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Further to Andy P's reference to my book, The New Civilisation?, and his comment 'Is there anything akin to this focused specifically on US dupes?, there is Frank Warren's Liberals and Communism: The 'Red Decade' Revisited (Columbia Uni Press), originally published in 1966, which looks at some length at The Nation and The New Republic and other magazines in the 1930s. I found it an informative work. The former fellow-traveller Eugene Lyons published in 1941 The Red Decade: The Stalinist Penetration of America, which, as suggested by the title, is an agitational anti-communist work, but it does contain quite a bit of useful information. David Caute's The Fellow Travellers and Paul Hollander's Political Pilgrims look, from a left and right-wing perspective respectively at pro-Soviet individuals, including many US ones. One thing I noticed when reading through the many descriptions of the Soviet Union that were published here which has resonated in the light of the rival descriptions of what's happening in Ukraine today is that reading anti-Soviet and pro-Soviet material I had the distinct impression that the authors were describing two entirely different countries, so different were their descriptions. Reading the many rival reports on the Maidan protests and the separatist movements and various other aspects of Ukraine today, I feel that we are getting descriptions of two entirely different places, almost like parallel dimensions. To return to my book, where I feel that it is also useful is that I managed to go beyond the usual view of the 1930s attitudes towards the Soviet Union of consisting solely of diametrically-opposed pro-Soviet and anti-communist viewpoints, and -- as Geoff Foote pointed out in his review -- described what I call the 'centre ground', that is, a broad swathe of opinion, from moderate Tories through to right-wing and centre social democrats, who, whilst strongly rejecting Marxism and workers' revolution (and the Stalinist interpretations of them), looked to Soviet state economic and social welfare policies as something from which Western governments could learn. This was, of course, in the context of the vivid contrast between Western economic slump and the massive growth under the initial Five-Year Plans. Various authors have looked in passing at how the Soviet economic and welfare measures were looked at in Britain, and others have looked, at some length, at the rise of the idea of state intervention in Britain between the world wars, but none, as far as I know, has systematically brought the two factors into a single framework of analysis. I imagine that attitudes towards the New Deal and related state interventionist policies have been thoroughly investigated in the USA, although whether researchers have done for the USA what I have done in respect of Britain, I'm unable to say. I imagine that the situation in the USA was similar to that in Britain, and that it went beyond the clash of uncritical pro-Soviet and totally rejectionist anti-Soviet viewpoints. I researched and wrote my book, of course, many decades after the event and in the light of subsequent knowledge, and it was thus much easier to ascertain what were worthwhile reports and assessments and which were tendentious or wishful thinking, and to discover that the usual perception of the 1930s debate as a mere clash of anti-Soviet and pro-Soviet views is inaccurate. Although it was not impossible at the time to ascertain to a fair degree what was happening in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and to ascertain the complexity of the impact of the Soviet experience in Britain, it needed quite a bit of discretion, a lot of studying of the material, and the putting aside of preconceptions. That might be a good idea today when considering events in Ukraine and elsewhere. Anyone interested in my book can order it via here < http://www.francisboutle.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=10&products_id=50 >. Paul F ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
