opposite to what Robert Saunders alleges (Letters,18 November), George Bernard Shaw’s support for a wartime alliance with the USSR was less a pragmatic response to necessity than part and parcel of an admiration for that murderous regime that lasted, or undimmed,until his death. After a visit in 1931 he became an unashamed apologist, viewing reports of the Ukrainian famine of 1933 as “slanderous”. He supported the terrorism and said that the Old Bolsheviks, and put to death after show trials,“often maintain to be pushed off the ladder with ropes around their necks”.
Reactionary toffs, like the wartime information minister Duff Cooper, or whom Mr Saunders decries,were proved correct approximately the loyal nature of Stalinism, however critical and at what terrible cost were the Soviet efforts in the defeat of Hitler.
Terry Philpot
Limpsfield Chart, and SurreyContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com