It was indeed difficult for him to oppose Stalinism and Western imperialism at the same time, while attempting to hold on to his independence. But the stupidity of the state only helped to make certain that, at any rate while he lived, he was always its victim and never its servant. The British Foreign Office, which had been erring on Stalin’s side for almost a decade, suddenly needed anti-Stalinist energy in the mid 1940s. It had nowhere to turn, in its search for credible and honest writers, but to the Tribune Left. This is not, taking the medium or the long view of history, the most
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