

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By Liakhovetsky, Ivan Mikhailovich (Maisky)

The Complete Maisky Diaries: Volume 2

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8 July

Now that Cripps is finally settled in Moscow as ambassador of Great Britain, I am trying to recover his true image in my mind. Who is he really? What are his most characteristic features?

It is important to know this. One can then draw the appropriate conclusions about the prospects of Cripps’s employment in Moscow.

Cripps is a deeply English type. He was born in 1889, the youngest son of Lord Parmoor, who was a Tory all his life but became a Labour peer in 1924. Lord Parmoor is still alive, but he is very old and has retired from public view.

Nothing in Cripps’s childhood and youth foretold that he would become a major politician. On the contrary, his first interest was architecture and construction of every sort. Then, after finishing public school at Winchester, he began studying chemistry at London University. Cripps, however, soon dropped chemistry and took up law. He became a lawyer in London in 1913, while in 1914 he found himself in France, working for the Red Cross. A year later, Cripps returned to London and during 1915–17 he was in charge of an explosives factory (studying chemistry had come in handy). He returned to the Bar after the war, and in 1927 was appointed King’s Councillor [sic]. As a lawyer, his rise to the top was exceptionally fast and, which is most interesting, he earned a good reputation among both the workers and the bourgeoisie. He was particularly popular among the miners, whom he often defended in court. At the same time, as Butler once told me, his son-in-law Courtauld,

Samuel Courtauld.

a leading

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manufacturer of artificial silk who consulted Cripps on legal matters, considers him one of the most intelligent men in England. As a barrister, Cripps usually earned a great deal: 20–30 thousand pounds a year!

In 1911, at the age of 22, Cripps married the daughter of a naval officer called Swithenbank.

Harold William Swithenbank.

She bore him four children, a son and three daughters. Cripps’s wife Isobel is a wealthy lady (her annual income is said to reach 10,000 pounds). So the financial status of the Cripps family is that of the bourgeoisie, perhaps not the upper bourgeoisie by British standards, but quite ‘solid’ all the same.

Cripps remained outside politics until he was about 40. Only in 1928 did he join this important sphere of British life, and in 1931 he started representing the Bristol East constituency as an MP for the Labour Party. Cripps was expelled from Labour at the beginning of 1939 for advocating a ‘united front’, but his constituency remained faithful to him, and he continues to represent Bristol East in the House of Commons.

Cripps is undoubtedly a very intelligent and well-educated man. He is an English intellectual of the left who considers himself a radical socialist, but who has never had anything to do with Marxism. Cripps’s socialism is of a particular English breed – a mixture of religion, ethical idealism and the practical demands of the trade unions. Cripps is a republican, which is a rather rare phenomenon in England. In recent years he has spoken out sharply against royal authority, and for a while his name was ‘taboo’ in Buckingham Palace. Cripps is very emotional, hence his instability and the frequent contradictions in his speeches of different periods. What is especially valuable about Cripps is the fact that he has convictions and is ready to stand up for them. He has proved his honesty and courage in deeds on more than one occasion, especially in connection with the propaganda of a ‘united front’, for which he had to pay a heavy price.

Despite being, by British standards, a man of the far left, Cripps is deeply religious (not, of course, in a formal, churchly sense). He is a confirmed teetotaller and vegetarian, and even prefers to eat raw rather than boiled vegetables. Yet Cripps is a heavy smoker. He is exceptionally interesting to talk to. He is a fine orator, whose speeches are greatly influenced by the context in which he finds himself. In parliament and in court, Cripps is a model of logical, juridical eloquence. But at mass meetings he is transformed beyond recognition: the sight of a crowd goes to his head and he becomes a tribune of the people. His excited imagination carries him farther and farther afield and he skips his habitual ‘buts’ and ‘ifs’, becoming more left-wing than he actually is. That’s why he has often found himself in awkward predicaments. Cripps is a

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very feeble tactician. He does not know how to manoeuvre, how to wait for an advantageous moment, or how to handle people. It was only because of these shortcomings that he was expelled from the Labour Party.

Cripps is a typical political individualist, such as may be found in England fairly often. He is akin to Lloyd George in this sense. Cripps enjoys great popularity in the thinking strata of the proletariat and among more enlightened Conservatives like Churchill, Eden and others. Labour, the Transport House, dislikes him. Butler and, strangely enough, Halifax think highly of him. Perhaps it is religion that unites Halifax and Cripps. It is difficult to foretell Cripps’s future, but he will probably play a major role in the political events of the next few years. I’ve heard it said several times that Cripps is a future ‘left-wing’ minister of foreign affairs or ‘left-wing’ prime minister. Even such a man as Lloyd George, upon learning of Cripps’s appointment as ambassador to Moscow, told me: ‘I almost regret it. We need Cripps here more than in Moscow. He is the only major figure on the opposition bench.’

Cripps’s attitude towards the USSR is entirely cordial. I remember the courage and skill with which he defended us on behalf of Labour during the debate on the embargo in connection with the Metro-Vickers case. No doubt, he still has very good intentions in respect of Anglo-Soviet relations. But will he be able to improve these relations significantly? I don’t know. All will depend on the policy of the British government, which is much further to the right than Cripps on this matter. If only the British government could reform itself and allow Cripps to genuinely represent it. Will Cripps remain as friendly to the USSR as he has been until now? I don’t know that either. We’ve had quite a few bad experiences on that score. Time will tell.

[A member of a minority left-wing faction in parliament, Cripps now found himself in a crucial role as British ambassador to the sole major power in Europe which still retained its independence, even as he remained an outspoken opponent of the prime minister. Convinced that Russia would eventually find itself at war with Germany, Cripps hoped to lay the foundations for an alliance during the war which could pave the way to a post-war agreement. Hardly had he settled in Moscow than he advocated an agreement with Russia that would recognize part of her acquisitions (mostly in the Baltic States) and lead to the establishment of a south-eastern alliance with Turkey. His detailed plan for post-war reconstruction – a premonition of things to come – contained some very radical thinking: in the wake of the war, which was bound to lead to significant social changes on the home front, Great Britain must, he argued, ‘be prepared to regard herself as an outpost’ of the United States. Cripps presented his ideas in a letter that he addressed to Halifax and which was shown to Churchill. Churchill attached to the letter a note for circulation to the Cabinet, which he later tore up. Apparently the note ran as follows: ‘It seems to me that the ideas set forth by Sir S. Cripps upon the post-war position of the British Empire are far too airy and speculative to be useful at the present moment, when we have to win the war in order to survive. In these circumstances, unless any of my

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colleagues desire it, it seems hardly necessary to bring this excursion of our Ambassador to the USSR formally before the Cabinet.’

Cripps’s views are elaborated in a letter by Monckton to Lady Cripps, Monckton papers, Trustees 03/5, July 1940; Colville, Fringes of Power, 10 Aug. 1940, p. 215.

Churchill’s own message, which Cripps delivered to Stalin on 1 July (at their only meeting before the German invasion of Russia) was confined to a general declaration of a desire to maintain ‘harmonious and mutually beneficial’ relations between the two countries, regardless of their ‘widely differing systems of political thought’.

TNA FO 371 24844 N5853/30/38, FO to Cripps, 25 June 1940.

The concrete proposals which Cripps made to Stalin were aimed at establishing a bulwark against Nazi Germany in the Balkans. The timing, however – just a week after the fall of France – was inauspicious. Stalin feared that Britain, under siege and with no apparent prospect of victory, might try to embroil Russia in a war with Germany. He was as suspicious that Britain might sign a peace agreement with Germany. The ‘scramble for the Balkans’ that followed best illuminates the nature of Stalin’s frame of mind, as well as his modus operandi following the Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact.

The annexation of Bessarabia in June 1940 (as stipulated in the Pact) has been perceived by most historians as yet another example of Bolshevik ideological expansionism. But the move was motivated by a need to improve the strategic position of the Soviet Union in the Black Sea area by securing control of the mouth of the Danube. This would bolster Russia’s position as a European power and establish a springboard to the Turkish Straits. It mirrored the concessions which were forcibly extracted from Finland after the conclusion of the Winter War of 1939–40 to protect the maritime approaches to Leningrad.

Stalin further sought to achieve the best preconditions for the Soviet Union at the putative peace conference, which he expected to take place in 1941–42. In view of the eventual formation of the Grand Alliance, it is rarely recognized by historians that throughout the 1930s the Russians regarded the Germans and the British with equal suspicion. Well into 1940, British naval dominance of the Mediterranean – taken in conjunction with the legacy of imperial rivalry between England and Russia, the Crimean War, the confrontation of 1877–88, the Balkan wars at the beginning of the twentieth century and British intervention in the Civil War after the Revolution – was perceived by Stalin to be as much of a threat to Russia as German expansion.

For a documented survey of Soviet foreign policy during that period, see Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion.

]

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Document Details

Document Title8 July

AuthorLiakhovetsky, Ivan Mikhailovich (Maisky)

RecipientN/A

RepositoryN/A

ID #N/A

DescriptionN/A

Date1940 Jul 8

AOC VolumeThe Complete Maisky Diaries: Volume 2

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