Facts in the USSR

Two more chapters into Richard Ingrams' biography of Malcolm Muggeridge I have a much better idea of why he mattered and a fine sense of why I had no idea of who he was.

In chapter IV, simply titled, "Russia," (though it was still the USSR at the time) Ingrams chronicles Muggeridge's interest in Russia as a socialist paradise and how this interest turned into disillusionment and depression once he actually moved to the country. Once Muggeridge started going around as a freelancer and a correspondent, it became apparent that the socialist dream was just a front and that under Stalin millions were set to die of starvation. The observation and subsequent reporting of this were what made Muggeridge famous.

It wasn't that he was the only foreign journalist in Russia at the time, not by a long shot, but rather that he was the first to successfully write honestly about it. Others had tried, but either recanted once their articles reached publication because of political pressure, or just never managed to get them into print. With the exception of Muggeridge and a handful of others, it was as A.T. Cholerton put it: "Everything is true except the facts" (57).

As per why I had never heard of him before this, his import on the international front was a phenomenon locked into the 1930s. After all the 1930s were a time when the idea of socialism was popular among intellectuals and middle class members throughout Europe and America (which country had sent the Bolsheviks $66,000,000 for food in the 1920s (66); and which country officially recognized the USSR in 1933 (69)). As such, Muggeridge was a rare anti-socialist voice in the Western press at the time, though now such a stance seems almost common sense.

Having read more, I can also see why I was told that I ought to read this. Again, like most people graduating with some sort of arts degree, Muggeridge never lead his life with a solid plan but usually acted more on impulse. Speaking for myself, I'm not overly impulsive, but can still relate to living without a plan to which I stick like needles on a fir.

On a bit more of a petty note, it may be voyeuristic, but I find the letters and diary entries that Ingrams includes in his retellings of the various episodes in Muggeridge's life pretty incredible. It's easy to have a whitewashed sense of the past from text books and cleaned up cinematic accounts, but actually being able to read people's correspondence and personal writings really makes it clear how messy things could be. And, taking place in the mid twentieth century, how much attitudes towards things like sexuality were taking a more accepting turn.