George Orwell: A Life in Letters (66 page)

To Dwight Macdonald*

15 April
1947

Barnhill

Isle of Jura

Dear Dwight,

Many thanks for your very interesting and informative article on Wallace
¹
, which reached me yesterday—unfortunately a few days after I’d left London for the summer. I’ve sent it on to
Tribune
, as I should think they could well use parts of it, at least as background material. I left London the day before W[allace] had his big public meeting at the Albert Hall, but I heard him say a few words of welcome on arrival and got the impression that he meant to be very conciliatory and not make the sort of remarks about ‘British imperialism’ which he has been making in the
USA
. His visit here has been timed to do the maximum of mischief, and I was somewhat surprised by the respectful welcome given to him by nearly everyone, incidentally including
Tribune,
which has given him some raps over the knuckles in the past.

It doesn’t matter about the Tolstoy article. If you feel you do want to use a piece of it sooner or later, hang on to it until then. Otherwise, could you be kind enough to send it on to my agents, Mcintosh & Otis, explaining the circumstances. It’s possible they might be able to do something with it, though as they failed with another
Polemic
article (one on Swift), perhaps this one is no good for the American market either.

As to books on the
USSR
. It’s very hard to think of a good list, and looking back, it seems to me that whatever I have learned, or rather guessed, about that country has come from reading between the lines of newspaper reports. I tried to think of ‘pro’ books, but couldn’t think of any good ones except very early ones such as
Ten Days that Shook the World
²
(which I haven’t read through but have read
in
, of course.) The Webbs’
Soviet Communism,
³
which I have not read, no doubt contains a lot of facts, but Michael Polanyi’s little essay
⁴
on it certainly convicted the W.s of misrepresentation on some points. A nephew of Beatrice Webb
⁵
whom I know told me she admitted privately that there were things about the
USSR
that it was better not to put on paper. For the period round about the Revolution, Krupskaya’s
Memories of Lenin
has some interesting facts. So does Angelica Balabanov’s
My Life as a Rebel
.
⁶
The later editions of Krupskaya’s book have been tampered with a little, at any rate in England. Of the same period, Bertrand Russell’s
Theory and Practice of Bolshevism
(a very rare book which he will not bother to reprint) is interesting because he not only met all the tops but was able to foretell in general terms a good deal that happened later. Rosenberg’s
History of Bolshevism
is said to be good and unprejudiced, but I haven’t read it and his book on the German Republic seemed to me rather dry and cagey. A book that taught me more than any other about the general course of the Revolution was Franz Borkenau’s
The Communist International
. This of course is only partly concerned with the
USSR
itself, and it is perhaps too much written round a thesis, but it is stuffed with facts which I believe have not been successfully disputed. As for books of ‘revelations,’ I must say I was doubtful of the authenticity of Valtin’s book, but I thought Krivitsky’s book
⁷
genuine although written in a cheap sensational style. In one place where it crossed with my own experiences it seemed to me substantially true. Kravchenko’s book
⁸
is not out in England yet. For the concentration camps, Anton Ciliga’s
The Russian Enigma
⁹
is good, and more recently
The Dark Side of the Moon
¹⁰
(now I think published in the
USA
) which is compiled from the experiences of many exiled Poles. A little book by a Polish woman,
Liberation, Russian Style
,
¹¹
which appeared during the war and fell flat, overlaps with
The Dark Side
and is more detailed. I think the most important of very recent books is the Blue Book on the Canadian spy trials,
¹²
which is fascinating psychologically. As for literature, Gleb Struve’s
Twenty-five Years of Soviet Russian Literature
is an invaluable handbook and I am told very accurate. Mirsky’s
Russian Literature 1881–1927
(I think that is the title) takes in the earlier part of post-revolutionary literature. There is also Max Eastman’s
Artists in Uniform
. You’ve probably read everything I have mentioned except perhaps the Blue Book. If you haven’t read the latter, don’t miss it—it’s a real thriller.

I am up here for 6 months. Last year I was just taking a holiday after six years of non-stop journalism, but this year I am going to get on with a novel. I shan’t finish it in six months but I ought to break its back and might finish it at the end of the year. It is very hard to get back to quiet continuous work after living in a lunatic asylum for years. Not that conditions are now any better than during the war—worse in many ways. This last winter has been quite unendurable, and even now the weather is appalling, but one is a little better off up here where it is a bit easier to get food and fuel than in London.

Yours

George

[XIX, 3215, pp. 126–9; typewritten]

1
.
For Henry Wallace see
5.12.46
n. 6.

2
.
John Reed,
Ten Days That Shook the World
(1
919). Reed (1887–1920) was involved in setting up the Communist Party in the United States. He died of typhus and was buried in the Kremlin wall.

3
.
Sidney James Webb (1859–1947) and Beatrice Webb (1
858–1943),
Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation?
(2 vols, London, 1935; New York, 1936). Republished in London in 1937, but without the question mark, and in 1941 with a new introduction by Beatrice Webb.

4
.
Michael Polanyi (1891–1
976),
The Contempt of Freedom: The Russian Experiment and After
(1940). Includes his ‘Soviet Economics – Fact and Theory’ (1935), ‘Truth and Propaganda’ (1936), ‘Collectivist Planning’ (194
0).

5
.
Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–90), author and journalist. In 1930, after three years as a lecturer at the Egyptian University, Cairo, he joined the
Manchester Guardian
and was its Moscow correspondent, 1932–3 (see his
Winter in Moscow
, 1934). He then worked on the
Calcutta Statesman
and, from 1935–6, on the
Evening Standard.
He served throught the war (Major, Intelligence Corps) and afterwards was
Daily Telegraph
Washington correspondent, 1946–7, and its deputy editor
1950–2. From 1952–7 he edited
Punch
. His
The Thirties
(1940) is a useful account of that decade. Sonia Orwell asked him to write Orwell’s biography; he agreed but never produced anything. The section of this letter from ‘A nephew’ to ‘on paper’ was marked in the margin, in Orwell’s hand, ‘Off the record.’

6
.
Nadezhda Krupskaya (1869–1
939), wife of Lenin and active in his revolutionary programme. Her
Memories of Lenin
is quoted more than once by Orwell. Angelica Balabanov (1878–1965), associate editor with Mussolini of
Avanti
, worked with Lenin and Trotsky during the Russian Revolution and was the first secretary of the Third International. Her memoir was published in 1937.

7
.
Jan Valtin (pseudonym of Richard Krebs, 1904–1951),
Out of the Night
(New York, 1940; London and Toronto, 1941). He later became a war correspondent with the American forces in the Pacific. Walter G. Krivitsky (d. 1941),
In Stalin’s Secret Service
(New York, 1939;
I
Was Stalin’s Agent
, London, 1963). He was head of the western division of the NKVD, but defected.

8
.
Victor Kravchenko (1905–1966),
I
Chose Freedom: The Personal and Political Life of a Soviet Official
(New York, 1946; London, 1
947). During the Spanish civil war, Kravchenko served as an aide to General Dimitri Pavlov (shot on Stalin’s orders, 1941). (See Thomas, p. 588, n. 1.)

9
.
Anton Ciliga (1898–1991), a founder of the Yugoslav Communist Party. His
The Russian Enigma
was published in English in 1940 (in French, Paris, 1938). It is concerned chiefly with Russian economic policy, 1
928–1932, and with its prisons. His
The Kronstadt Revolt
(Paris 1938; London, 1942) was described by Orwell as an ‘Anarchist pamphlet largely an attack on Trotsky’.

10
.
Anonymous,
The Dark Side of the Moon
(London, 1946; New York, 1947), deals with Soviet-Polish relations. It has a preface by T. S. Eliot, a director of the book’s English publishers, Faber & Faber.

11
.
Ada Halpern,
Liberation—Russian Style
(1945); it is listed by Whitaker as August 1945 and so published not during the war but just as it was ending.

12
.
In the left-hand margin, against one or both of
Liberation
—
Russian Style
and the Canadian Government Blue Book, is a marker arrow, presumably added by Macdonald. The Blue Book referred to reported on a Canadian Royal Commission which investigated Soviet espionage in Canada, 1946 and 1947. This found that a spy ring had been built up by the Soviet Military Attaché, Colonel Zabotin. Amongst those sentenced to terms of imprisonment was Fred Rose, the only Canadian Communist
MP
.

To Fredric Warburg*

31 May 1
947

Barnhill

Isle of Jura

Dear Fred,

Many thanks for your letter. I have made a fairly good start on the book and I think I must have written nearly a third of the rough draft. I have not got as far as I had hoped to do by this time, because I have really been in most wretched health this year ever since about January (my chest as usual) and can’t quite shake it off. However I keep pegging away, and I hope that when I leave here in October I shall either have finished the rough draft or at any rate broken its back. Of course the rough draft is always a ghastly mess having very little relation to the finished result, but all the same it is the main part of the job. So if I do finish the rough draft by October I might get the book done fairly early in 1948, barring illnesses. I don’t like talking about books before they are written, but I will tell you now that this is a novel about the future— that is, it is in a sense a fantasy, but in the form of a naturalistic novel. That is what makes it a difficult job—of course as a book of anticipations it would be comparatively simple to write.

I am sending you separately a long autobiographical sketch
¹
which I originally undertook as a sort of pendant to Cyril Connolly’s
Enemies of Promise
, he having asked me to write a reminiscence of the preparatory school we were at together. I haven’t actually sent it to Connolly or
Horizon
, because apart from being too long for a periodical I think it is really too libellous to print, and I am not disposed to change it, except perhaps the names. But I think it should be printed sooner or later when the people most concerned are dead, and maybe sooner or later I might do a book of collected sketches. I must apologise for the typescript. It is not only the carbon copy, but is very bad commercial typing which I have had to correct considerably—however, I think I have got most of the actual errors out.

Richard is very well in spite of various calamities. First he fell down and cut his forehead and had to have two stitches put in, and after that he had measles. He is talking a good deal more now (he was three a week or two ago.) The weather has cheered up after being absolutely stinking, and the garden we are creating out of virgin jungle is getting quite nice. Please remember me to Pamela and Roger.
²

Yours

George

[XIX, 3232, pp. 149–50; typewritten]

1
.
In the margin there is a handwritten annotation (in Warburg’s hand?): ‘Such, Such were the Joys’. For the development of this essay and for the nature of the ‘commercial typing’, see headnote to the essay, XIX, 3408, pp. 353–6.
Cyril Connolly’s
Enemies of Promise
was published in 1938. Warburg wrote to Orwell on 6 June saying, ‘I have read the autobiographical sketch about your prep. school and passed it to Roger.’