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By Root 976 0

interested in politics, ‘The Twentieth Congress,’ and he said: ‘What’s that?’ Well, it was the Congress of the Russian Communist Party when Khrushchev stood up in the Kremlin and said that Stalin was not all what he had been cracked up to be. Now this may have been a revelation in Russia, but it wasn’t in certain Communist circles here, who had for some time been fighting to get the leadership of the Communist party to tell the truth and divorce itself from Russia. The Twentieth Congress came as a relief for many Western Communists. What sent so many Communists out of the Western Communist parties was not Hungary, but Hungary coming so soon after the Twentieth Congress. To put it over-simply: if the Russian troops had gone into Hungary as they did before the Twentieth Congress, it would have been shocking but no more than could have been expected. That they crushed the Hungarian uprising in the brutal and cynical way they did after the Twentieth Congress, meant that Congress was more of a safety-valve than a promise of change.

I see that I said in Going Home that within a decade the Communist countries would have become more democratic than the Western countries. This has turned out to be untrue. But the Communist countries, save for China, have all become much more democratic, so much so as to make obsolete all the patterns of thinking of ten years ago.

But to return to ’56. I was in the position of someone coming from ‘the centre’—which is the romantic way people living in outposts see people who live in London. I would be in a position to deny the horrid truths of the Twentieth Congress—which were nothing, said the local Communists, but revolting lies and inventions. They were able to feel like this because they were isolated in Rhodesia. Who were the local Communists? They weren’t Communists at all. There has never been a Communist party in Rhodesia. They were a couple of dozen people scattered about the country who were inspired in the long, thankless, draining battle against colour bars and white supremacy by the glories of the Russian revolution. It is always a mistake to discount such people and their influence for good. If you are living in a country which is stifling, backward and provincial, and you are a lively idealistic person, you need something to buoy you up. For many people, in many parts of the world, this idealistic flame was Russia. Your local conditions may be primitive—but somewhere is good, the truth, progress. Your neighbours think you are mad and treacherous Kaffir lovers—but in other parts of the world you have friends, even if you don’t know their names. No one should laugh at this, or think it childish who has not lived in a backwater full of neurotic and bigoted racists.

Well, the Twentieth Congress was a blow to such people, and the tragedy was that in any place I went, they were the core of sensible opposition to Partnership and associated foolishness. I spent my days during that extraordinary trip being escorted around manifestations of Partnership by Garfield Todd’s publicity men and shadowed by the CID, as described, and my nights talking to groups of people whose hearts had been broken and who wanted to believe that I was a corrupted person for believing one word that Khrushchev said. They could not bear to believe him—yet. It was all very painful.

There were a good many other interesting aspects of this trip I still can’t write about, because people would get into trouble. That is why I shan’t lightly again go on a trip as a political journalist. Most of the really interesting things you discover you have to keep quiet about. Some journalists enjoy precisely this aspect of their work—being in the know. I find it more frustrating than enjoyable. And besides, it’s a responsibility, remembering to keep your mouth shut, because people’s jobs, lives, are at stake.

The financing of this trip was tricky. I had to go home, for emotional reasons. I needed to see how Rhodesia struck me after living in a civilized country. I needed to feel and smell the place. But I had no money. I was very