In 1943 Philip Grierson of Cambridge University published a bibliography with the title Books on Soviet Russia 1917–42: at a rough estimate, it counted between two and three thousand such books in the English language alone. This seminal work lists a comparable bibliography published in 1937 by Klaus Mehnert—originally from the Volga region and in his day a prominent specialist—with 1,900 titles in German. The scale of this output testifies to the fascination exerted by the Soviet Union in its heyday. Grierson allowed himself to guide his readers with short comments such as “Violently anti-Bolshevik” on books he disapproved of, or at best “very hostile but gives a valuable picture of the appall- ing conditions caused by the Civil War.” One early visitor eager to judge Communism for himself was Bertrand Russell, who records that his blood ran cold when he met Lenin. “A friendly but sceptical account ...

This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchase