From THE TIME OF MY UFE

By Denis Healey TEXT DRAWING BACK THE CURTAIN

Denis Healey was born in 1917 and brought up in Yorkshire. After gainig a dou­ble first at Balliol College, Oxford, for six years he was a soldier learning about real life.

Another six years as International Secretary of the Labour Party taught him much about politics, both at home and abroad. From 1952 to 1992 he was a Labour Member of Parliament for Leeds.

He is a prolific journalist and broadcaster. He has published Healey's Eye, a book on his life as a photographer, and has contributed essays to many publications for the Fabian Society¹ including New Fabian essays and Fabian International Essays.

When Shrimps Learn to Whistle, Signposts for the Nineties, also published by Pen­guin, include a selection of his earlier writings which are relevant to the world after the Cold War.

In the early years after the war, when we first heard the truth of what Russia was doing in Eastern Europe, and began to look more objectively at the Soviet Union itself, my generation was powerfully influenced by George Orwell's 1984, and by a flood of books which purported to analyse the nature of totalitarianism.

My visits to Eastern Europe cured me of any erratic illusions. No power could destroy national traditions which were rooted in centu­ries of history. Moreover, these peoples yearned to return to the Eu­rope in which Chopin and Bartok were part of a common civilisation with Bach and Verdi. Once Stalin died, it was clear that Soviet Com­munism already carried the seeds of its own destruction. The Russia of Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky and Herzen was still there beneath the sur­face. Stalin could no more expunge it from the consciousness of its people than Hitler could liquidate the Germany of Beethoven, Goet­he, and Kant.

I had been fascinated by Russia since I read its great novelists as a schoolboy. My years in the Communist Party at Oxford had given me sufficient understanding of Stalinism to reject it even while I still saw Russia as a socialist state and a necessary ally against Hitler. I was also impressed by much of pre-war Soviet culture.

The great Soviet film-makers of those days — Einstein, Pudovkin, and Dovzhenko — seemed superior to their Western rivals. Though I loathed "Socialist Realism", I admired the paintings of Deineka. They were in a book given me by a friend; she also introduced me to Shos­takovich's opera, The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.

After the war I found that my friend had disappeared during the great purges, and that Lady Macbeth had been banned.

This helped to reinforce the bitter hostility I had developed for Soviet policies both at home and abroad.

When Stalin died, I was at first deeply suspicious of the changes introduced by his successors.

There were ample grounds for my distrust. The new men, all prod­ucts of the old system, claimed loyalty to its principles.

At the beginning of 1956 Malenkov came to Britain as Deputy Premier, shortly after losing the leadership to Krushchev. His visit was such a propaganda success that people wondered how the Polit­buro could ever have replaced him.

Bulganin and Krushchev followed Malenkov to Britain a few months later. Their visit was less successful.

Yet in fact Krushchev continued and extended the liberal pro­grammes which Malenkov had introduced. The Foreign Office rightly saw him during that visit as a shrewd and cunning political leader, by comparison with the better educated and more courteous Bulganin. By 1958 I myself had come to the conclusion that Krushchev was 'one of the half-dozen greatest political leaders of this century. It is doubtful whether any other known figure could operate the Soviet system on a basis of persuasion and incentive as successfully as he. His outstanding personal characteristics are pragmatism and self-confidence... Compared with Stalin he seems little interested in the theory of communism — his faith is all the more formidable because it is not overdogmatic. Both at home and abroad, he insists on seeing things for himself — no modern Prime Minister has travelled so widely. To this extent summit conferences may have a special value in deal­ing with the Russians today, providing the West can produce leaders of comparable ability' I still maintain these views; they apply even more to Gorbachev.

It was now clear that the picture which the West had painted of the Soviet Union in the early post-war years needed drastic revision. I made my first visit to Russia the following year as part of a Labour Party delegation, with Hugh Gaitskell and Nye Bevan. Our meeting with Krushchev confirmed the views I had now formed of him. He was exceptionally well briefed, but was not ashamed to ask Gromyko to put him right if necessary.

Kruschev never carried a chip on his shoulder about men born in more fortunate circumstances. He had a natural dignity and self-con­fidence which rejected class envy.

Most of our visit was spent in sightseeing. We were of course, with our consent, taken to schools, factories, and collective farms. It also included the visits to the Hermitage in Leningrad and the magnifi­cent summer palace of Peter the Great overlooking the Gulf of Fin­land, its fountains sparkling in the autumn sun, its rococo buildings gleaming with white and gold; like most other palaces, it had been meticulously restored to its former glory after almost total destruc­tion by the Nazis. In Leningrad we were given a concert at what had originally been the club where members of the first Russian Parlia­ment, or Duma, used to meet. In those nineteenth-century surround­ings, the concert itself was like a salon at the court of Queen Victoria, as sopranos and baritones in evening dress sang ballads and songs by "Kompositori Verdi" in voices of remarkable purity.

By comparison with the eighteenth-century canals of Leningrad, which might have been part of Amsterdam or Bremen, the Kremlin brought us to the heart of old Russia. I had imagined it a building as grimly functional as the Party it housed, and was quite unprepared for the mediaeval splendour of its palaces and churches, scattered among copses of birch and lilac.

My visit to Russia in 1959 began to give me some sense of these cultural changes. I was immensely impressed by the charm and qual­ity of the young sixth formers we met in Leningrad at school.

In manner and appearance they could have come from any of the upperclass families described by Turgenev or Tolstoy. Similarly, the colleges which taught foreign languages and international affairs were giving a rounded education to able young men and women, who are now in key positions in their country, where their knowledge of the outside world is invaluable.

The creative intelligentsia, such outstanding people as Sakharov, with his strong opposition to using the hydrogen bomb, Solzhenitsyn, exposing the life in a labour camp (A Day in the life of Ivan Denisov-

ich), Yevtushenko with his poem Babiy Yar on anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union — were giving a headache to the authorities.

And yet we saw signs of the cultural thaw all around us.

Jazz was officially disliked, but they didn't use the power of the state to prevent it. Its public performance was then largely confined to the circus and music hall. In Leningrad we saw an ice-spectacular in which the girls were half-naked, in costumes reminiscent of the pre-war Folies Bergere.

The theatre and ballet had changed little since the revolution, the best had been preserved.

The Moscow Arts Theatre performed Chekhov as Stanislavsky had produced it half a century earlier — as sad comedy rather than as trag­edy with humour. The only ideological change I noticed was in Uncle Vanya: Astrov was presented as a handsome, vigorous young prophet of a better future, rather than as the wrinkled cynic of Olivier's² inter­pretation at the Old Vic³. We saw the aging Ulanova at the Bolshoi in a ballet based on a novel by Peter Abrahams about Apartheid⁴ in South Africa, which called on her to act rather than to dance. On the other hand we saw Plisetskaya at her best as prima ballerina in Prokofiev's The Stone Flower. I shall never forget her rippling sinuosity.

In 1963, when I next visited Russia, the general atmosphere was more liberal than on my first visit, and as I was not on official delega­tion, but attending an informal conference between Soviet and West­ern politicians, I had a good deal more freedom.

Our guide was a gentle young man called Kolya who had just got his degree in foreign languages. He had been at the World Youth Con­gress that summer in Moscow, and greatly enjoyed reciting phrases of hair-raising obscenity which he had picked up from his American comrades. Jazz was now all the rage, and since imports of Western records had been stopped, a disk by Dave Brubeck was beyond price. Since then the international youth culture has swept the whole of Russia like a hurricane.

I learned much from these visits to Russia, restricted though they were, and was to learn more still from later visits. I do not accept the view that short visits to foreign countries are more likely to mislead than to educate. On the contrary, providing you have done your home­work before you go, they not only enable you to check some of your views, but also provide you with a library of sense-impressions which give reality to any news you read later.

However, for this purpose I think three days is better than three weeks. Anything over a week and less than three years is liable to

confuse you. But series of short visits, at intervals of over a year, can give you a sense of the underlying trends in a foreign country which no accounts in the press can provide.

Since the Labour Party was then in opposition, there was little that I or my colleagues could do on these visits except to talk and learn. But they enabled me to follow the later evolution of the Soviet system with more understanding than some of the professional ex­perts who knew nothing of Soviet reality. I did not find the emer­gence of Gorbachev surprising. Nor, like so many Russia-watchers, did I ever think that his early speeches were simply designed to take the West off its guard. When I later met men like Burlatsky, who had written speeches for Krushchev, I knew that his articles had to be taken seriously; he, like Gorbachev himself, represented something in Soviet society which had always been there, even in the darkest

days of Stalinism.

Above all, I learned that the Russians, like us, were human beings,

although they were not human beings like us.

Commentary

1. The Fabian Society — a British organisation of left wing think­
ers which was a founder or the Labour Party and used to have an

important influence on it.

2. Olivier Sir Lawrence, also Larry (1907—1989). English actor thought of by many people as the greatest of the 20th century. He was the first director of the National Theatre and the first actor to be made a life peer. Most people know his films of Shakespeare's plays Hamlet, Henry V, Richard III.

3. Old Vic — a London theatre originally opened in 1818, the full name of which is the Royal Victoria Theatre.

4. Apartheid in South Africa.

The system established by the Government of keeping different races separate so as to give advantage to white people. The South African government is now removing the apartheid laws and ending

the system.

5. Hugh Gaitskell (1906-1963) A British Labour Statesman.

Leader of the Labour Party 1959-1963.

8 3189 Аракин, 4 курс

6. Nye Bevan (1897—1960) — a British Labour polititian from
Wales known for his excellent speeches.

SPEECH PATTERNS

1. I learned much from those visits, restricted though they were.
Hard working though he was, there was never enough money
to pay the bills.

Strange though it may seem I am a great admirer of the great film-makers of those days.

2. The Moscow Arts Theatre performed Chekhov as sad
comedy rather than as tragedy with humour.

Astrov was presened as a young prophet rather than as the cynic of Olivier's interpretation at the Old Vic.

3. The ballet... called on her to act rather than to dance.
These short visits are more likely to mislead rather than to
educate.