R.B.: You were imprisoned in the Brezhnev period because of your oppositionist ideas. What was prison like?
Surprising though it may be to the British public, Mrs Thatcher is one of the most popular Western politicians in the Soviet Union, especially among the apparatchiki. It follows that the British Prime Minister is often a central figure in discussions among people on the left of Soviet public opinion. The experience of ten years of Conservative radicalism in Britain is too important historically to be ignored. The reasons usually given, in Moscow and elsewhere, to explain Thatcher’s success – namely, political will, strong ideological motivation, capacity for hard work, skilful utilisation of the ‘Falklands factor’ – will not help us to understand the real significance of the political drama which has been played out in Britain. Will-power, consistency and ideological motivation are certainly necessary for success in politics. But are they sufficient?’
At the close of the Fifties, the New Left put on a mass meeting in London, at which the star speaker was Isaac Deutscher and the slogan was ‘Into the Red Sixties’. At the close of the...
It is a measure of Gorbachev’s impact in the three and a half years since he became General Secretary that the debate over his significance among Western observers has fundamentally...
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