Re: AR & Bolshevism


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Posted by John Wilson on December 27, 2002 at 12:35:43 from 203.96.58.8 user hugo.

In Reply to: Matters arising from Mixed Moss posted by Duncan on December 26, 2002 at 14:39:28:

I would support the idea that Arthur Ransome was on the left, although it could be called the “soft left” rather than the hard left or Bolsheviks. His short story on the Russian Revolution (in Coots in the North & other stories) indicates a distrust of both the Russian Bolshevik government and the anti-Bolshevik government of the Baltic Republic (Estonia?) that the yacht was headed for. Hence his hero supported “the unofficial side”.

The Russian Civil War was between the Reds (urban Left) parties, the Whites and also the Greens or rural peasants. The foreign (British etc) Intervention was on the side of the White Admirals & Generals ie Denikin, Kolchak & Judenich, hence would not be supported by anyone on the left.

There were two Russian Revolutions, and “the Revolution” means the October Bolshevik Revolution, not the February Revolution that brought Kerensky to power. In the October Revolution (or Coup) the Bolsheviks seized power for themselves from the other parties of the Left ie the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries.

In “Witnesses of the Russian Revolution”, Harvey Pitcher has what foreign journalists wrote at the time, rather than later with hindsight:
“... the left-winger Arthur Ransome, who fondly imagined that Lenin would form a nice coalition government with other left-wing parties, the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries. Or Harold Williams clinging to his belief that the middle-class Kadets were going to revive.”

PS: Did Malcolm Muggeridge in his autobiography metntion Arthur Ransome playing chess with Lenin? This is in the 20s when AR recommended him to his paper (the Guardian?).

Harold Williams the New Zealand journalist and linguist was a father-figure to Arthur Ransome when he first went to Russia in 1913-14 and his wife Adriana was kind to him (Brogan pages 99-100). But Adriana turned bitterly against Ransome when their political views diverged, because of her anti-Bolshevism. She was a leading member of the Constitutional Democrats (Cadets). It was said that the Cadets had one good man, and she was a woman! “Cheerful Giver” Adriana Tyrkova-Williams’s biography of Harold Williams (pub. 1935) makes no mention of Arthur Ransome that I could find.

Adriana was an intimate friend at Princess Oblensky’s school of Nadya Krupskaya, who was later the wife of Lenin after meeting him at evening classes. Adriana visited them in Geneva in 1904. During her only conversation with Lenin, he said to her, while they were standing under a lamp-post:
“That’s what we shall ‘lantener’ you for”
when he pointed to it, and reminded her of how the French mobs used to hang the aristocrats on lamp-posts. She saw with surprise that a sensual, sadistic smile was hovering over his lips.



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