Russia in the Shadows
Russia in the Shadows is the title of the book by H. G. Wells
published early in 1921, which includes a series of articles previously printed
in The Sunday Express in connection with Wells's second visit to Russia (after
a previous trip in January 1914 to St. Petersburg and Moscow) in September and
October 1920. Wells was at the height of his fame, having recently completed
The Outline of History, and was paid ₤1000 for the articles by the Sunday
Express. During his visit to Russia he visited his old friend Maxim Gorky, whom
he had first met in 1906 on a trip to the United States, and who arranged
Wells's meeting with Lenin.
Wells portrayed Russia as recovering from a total social collapse, the
completest that has ever happened to any modern social organisation. He
minimized the role of the Bolsheviks in the fall of the Russian state, and
presented this explanation of their success: While all the rest of Russia was
either apathetic like the peasantry or garrulously at sixes and sevens or given
over to violence or fear, the Communists were prepared to act.
In a chapter devoted to an interview with Lenin at the Kremlin Wells
describes the leader and founder of Russian communism. Wells portrays Lenin as
a pragmatic leader who ‘has recently stripped off the last pretence that the
Russian revolution is anything more than the inauguration of an age of
limitless experiment.
While Wells in Russia in the Shadows, as always, rejects Marxism on
principle (Das Kapital impresses him as ‘a monument of pretentious pedantry’,
he argues that ‘we should understand and respect the professions and principles
of the Bolsheviki’ in order to make a "helpful intervention" in
Russia, lest its social collapse drag down Western civilization with it.
The famous British writer Herbert Wells who visited the revolutionary
Russia in the middle of the civil war and met Vladimir Lenin in the Kremlin
named his book about the Bolshevik coup and the future of the giant country
"Russia in the Shadows". Nearly a hundred years after that trip new
researchers could also use this name: Russia's future is still obscure and
nobody can predict what will become of it in several years.
In 1920, as Wells met the Soviet leader, Lenin was still the head of
the government of the Soviet Russia. The other future republics of the Soviet
Union – including Ukraine – still existed as independent states with imposed
agreements on military and economic unions after the Red Army had occupied
them. (As is well known, a similar plan also existed in relation to Poland, but
it failed due to the defeat of the Red Army units under the command of Mikhail
Tukhachevsky).
The Soviet Union was still two years away from being proclaimed, but
hardly anybody doubted that the Bolsheviks had set a course for restoration of
their former empire by means of armed forces.
In 1920, as Wells met the Soviet leader, Lenin was still the head of
the government of the Soviet Russia. The other future republics of the Soviet
Union – including Ukraine – still existed as independent states with imposed
agreements on military and economic unions after the Red Army had occupied
them. (As is well known, a similar plan also existed in relation to Poland, but
it failed due to the defeat of the Red Army units under the command of Mikhail
Tukhachevsky). The Soviet Union was still two years away from being proclaimed,
but hardly anybody doubted that the Bolsheviks had set a course for restoration
of their former empire by means of armed forces.
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