Abstract
In July 1931 George Bernard Shaw embarked on his first and only trip to the Soviet Union. He had been a champion of this new experiment in political and economic organization from the outset, but had refrained from visiting because he wanted to give the experiment time to develop before he offered his first-hand observations. By 1931 Lenin’s New Economic Policy had been succeeded by Stalin’s First Five Year Plan of crash industrialization and agricultural collectivization, and Shaw felt that the time was finally right to make a visit. Soon after their arrival in Russia, Shaw and Lady Astor, one of his traveling companions (and like Shaw something of a celebrity), received cablegrams from an exiled Russian professor of civil engineering at Yale University, Dmitry Krynin. Worried for his family, the exiled scholar implored the two eminent visitors “in the name of humanitarian principles, please help my wife in Moscow.” Shaw remained silent, but Lady Astor went down on her knees importuning her host Maxim Litvinov to come to the aid of this man and his destitute family. The obviously embarrassed Litvinov simply remarked that he was unable to help, and walked away. But Lady Astor would not let the matter rest, and was soon at the central office of the GPU or Soviet secret police, Shaw and Viscount Astor in tow, pleading with them to help the distressed family.
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Notes
From the editor’s introduction of George Bernard Shaw, The Rationalization of Russia. Ed. Harry M. Geduld (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964) 22–23.
Quoted in Sally Peters, Bernard Shaw: The Ascent of the Superman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996) 16.
Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 1: The Spell of Plato (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962).
Bernard Shaw, “Sixty Years of Fabianism.” Fabian Essays: Jubilee Edition. Ed. Bernard Shaw (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1948) 229.
George Orwell, The Collected Essays, Journalism & Letters: As I Please, vol. 3. Ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (Boston: Nonpareil Books, 2000) 222.
Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2000) 377.
Maurice Valency, The Cart and the Trumpet: The Plays of George Bernard Shaw (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973) 429.
For instance Martin Meisel in his essay, “Shaw and Revolution: The Politics of the Plays.” Shaw: Seven Critical Essays. Ed. Norman Rosenblood (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971).
Beatrice Webb, The Diary of Beatrice Webb, vol. 4. Ed. Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie (London: Virago Press Limited, 1985) 132.
C.E.M. Joad, Shaw (London: Victor Gollancz, 1949) 159–60.
Russell Jacoby, Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
Edward Rothstein, “Utopia and Its Discontents.” Visions of Utopia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) 5.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Orlando: Harcourt, 1968) 398.
Tzvetan Todorov, Hope and Memory: Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Trans. David Bellos (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003) 26–27.
Quoted in Alan Chappelow, Shaw—“The Chucker-Out”: A Biographical Exposition and Critique (New York: AMS Press, 1969) 293
Bernard Shaw, The Perfect Wagnerite. Major Critical Essays (London: Penguin Books, 1931) 242.
Quoted in Arnold Silver, Bernard Shaw: The Darker Side (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1982) 164.
Eric Bentley, Bernard Shaw (New York: New Directions Publishing, 1947, 1957).
Margery M. Morgan, The Shavian Playground: An Exploration of the Art of George Bernard Shaw (London: Methuen, 1972) 286–302.
See Gabriel Marcel, Man Against Mass Society. Trans.G.S.Fraser (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1965).
Quoted in David Nathan’s “Failure of an Elderly Gentleman: Shaw and the Jews.” SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies Volume Eleven: Shaw and Politics. Ed. T.F. Evans (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991) 226–27.
Stephen Koch, Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Munzenberg, and the Seduction of the Intellectuals (New York: Enigma Books, 1994, 1995, 2004) 7.
Beatrice Webb, The Diary of Beatrice Webb, vol. 4. Ed. Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie (London: Virago Press, 1985) 135.
“When Shaw asks, therefore, how much trouble a troublesome person is worth, surely the answer is, infinite trouble.” From Maurice Colbourne, The Real Bernard Shaw (New York: The Dodd, Mead & Company, 1940) 195.
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© 2013 Matthew Yde
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Yde, M. (2013). Introduction. In: Bernard Shaw and Totalitarianism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137330208_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137330208_1
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