ABSTRACT
THIS CONVERSATION WITH an unidentified interviewer probably took place on 14 October 1955; Edith Russell’s pocket diary for that date contains an entry for a meeting with a Soviet journalist and an embassy attaché. It was published in Russian in the Soviet cultural and political weekly Ogonek, Moscow, 1955 (B&R E55. 09). On 10 December Russell acknowledged receipt of a translation of this text prepared by Mark Winterton of the Joint Services School for Linguists, an institution which from 1951 to 1960 provided intensive language instruction to National Servicemen capable of performing interpretation and intelligence work for Britain’s armed forces. Winterton had been “very interested recently in the accuracy of Russian reporting” and wanted Russell to comment on this “rough translation”. Russell replied that there was “nothing inaccurate in his interviewer’s account though he has passed lightly over whatever I said that might be disagreeable to Russian readers, more particularly as regards Eastern Germany”. His criticisms of Western policy, by contrast, particularly the exclusion of Communist China from the United Nations, feature prominently below, as do the interviewer’s boastful interpolations about the sincerity of the Soviet Union’s interest in disarmament and peace.
