H. N. Brailsford and Russia: The Problem of Objectivity

Abstract

In a journalistic career which spanned seven decades, Henry Noel Brailsford devoted a considerable part of his writing to Russian affairs and to the relations of the British and Russian peoples. In scores of articles and in two books based on first-hand observations, he helped to mold Western attitudes — especially of those on the political Left — to the often maligned, frequently enigmatic giant of the East. Few English journalists in the twentieth century could match the knowledge, personal contacts, and audience of a man who published several articles a week from the late 1890s to the early 1950s for a host of papers, including, to name the most important, the Manchester Guardian, the Speaker, the Daily News, the Nation, the Herald, the New Republic, the New Leader, Reynolds News, and the New Statesman. While Brailsford's field of competence encompassed the whole range of international and imperial affairs, he was preoccupied with the Balkans, with Russia, and with India, and of these only Russia commanded his attention throughout his life. The Balkan question belongs to the years before World War I, India to the 1930s and 1940s, but Russia remained of consuming interest from the revolution of 1905 until after the Second World War.