Shortly after midnight on November 2nd, 1950, with the Cold War in full swing, all the glowing panels on Broadway and Times Square were dimmed in tribute to the West's most prominent Stalin admirer. The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw has just died, and the tributes to him reflect the fame of plays like Pygmalion, Man and Superman and St. Joan.
But Shaw's plays have a strong political bent, and few of his American admirers doubt that his political understanding included support for communism in general and Stalin in particular. The fact that he is nonetheless revered in the United States is a reminder that the great Cold War divide was never as simple as it seems. Moreover, behind Shaw's infatuation with Stalin lies a force that is still with us: the desire to see in Russia some qualities that Western democracies lack.
At first glance, Shaw's idolization of Stalin is a great mystery. The man known the world over by his initials G.B.S. was not only a great playwright; he was perhaps the most influential public intellectual of the first half of the 20th century. On Shaw's death Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India, said, "He was not only one of the greatest figures of his age, but a man who influenced the thought of a vast number of human beings for two generations."
Contrary to the claims of historian Robert Saunders, George Bernard Shaw's support for Britain's alliance with the USSR in World War II was not a pragmatic response to circumstances so much as an integral part of his admiration for that murderous regime that lasted until his death. After his 1931 visit to the USSR he became an unashamed apologist, regarding reports of the 1933 famine in the Ukraine as 'slander'. Shaw supported terror and said that old Bolsheviks sentenced to death after show trials "often had to be taken down from the pillars with ropes around their necks".
People like wartime Information Minister Duff Cooper are proved right about the true nature of Stalinism, however critical the USSR's efforts to defeat Hitler.
"I agree with Robert Saunders' thesis that we should treat Putin's Russia without letting prejudice cloud our judgment. But if he wants to convince others and show that he himself is not prejudiced, I would advise him not to cite George Bernard Shaw's willingness to submit to Stalin's Russia at a time when Britain was fighting Hitler and Stalin had just made an alliance with him. Putin doesn't deserve to be compared to that!" says British diplomat Oliver Miles to the Guardian. | BGNES
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New York Times analysis /11.09.2017/
