Posted by John Wilson on February 08, 2006 at 13:16:40 from 202.154.130.237 user hugo.
In Reply to: Well Heeled posted by Laurence Monkhouse on February 06, 2006 at 16:11:13:
Certainly I agree with Paul Foot that there is nothing on politics in all of the 12 S&A books (that I can recall). But while Paul Foot sees AR as a Bolshevik, Richard Price sees him as a pragmatist.
AR was against the Allied Intervention in Russia. But in 1917 he held that “only the moderate majority in the All-Russian Soviet stood between Russia, and either reaction ... or a takeover by the Bolsheviks” (Brogan, bio page 135). His low opinion of the bourgeois Cadets (Constitutional Democrats) and particularly Miliukov led to a break with Harold & Ariadna Williams. Though Miliukov’s expansionist ideas were similar to Stalin’s during and after WWII (Brogan, bio page 127)
AR’s later plans for a book on the history of Russian Revolution did not eventuate (what did Genia think?). He had promised the Bolsheviks to write it, and had a letter of support written by Lenin. But in 1920 he found that his collection of 1917-18 Petrograd newspapers left in his lodgings had been burnt, and his telegram files stolen. He did write three (not two) books/pamphlets on the Revolution: The Truth about Russia (1918), Six Weeks in Russia in 1919 (1919), and The Crisis in Russia (1921). Eventually he put some of his arguments about Russian politics into his autobiography (Brogan, bio page 225, 231, 240, 421)
In 1938-39 he thought that Neville Chamberlain was on the right lines for peace with his Appeasement policy (Brogan, bio page 363-365). Of course other “left-wingers” have changed as they got older!
PS: Not knowing E. Nesbit’s books, was there any “implied radicalism” (Paul Foot) in them?