Winter in Moscow

One of the few journalists to clearly see--and honestly report--conditions in Stalin's Russia was Malcolm Muggeridge, whose novel, Winter in Moscow (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman's Publishing Co., c. 1987; first published in 1934 by Eyre and Spottiswoode, London), was based upon his observations as a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian in 1932 and 1933. Reared in a socialist home, married to the niece of Beatrice Webb (an eminent socialist who routinely praised and defended the Bolsheviks), Muggeridge arrived in Russia with great expectations, confident he'd find the dreams of himself and his father fully fulfilled. He even considered becoming a Russian citizen and devoting the rest of his life to the socialist cause. But he'd barely arrived before he was overwhelmed with the reality of what had happened, the misery of the "workers' paradise," the illusions of Marxist slogans. So instead of writing an encomium to the endeavor, he drafted one of the most searing indictments of the Soviet system written in his era. In his introduction to this edition, Michael D. Aeshliman notes that "A.J.P. Taylor, one of the finest English historians of our time, wrote in 1965 that this novel was `probably the best book ever written on Soviet Russia'" (p. vii). The novel is loosely structured around a corps of English visitors' and journalists' activities in Russia. Representative of the thousands of "political pilgrims" who toured the country was a woman, a devout feminist, who was delighted "to find that so many things she believed in had been put into practice--co-education, sex equality, humane slaughterer, family allowances, communal kitchens" etc. (p. 24). Another, an Anglican clergyman, "by nature mild and gentle," who had no faith in either the Thirty-Nine Articles or the Virgin Birth he officially upheld, sought a better world in Russia and agonized over the "intolerance and cruelty" so amply evident under Stalin's rule, but he took comfort in the fact that every home "had its wireless, and its gramophone, and its shelves of revolutionary literature" (p. 38). Coming to Russia for a brief visit, knowing what they wanted to see and seeing what the tour guides chose to show them, they generally returned home with glowing testimonials for the communist system. Western journalists too gave Stalin support. They were epitomized by a man Muggeridge called "Jefferson"--clearly the celebrated, Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty, who (while millions of peasants died) merely acknowledged that there was "'a shortage of some districts'" that might in "'certain very rare'" cases be called "'a famine. But, as I said in a piece I sent a few days ago, you can't make omelettes without cracking eggs'" (p. 90). Years later, Muggeridge would say that Duranty was "the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in fifty years of journalism" (p. xix). Evaluating another journalist, who solemnly praised Duranty, Muggeridge said:

This book was ahead of its time in revealing the true nature of the Bolsheviks and those that implemented its horrors as never seen before in history.Much of what Muggeridge revealed was verified in the many publications of late from those authors in Yale University Press'Annals of Communism Series'.Ironic how so little exposure these revelations have had in our media.

Malcolm Muggeridge, a confirmed life-long Fabian, went to Moscow as a journalist to realize his dream of studying first-hand the wonders of this political-economic dictatorship that the NY Times correspondent had called "The Future". ("We have seen the future and it works!")In a very short period, Muggeridge, an intelligent, politically savvy man, saw through the propaganda which hid to the world the all-pervading Terror, the economic disaster, the assasinations, the rape and thievery of the country's riches, the hunger-induced cannibalism, and the mountains of cadavers, all of this savagery carried out by a chosen few, who saw nothing wrong with the way that they, who controlled it all, were taking over and destroying the country, for their exclusive benefit.Muggeridge saw legions of foreign, leftist radicals who were taking advantage of the real Russians, who were starving; he saw as well other regiments of "useful-idiots" who gained little from the cruel experiment, but rejoiced in the mystic "values" that they saw, which obscured to them the grim reality of the disaster that was taking place.The book is historical fiction. Muggeridge tried to counter the damage to Freedom caused by the admiration of the cuckolded Western press, either seduced by what they did not understand or afraid for what might happen one day, should this perverted, absurd experiment that was Communism, triumph. To do so, from his lone position of weakness, against the clamor of socialists and internationalists who still today constitute the nucleus of the editors and managers who run what we erroneously believe is a free press, he was forced to trivialize what he saw, trying to achieve small gains for the truth, rather than be overwhelmed and steam-rollered by the lying leviathan.That Muggeridge saw nothing trivial about the rape of a nation, is obvious by what he did upon his return to England and what his life became, after the highly educational, but terrifying experience he had just lived through. He immediately left the Fabian organizations he had belonged to all of his life; a politically-confirmed atheist, he became a Catholic; he gave speeches and explained to anyone who would listen to him, the evils of Communism; he wrote several books and tracts against this menace - although his voice was almost lost amidst the din of the Media, fawning all over itself to present favorably the lies and exaggerations of the communist savages, who had then, and retain today, certain elements of chic adored by those amongst us who enjoy every degeneracy that today has become "politically correct".Mr.Muggeridge did his very best, with the meager tools he had been given, to staunch the flow of irrational propaganda that promised to flood the world to bring about Lenin's dreams of a world under the specter of communism, leading to the eventual liquidation of all religion, the eradication of ethics and morality, the removal of patriotism, and the assassination of anyone who dare