On the day of the election, MARTIN GOLLAN reflects on the perennial relationship between the far-right and the back-hander
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An indispensable history of the SCRSS
CHRISTINE LINDEY marvels at a history of the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR
HERO'S WELCOME: Toasting Yuri Gagarin at the Society’s premises in Kensington Square, July 1961
[Courtesy of the SCRSS]
MARY CONWAY is gripped by the powerful emotional journeys portrayed by the parents of the perpetrator and victims of a mass shooting
LEO BOIX reviews a novel where shadows deceive and mortality looms, and a poetry collection that refuses to dim
ROBIN STYLES welcomes a boundary pushing work of fiction exploring the life and ideas of the godmother of modernism
PAUL DONOVAN recommends an energetic adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel, that emphasises how psychiatry is a tool in the hands of a racist agenda
ED WAUGH introduces a special event to commemorate the centenary of the 1926 General Strike
Reviews of Charlotte Cornfield, Michael Weston King, and Gun Outfit
An Unpopular Cause : A Centenary History of the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR 1924-2024
Jane Rosen, SCRSS, £15
JANE ROSEN points out that throughout its existence the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR (SCRSS) has had to deal with anti-Soviet and/or anti-Russian propaganda in the mainstream press, lack of funds and varying degrees of invidious surveillance by the British authorities. Yet it has survived due to support from its members and sympathisers and even had periods of popularity, especially during WWII.
In 1924 only a few years after the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Labour government established diplomatic relations with the Soviet government and the society was founded that year by socialists and other progressives including EM Forster, HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Sybil Thorndike, Julian Huxley and JBS Haldane.
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