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H. N. Brailsford and Russia: The Problem of Objectivity*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

F. M. Leventhal
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Extract

In a journalistic career which spanned seven decades, Henry Noel Brailsford devoted a considerable part of his writing to Russian affairs and to the relations of the British and Russian peoples. In scores of articles and in two books based on first-hand observations, he helped to mold Western attitudes — especially of those on the political Left — to the often maligned, frequently enigmatic giant of the East. Few English journalists in the twentieth century could match the knowledge, personal contacts, and audience of a man who published several articles a week from the late 1890s to the early 1950s for a host of papers, including, to name the most important, the Manchester Guardian, the Speaker, the Daily News, the Nation, the Herald, the New Republic, the New Leader, Reynolds News, and the New Statesman. While Brailsford's field of competence encompassed the whole range of international and imperial affairs, he was preoccupied with the Balkans, with Russia, and with India, and of these only Russia commanded his attention throughout his life. The Balkan question belongs to the years before World War I, India to the 1930s and 1940s, but Russia remained of consuming interest from the revolution of 1905 until after the Second World War.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Summer 1973 , pp. 81 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1973

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Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this essay was delivered at the New England regional meeting of the Conference on British Studies at Boston University, May 6, 1972. I am grateful to Mr. C. H. Rolph for access to the Kingsley Martin Papers, to Lady Isobel Cripps for permission to use the Sir Stafford Cripps Papers, and to Miss Livia Gollancz for copies of her father's correspondence with H. N. Brailsford.

References

1 See Taylor, A. J. P., The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792-1939 (Bloomington, Indiana, 1958), pp. 95–131Google Scholar; Weinroth, Howard S., “The British Radicals and the Balance of Power, 1902-1914,” Historical Journal, XIII (1970):653–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Brailsford, H. N., “A Liberal Policy in the Near East,” Independent Review, III (1904):321–36.Google Scholar

3 Brailsford to Gilbert Murray, May 13, 1905. Murray Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford; Brailsford to Noel Buxton, May 19, 1905, Noel-Buxlon Papers, McGill University, Montreal; Nevinson, Henry W., More Changes, More Chances (London, 1925), pp. 101–03.Google Scholar

4 Brailsford to Gilbert Murray, May 5, 1905, Murray Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford.

5 “Lenin and Trotsky in London,” Listener, Jan. 1, 1948. Also see Maisky, Ivan, Journey into the Past (London, 1962), pp. 140–44.Google Scholar

6 Daily News, Aug. 5, 1905.

7 Brailsford, H. N., “Sir Edward Grey's Foreign Policy,” Independent Review, X (1906):257–64Google Scholar; Brailsford, H. N., The Fruits of Our Russian Alliance (London, 1912), pp. 5–13.Google Scholar

8 Daily News, June 25, 1908.

9 “The Second Duma,” Nation, Mar. 2, 1907; Brailsford, H. N., “Liberalism and the Russian Government,” Socialist Review, I (1908):335–40Google Scholar; Brailsford, , Russian Alliance, pp. 18–34.Google Scholar

10 Taylor, , Trouble Makers, p. 97.Google Scholar

11 June 27, 1908, Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen, My Diaries (New York, 1932), p. 618.Google Scholar

12 Letter to the Editor, Times, Sept. 10, 1907.

13 Daily News, May 13, 1907: “The Trend of Foreign Policy,” Nation, May 18 and 25, 1912.

14 “The Trend of Foreign Policy,” Nation, June 15, 1912.

15 Brailsford, H. N., Origins of the Great War. Union of Democratic Control Pamphlet No. 4 (1914)Google Scholar; previously published as “The Empire of the East,” Contemporary Review, CVI (1914):334–45.Google Scholar

16 Letter to the Editor, Nation, Aug. 29, 1914.

17 “Russia, the Navy, and Persia,” Nation, May 30, 1914.

18 “Russia in Transition,” New Republic, Oct. 9, 1915.

19 “The Russian Revolution,” Herald, Mar. 24, 1917.

20 “From the Revolution to the Trenches,” Herald, Mar. 31, 1917.

21 “Russia and the Settlement,” New Republic, Apr. 21, 1917.

22 “The Offensive and the Revolution,” Herald, July 28, 1917.

23 “Russia, Peace and Bread,” Herald, Nov. 17, 1917.

24 “A Separate Peace?” Herald, Dec. 1, 1917.

25 “The Kerensky Visit,” Herald, July 6, 1918; Advisory Committee on International Questions, Memorandum No. 9. Labour Party, Transport House, London. See Graubard, Stephen Richards, British Labour and the Russian Revolution, 1917-1924 (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), pp. 58–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 “The War with Russia,” Herald, Dec. 14, 1918.

27 “Bolsheviki and Jacobins,” New Republic, Mar. 9, 1918.

28 Russell, Bertrand, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 1914-1944 (Boston, 1968), p. 141.Google Scholar

29 Brailsford, H. N., The Russian Workers' Republic (London, 1921), p. 15.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., p. 73.

31 Ibid., p. 115.

32 Ibid., p. 205.

33 New Leader, May 25, 1923; Apr. 18 and June 6, 1924.

34 New Leader, Jan. 9, 1925.

35 “Towards Socialist Unity,” New Leader, Apr. 16, 1926.

36 New Leader, Nov. 14, 1924.

37 “The Real Revolution in Russia,” New Leader, Mar. 23, 1927.

38 Brailsford, H. N., How the Soviets Work (New York, 1927), p. 139.Google Scholar

39 Ibid., p. 168.

40 Ibid., p. 157.

41 Reynolds's Illustrated News, Dec. 10, 1933.

42 Reynolds News, June 28, 1936.

43 Brailsford to Sir Stafford Cripps, July 31, 1936, Cripps Papers, File 591, Nuffield College, Oxford.

44 New Republic, July 28, 1937. Hyams claims that the New Statesman took a strongly critical stand, but it is its deliberate neglect of the purges that is more striking. Kingsley Martin wrote occasionally on the trials, but Brailsford contributed only one article in Aug. 1936, as well as the letters in reply to Dutt in July 1937. See Hyams, Edward, The New Statesman: The History of the First Fifty Years (London, 1963), pp. 196–202Google Scholar. I am grateful to Mr. Michael Foot for bringing to my attention Brailsford's unique and unpopular role.

45 Reynolds News, Aug. 30, 1936.

46 Reynolds News, Sept. 13, 1936.

47 Reynolds News, Feb. 7, 1937.

48 Reynolds News, June 20, 1937.

49 Reynolds News, June 27, 1937.

50 Brailsford to Ponsonby, Mar. 1 [1938]; Ivan Maisky to Ponsonby, Mar. 4, 1938, Ponsonby Papers. Bodleian Library, Oxford.

51 New Statesman, July 10, 1937.

52 New Statesman, July 17, 1937.

53 Gollancz to Brailsford, Sept. 6, 1937, Gollancz Papers, in the possession of Victor Gollancz Ltd, London.

54 Brailsford to Gollancz, Sept. 19, 1937, Gollancz Papers.

55 Brailsford to Gollancz, Feb. 14, 1938, Gollancz Papers. Although Why Capitalism Means War was published in 1938, Brailsford later remarked that “few people ever saw that little book. Victor buried it in oblivion, because it contained some very mild criticism of Stalinism.” Brailsford to Kingsley Martin, July 28, 1957, Kingsley Martin Papers, University of Sussex Library.

56 “Causes and Consequences,” New Republic, Sept. 13, 1939.

57 Reynolds News, Dec. 3, 1939.