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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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From EM Forster to the Soviet War Memorial, the society has fostered British-Russian understanding through turbulent times. Its legacy remains vital today, writes JANE ROSEN
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