Norman Letter April 4, 1937

Cambridge [Massachusetts]
April 4 [1937]

Dear Howie:

I have received at least 3 letters from you in rapid succession (#15 is at hand today).

[…]

I am glad I didn’t answer your letter #14 promptly because I admit it had me pretty sore. The ease with which you […] bluntly explained the whole problem of the Moscow trial as being clearly a case of extortion by threats to the relatives of the accused (based on Chamberlain’s Old Wives Tale) and in the midst of a letter pleading for “open minds” and warning me that we don’t know what goes on in the “inside” of the Soviet Union (which I agree is partially true). This I admit had me groggy. […] Before going on to a discussion of your latest letter which you restate your position, and give reasons for it and reasons which I can appreciate if not always agree with, I would like to mention Chamberlain’s book which you admit is hostile but which you continuously refer to as if it were authoritative and a final statement of some sort. I might as well say first of all that Chamberlain is a very able writer—no 2 ways about it—which makes him more dangerous, but it is naïve to expect any understanding of the basic problems from a man who is an intransigent and bitter enemy of socialism and a devoted defender of capitalism. Even some bourgeois reviewers of his book noted how consistently he distorted facts which were bad in themselves but which take on meaning only as a part of the historical growth of socialism in so backward a country as old Russia. Would Chamberlain take an objective view of such developments? Not a bit of it.

His claim is (I can substantiate it from numerous articles of his in magazines, etc.) that the Russian masses are worse off now than under Tsarism, and mark it well, because his reputation as a “scientific observer” will stand or fall by that claim of his. The Soviet canvas is too vast and kaleidoscopic even to review, but I’m sure with the Webbs and hundreds of slighter works you have read by his critics, you will find Chamberlain’s claim pretty hard to substantiate. Let me give you some examples of his “scientific” skill. The Webbs have explained the agricultural crisis of 1932-3 about as well as anyone. Chamberlain adds to the confusion by stating the toll the “famine” as “five or six million” on p. 67 (American edition) and as three or four million on p. 88—a real master statistician who can juggle a “few million” as easily as that, and still claim to be an accurate reporter. He states that forced labour gangs recruited from “hundred of thousands of families” of Kulaks—another bit of scientific accuracy. He says that those deprived of liberty without “due process of law” exceeds two millions. You see his little trick is to try to get something in which precise Soviet figures may be lacking and then by some prestidigitation he produces a figure which no one can verify (including of course himself—but the horrified liberals who read him are much too impressed by his reputation for impartiality even to doubt his word).

[…]

You ended letter #14 by stating that the communist press had “dubbed” Manchester Guardian “Fascist” because of an article on the trials. I certainly think the epithet a bit hasty to say the least, but it is egually naïve of you who consider yourself so skeptical and balanced and normal in comparison to the “twisted communists” as you term them, to imagine that the Manchester Guardian is an impartial arbiter of all that goes on in this world of class struggle. Surely its record of Soviet-baiting is known to you. It is truly liberal in the real sense of the word on questions like fascist terror, Spain, or the depredations of imperialisms other than British. But after all it is (EHN) a capitalist paper. It’s not going to defend the Soviet Union—the hope and pride of the working class. On every crisis I can recall, it has been rabidly anti-Soviet […]

Don’t you think the bourgeois press which plays up sex and crime, and even in the more dignified papers, glorify chauvinism, war, imperialism, distort news, slander the Soviet Union, don’t you think they are really twisted? In comparison with the bourgeois press, the weakest organ of communism reads like horse-sense—it doesn’t indulge in muck and filth and it concerns itself with an attempt to guide its readers towards making a better world. If you call that twisted, I’d like a definition of your idea of healthy and normal—in terms of the press we have.

Well, it’s late now and I’m weary. I should first tell you the good news—that my fellowship has been renewed another year—so that clears up your question on my plans for next year. What time of year do you expect to arrive in this part of the world? I’m delighted you are going to get back a year earlier and that you are taking in the Soviet Union and Europe on the way.

You’d better write to me for the next 3 months at 280 Ottawa St., Hamilton, Ont. Thanks for your splendid long letters; despite the controversial tone of this letter, I enjoy your letters and look forward to them eagerly.

Love to all

As ever—
Herbert