Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Contributors
- A Note on Transliteration
- Introduction: “The Wells Effect”
- Part One WELLS IN RUSSIA: PRE-WORLD WAR II
- Part Two WELLS IN RUSSIA: POST-WORLD WAR II
- Part Three RUSSIA IN WELLS
- APPENDIX TRANSLATIONS
- Appendix 1 V. D. Nabokov on Visiting H. G. Wells in England in 1916 (From Iz voiuiushchei Anglii, 41–51)
- Appendix 2 Alexander Amfiteatrov on Wells's 1920 Visit to Russia
- Appendix 3 Alexander Belyaev on the Wells-Lenin Debate about “Utopias”
- Appendix 4 Karl Radek and Solomon Lozovsky to Stalin
- Appendix 5 Yury Olesha on His Love for H. G. Wells (In Literaturnyi Kritik 12 (1935), 156–7)
- Appendix 6 Yuly Kagarlitsky on Being a Soviet Biographer of Wells
- Bibliography
- Wells, Herbert George – Works Index
- General Index
Appendix 4 - Karl Radek and Solomon Lozovsky to Stalin
from APPENDIX TRANSLATIONS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 September 2019
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Contributors
- A Note on Transliteration
- Introduction: “The Wells Effect”
- Part One WELLS IN RUSSIA: PRE-WORLD WAR II
- Part Two WELLS IN RUSSIA: POST-WORLD WAR II
- Part Three RUSSIA IN WELLS
- APPENDIX TRANSLATIONS
- Appendix 1 V. D. Nabokov on Visiting H. G. Wells in England in 1916 (From Iz voiuiushchei Anglii, 41–51)
- Appendix 2 Alexander Amfiteatrov on Wells's 1920 Visit to Russia
- Appendix 3 Alexander Belyaev on the Wells-Lenin Debate about “Utopias”
- Appendix 4 Karl Radek and Solomon Lozovsky to Stalin
- Appendix 5 Yury Olesha on His Love for H. G. Wells (In Literaturnyi Kritik 12 (1935), 156–7)
- Appendix 6 Yuly Kagarlitsky on Being a Soviet Biographer of Wells
- Bibliography
- Wells, Herbert George – Works Index
- General Index
Summary
Karl Radek (1885– 1939) was the head of the International Information Bureau of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. In 1934, he gave an address on foreign literature to the first Soviet Writers’ Conference, where he denounced the likes of Proust and Joyce. He was arrested and tried in 1939, at the peak of Stalin Purges, and perished at the Western Siberian labor camp.
9 November 1934
Dear Comrade Stalin!
Comrade [Maxim] Litvinov has forwarded to me the request of the journal New Statesman, which published the transcript of Your conversation with Wells, that I should write an article about Wells's commentary on his conversation with You. Comrade Litvinov is also urging me to write the article. Since the matter concerns a conversation with You, and in this article it would be impossible not to comment on that conversation— and, besides, Comrade Litvinov wants me to ridicule Wells (and he is right, since one cannot react to Wells's article in any other way)— I believe I need Your instructions as to how to phrase my article and what to emphasize.
I think that ridicule should be just the form of the article but its main focus should be on revealing the social basis for Wells's stupidity. One needs to show the bourgeois prejudices of the intelligentsia which prevent them from understanding what is going on, as well as to underscore the importance of Your conversation with that intelligentsia through Wells. Otherwise it would come across as just ridicule and bitching, similar to bitching when one does not succeed in charming some dame he likes.
Attached is the translation of this article. With heartfelt greetings, K. Radek 9/ 11/ 34
PS. Just got the issue of the New Statesman with the articles by [George Bernard] Shaw and [Ernst] Toller in connection with Wells's commentary. Shaw at times ridicules Wells quite skillfully but then calls You an opportunist and nationalist. I believe that the first part of Shaw's article can still be published here. Tomorrow you will get the translation of that article.
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- H. G. Wells and All Things Russian , pp. 197 - 200Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2019