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By Will Bennett, Art Sales Correspondent
NEWS.telegraph.co.uk, London, UK
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
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Stalin's show trials which led to the deaths of millions of people in the
Soviet Union during the 1930s were strongly defended by the British author
and playwright George Bernard Shaw.
An extraordinary document to be auctioned at Sotheby's in London next month
reveals that Shaw continued to defend the Russian leader's excesses despite
growing doubts on the political Left in Britain.
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Shaw-Stalin's Guest in 1931
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Shaw, who became an apologist for Stalin after being invited to visit the
Soviet Union in 1931, was sent a typewritten questionnaire about one of the
early show trials by the journalist Dorothy Royal.
The author of such works as Major Barbara, Androcles and the Lion and
Pygmalion gave brief replies, some of them handwritten, to Miss Royal's
questions. It is not known whether they were subsequently published. His
replies to the questionnaire, which is expected to fetch £3,000 to £4,000 at
Sotheby's on July 10, provide a shocking insight into the naivety of Soviet
sympathisers among the British intelligentsia.
Senior communists were arrested after the murder of Sergei Kirov, the
Leningrad party chief, in December 1934 and within two months almost 200
had been shot. Tens of thousands of lesser-known people were sent to
Siberia although Kirov is thought to have been been killed on Stalin's
orders.
Miss Royal said that leaders of the Independent Labour Party, a Left-wing
anti-communist group in Britain, had written to Stalin arguing that either
the charges against veteran Bolsheviks were untrue or the Russian Revolution
had "degenerate" leaders.
Asked whether he believed that the revolution had "attracted degenerate
types", Shaw replied: "On the contrary it has attracted superior types all
the world over to an extraordinary extent wherever it has been understood."
He continued: "But the top of the ladder is a very trying place for old
revolutionists who have had no administrative experience, who have had no
financial experience, who have been trained as penniless hunted fugitives
with Karl Marx on the brain and not as statesmen.
"They often have to be pushed off the ladder with a rope around their
necks," wrote Shaw, apparently justifying Stalin's execution of many of
those who had led the Bolshevik revolution in 1917.
Shaw argued that what he called "this Russian trial" had been exaggerated
and he rejected suggestions that the accused had only pleaded guilty because
they had been drugged or tortured.
At least 720,000 people were executed in the terror that followed. Millions
more died from hunger and ill-treatment in concentration camps.
By Will Bennett, Art Sales Correspondent, NEWS.telegraph.co.uk, London, UK
Wednesday, June 18, 2003, For Personal and Academic Use Only
http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/06/18/nshaw18.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/06/18/ixhome.html
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