ABSTRACT
Jean McCrindle was interviewed by Jenny Taylor in the summer of 1980, and a substantially reworked version of that interview is presented. The original paper on which it is based was given at the 1978 Ruskin History Workshop as a contribution to the theme ‘In Our Time 1945–1978’. In this chapter, the author have terrible recollections of reading a Soviet journal called For A Lasting Peace and a People’s Democracy and trying to understand why she found the language of it so offensive – phrases like ‘laughing hyenas of Wall Street’ and ‘running dogs of Imperialism’ to describe Tito or any critics of the Soviet Union. There was a tremendous sense of belonging to a dedicated group of people, and most of them were working-class activists of great warmth and vitality, and people were taken into their lives and homes immediately wherever they went.
