Sam Russell (1915-2010) - also known as Sam Lesser - talking at home in South London on 13 July 1992 to Andrew Whitehead in a wideranging interview about his membership of the Communist Party of Great Britain and his journalistic career with the Daily Worker. Main themes include:
Joined the Communist Party in 1935 as a student at UCL influenced by the growing threat of fascism
‘eagerly’ accepted when approached to fight in the Spanish Civil War
Served with the 1st British unit of the International Brigades, got to Spain at the end of October 1936
Reflections on fighting alongside anarchists, the receipt of Soviet weapons and memories of John Cornford and of Harry Pollitt’s visits to Spain
Wounded and later returned to Spain, in charge of English language broadcasts of Radio Barcelona, and then became the Daily Worker correspondent in Spain, leaving in January 1939
Awareness of top levels discussions within the CPGB over the 1939 change of line on World War Two and access to confidential document; ‘events have shown that Pollitt was right and Stalin was wrong at the time’
Reflections on Pollitt, and his ‘fixation’ with the Soviet Union
In 1955 went to Moscow on behalf of the Daily Worker (stayed until 1959); not present at Khrushchev’s secret speech; customary for the last day of CPSU’s congress to be a private session
On the day of the speech, met by chance a Soviet journalist ‘he said, I believe that K made another speech ... all I know is he crossed the ts and dotted the is on the question of the cult of personality’, a euphemism for the crimes Stalin committed when in power; repeated this to Pollitt over lunch
Thorez and Togliatti apparently briefed about the speech’s content, but it seems not Pollitt
Told more by two Soviet staffers of a communist publishing house; rumours going round Moscow
‘an old colleague of mine, John Rettie’ going on holiday and filed from outside Russia, and published by Reuters with a Bonn dateline
Two days later, phone a full account to the Daily Worker, but never published; ‘I still have a copy ... taken by stenographer’; subsequently speech published in The Observer
[on copy being spiked] ‘I felt pretty bad about it but there you are, it’s one of those things – it’s a common thing for journalists to have their copy spiked’; ‘that wasn’t the last time that copy of mine was spiked at a crucial moment, I thought’
In 1962 at time of missile crisis, sent to Cuba ‘at a time when everybody thought this was World War 3 and nuclear war’
Mikoyan in Havana, Cuban popular mood anti-Khrushchev over his deal with Kennedy; listening in to radio exchanges between Soviet and American navy ships
Had a long interview with Che Guevara, ‘I was absolutely amazed at the man and very impressed with him ... although I thought he was crackers at the time’
Sent a long report of the Guevara interview but ‘it was cut to hell’ before publication in the Daily Worker, ‘I felt very sick about that’; interview monitored by the CIA and fed by them to the United Press
Guevara ‘had a very poor opinion of the communists’ declaring that ‘the Communist parties of Latin America are shit’
Revolutionary enthusiasm in Cuba
Recalls ‘conditions of total corruption’ at CPSU Congress in 1981 at which Brezhnev as retained