GLENN BURGESS suggests that, despite his record in Spain, Orwell’s enduring commitment to socialist revolution underpins his late novels
Latest editorial
I Saw Democracy Murdered: the Memoir of Sam Russell
The Daily Worker and Morning Star foreign editor was a pioneering communist journalist whose reports from the Spanish Civil War to the rise of Solidarnosc in Poland record a life lived on the front line of history, says JOHN GREEN
I Saw Democracy Murdered - The Memoir of Sam Russell, Journalist (left). Members of the International Brigade in the British cookhouse at Albacete raise their fists (right)
CHRISTOPHER POLLARD explains how and why neoliberalism adopted the racist agenda common to the populist right of today
SYLVIA HIKINS recommends a sweeping survey of the world's biggest desert and the people who live there
GUILLERMO THOMAS is persuaded by a scathing critique of the Church of England and its embeddedness in imperialism
MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Materialists, Unmoored, Together, and Bambi: A Tale of Life in The Woods
TONY BURKE revels in the publication of previously unreleased tracks by the great US folksinger
GORDON PARSONS endures heavy rock punctuated by Shakespeare, and a delighted audience
I Saw Democracy Murdered
The Memoir of Sam Russell, Journalist
Ed. Colin Chambers
Routledge
Pbck £27.99
I Saw Democracy Murdered is the memoir of Sam Russell (1915–2010), a communist journalist and British volunteer with the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War, based on interviews with him made by Chris Myant and Colin Chambers, who edited the final copy.
The book covers his experiences during the Spanish Civil War, his time as a journalist at the Daily Worker and The Morning Star, and his later disillusionment with Stalinism. In his capacity as a journalist, Russell travelled extensively and was frequently a front-row spectator at significant historical events, from the formerly occupied Channel Islands at the end of World War II to the show trials of communists in eastern Europe in the 1950s.
Many of his generation lived sheltered lives and saw very little of the blood-soaked times they lived through. A few saw a great deal of it, but very few saw as much as Sam Russell.
More from this author
JOHN GREEN recommends an Argentinian film classic on re-release - a deliciously cynical tale of swindling and double-cross
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
JOHN GREEN is stirred by an ambitious art project that explores solidarity and the shared memory of occupation
JOHN GREEN applauds an excellent and accessible demonstration that the capitalist economy is the biggest threat to our existence
