THE HUMAN FACE OF A GREAT HORROR
The Maisky Diaries: Red Ambassador to the Court of St James's, 1932-1943
Edited by Gabriel Gorodetsky Pushkin Press
Stalin’s henchmen, sycophants constantly in fear for their lives, for very obvious reasons tended not to keep diaries or any other documentary evidence of their thoughts and feelings. This makes the discovery of Ivan Maisky’s diaries all the more astonishing. Soviet ambassador to the UK from 1932 to 1943, Maisky was unique in a great number of ways. He not only loved his posting but was extremely fond of the UK, and had many genuine friendships within the British establishment, being particularly close, amongst others, to Sydney and Beatrice Webb, Lloyd George, and George Bernard Shaw. He and Churchill got on well, and there were few in the Foreign Office with whom he did not have an amicable relationship.
These years were amongst the most tumultuous in the twentieth century, leading up to the outbreak of a cataclysmic world war which, by 1943 when he was recalled to Moscow, it was clear that the Allies would win.
His most extraordinary achievement was to develop a style of diplomacy, now commonplace, of developing a wide network of contacts, not just inside the foreign office, but in the wider world. From newspaper proprietors, the official opposition, society hostesses and maverick politicians such as Lloyd George, as well as insiders like Robert Vansittart.[1] He did all this, extraordinarily for a Stalinist diplomat, on his own initiative and, after the demotion of his mentor, Litvinov in 1939, in the face of hostility from Molotov and the Soviet foreign office. His widespread popularity in the UK also led to suspicions, not completely groundless, that he had ‘gone native.’
Of course, all political diaries, invariably written with an eye on posterity, are subject to the filter of the mental spin doctor. If you add to that the immense constraints faced by any soviet diplomat at that time of the immense perils of committing thoughts to paper, the inevitable question arises as to how useful these diaries are as a historical document?
That Maisky dissembles, glosses over or simply ignores inconvenient truths, sometimes telling outright lies, e.g. over Katyn, is a given. For him not to have so done would almost certainly have cost him his life. Given this considerable caveat and understood through this framework, the diaries are revealing, candid, and in their own, sometimes heavily coded fashion, remarkably truthful.
Thus it is his comments and reflections on the British ruling elite that make these diaries so fascinating. His observations can be acute, particularly demonstrated by his assessment of Chamberlain’s vanity and conceit. He also understood Churchill, whom he admired, though he had an exaggerated belief in the political influence of Lloyd George and the wisdom of George Bernard Shaw.
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| Maisky with Lloyd George |
As the Nazi state grew in power and increasingly became an undeniable threat too European and, after the Japanese alliance, World peace, the central question was how to confront this unpleasant reality. Maisky was a firm popular front man and strongly favoured an alliance between Britain and the USSR.
Chamberlain famously believed that Hitler could be appeased, or to put it more accurately, be brought off. It was the Czechs who paid the price, in an act of breathtaking cynicism at the Munich conference held in 1938. Not only cynical it was also incredibly stupid, for rather than preventing war it made war inevitable and gifted the Germans the considerable Czech armaments industry. Maisky saw this, but like Churchill could only watch impotently. The Soviet Union was excluded from Munich, as A J P Taylor later observed this was to be the last time Europe could pretend it was the centre of the World.
Cynical as it was it proved only to be the warm-up act for the greatest act of political cynicism in modern history, the rapprochement between Hitler and Stalin in the form of a pact. The Nazi-Soviet pact that crowned Auden’s ‘low dishonest decade’ not only paved the way for war it, it also allowed both Stalin and Hitler to realise their dream of carving up Poland. Truly the Midnight of the century.[2]
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| The Signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pct Hitler had a cigarette dangling from Stalin's lips edited out. He thought it made the signing look flippant. |
The period of the pact was Maisky’s most challenging, and he rather glosses over the actual pact itself. It was a time that saw him socially ostracised, with previously open doors now blocked. However, in a remarkably short time, he found himself rehabilitated and re-admitted to the circles of power and influence. The fall of France, Dunkirk, and the threat of invasion meant Britain could no longer afford to alienate the Soviet Union. Moreover, Churchill was now in power, with whom Maisky had good relations, and Chamberlain, the man he hated and despised, gone.
There was, however, another factor, and that was Maisky’s personality. It was clear that he wanted Britain to win its struggle with Nazi Germany[3] and by inference, for he could not even hint at the reality, that he was no fan of his countries pact with the Devil. He was in London throughout the Blitz and behaved, as did most Londoners, with courage.
With Hitler’s invasion of the USSR Maisky was again very much where he most liked to be, at the centre of events. Ironically as Britain and the USSR became allies, and Maisky enjoyed unparalleled popularity for a foreign ambassador – speaking at Miners rallies, in worker’s canteens, and public dinners, urging support for the USSR, - his star in Moscow was already on the wane, as it had been since the demotion of Litvinov in 1939. It was also this very popularity that was placing him in jeopardy. Molotov didn’t like being outshone by anyone, whilst Stalin’s attitude to those who might eclipse him are a matter of record.
Maisky was of the Bolshevik generation of the 1900’s, and indeed had been exiled in Britain in his youth, and he retained at least some belief in a ‘socialist’ vision, though he had long reconciled himself to the mass murder, lies and grotesque brutality of the Stalin years. For all his charm, and it is considerable, one must always keep this in mind.
Maisky’s desire for an Anglo-Soviet alliance was deeply felt and genuine, and he was truly dismayed by Chamberlain’s deliberate sabotage of the negotiations.[4] The Pact allowed Hitler to launch his war against Poland, having removed any Soviet interference and, less understood as part of the implications of the Pact, secured the material resources from Stalin to defy any British blockade. For Stalin his agreement with Nazi Germany gave him all the territory lost by Tsarist Russia in the First world war. It also established a clear sphere of influence underwritten by Hitler.
It is impossible to know whether Maisky swallowed Stalin's justification for the Pact, - he was certainly never made privy to its secret protocols at the time, - we will never know. He justified the Pact, the invasion of first Eastern Poland and the Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, with his usual confident, charming, if sometimes bullish, bravado. He seems to have viewed the Poles with customary Bolshevik disdain. Whether he knew the truth about the Katyn massacre of Polish officers is a moot point, there is little evidence here that if he did know it would have greatly troubled his conscience.
Maisky features little in most British narratives of the second world war and he certainly deserves more attention. These diaries to some extent help to redress this omission by providing a unique glimpse of the thinking of a key figure in those dark times. However, whilst reading these diaries it is important not to be seduced by the writing of an undoubtedly charming and interesting man into forgetting that he represented, in the shape of Stalin’s Soviet Union, the human face of a great horror.
[1] Robert Gilbert Vansittart, 1st Baron Vansittart GCB GCMG MVO PC, known as Sir Robert Vansittart between 1929 and 1941, was a senior British diplomat. Fiercely anti-German, sidelined by Chamberlain during the period of appeasement that led up to the Munich conference.
[2] The phrase, often used by Christopher Hitchens, originated, I think, from Victor Serge.
[3] Aside from any other considerations Maisky, a Jew high on Hitler’s hit list, Maisky’s knew his fate if he fell into Nazi hands, this can be well imagined.
[4] The team said to negotiate, by slow steamer, headed by the improbably named Admiral Sir Reginald Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernie-Erle-Drax, had instructions to deliberately stall and drag out negotiations, a fact known to the Soviets courtesy of one of their spies, a certain Guy Burgess.
