Introduction

Abstract

In July 1931 George Bernard Shaw embarked on his first and only trip to the Soviet Union. He had been a champion of this new experiment in political and economic organization from the outset, but had refrained from visiting because he wanted to give the experiment time to develop before he offered his first-hand observations. By 1931 Lenin’s New Economic Policy had been succeeded by Stalin’s First Five Year Plan of crash industrialization and agricultural collectivization, and Shaw felt that the time was finally right to make a visit. Soon after their arrival in Russia, Shaw and Lady Astor, one of his traveling companions (and like Shaw something of a celebrity), received cablegrams from an exiled Russian professor of civil engineering at Yale University, Dmitry Krynin. Worried for his family, the exiled scholar implored the two eminent visitors “in the name of humanitarian principles, please help my wife in Moscow.” Shaw remained silent, but Lady Astor went down on her knees importuning her host Maxim Litvinov to come to the aid of this man and his destitute family. The obviously embarrassed Litvinov simply remarked that he was unable to help, and walked away. But Lady Astor would not let the matter rest, and was soon at the central office of the GPU or Soviet secret police, Shaw and Viscount Astor in tow, pleading with them to help the distressed family.