The celebrated interviews Lenin and Stalin accorded H. G. Wells are a part our century's troubled political history, and as such well-documented both on the Soviet side and in the West. It is less widely known that Wells's interest in Russia antedates the October Revolution, indeed, that he visited that country with his russophile friend Maurice Baring on the eve of the First World War, at a time when Wells had already acquired a remarkable literary reputation. There, he was admired by writers as disparate as Tolstoy, Zamyatin, Nabokov, and Gorky with whom he formed a close friendship, abetted by their mutual love of the Baroness Budberg. These Russian connections of Wells's, as well as his three journeys to Russia and the Soviet Union have not been previously explored against the background of his attitudes to socialism, which in turn played a crucial part in Wells's own search for an ideal society. For Wells, this quest was inseparable from his idea of a federal world state and his perception of the Russian revolutions of 1917 as its harbinger. Although he had many doubts about the Bolshevik regime, he attempted to persuade the English people that Lenin--whom he met in 1920--and his party were the only possible option at a time when few governments were prepared to recognize the Bolsheviks. His own doubts became genuine misgivings in 1934, after his disappointing encounter with Stalin. Nevertheless, Wells's final disenchantment with Russia did not mirror that of other fellow travellers or the period, such as Arthur Koestler and George Orwell, Before his depth in 1946, Wells's profound and inconsistent feelings towards the U.S.S.R. were further complicated by the Second World War and the role the Red Army would play in the struggle against Hitler.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.22599 |
| Date | January 1994 |
| Creators | Krivokapich, Militsa |
| Contributors | Senior, Hereward (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of History.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001449719, proquestno: MM05398, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
Page generated in 0.0023 seconds