ABSTRACT
In the Spring of 1973, the author had been selected to succeed Major-General Thomas B L Churchill CB CBE MC as Director of the Great Britain-USSR Association. The association had been set up in 1959 following a ground-breaking visit to the USSR by Prime Minister Macmillan. It was expected that Macmillan’s visit might lead to more people travelling between the two countries, not only tourists but individuals following a wide range of cultural and academic pursuits. The new organisation was to be a forum for encouraging informal British—Soviet contact between those with shared professional or other interests. The theory was that a council thus constituted would be unlikely to elect onto itself a majority that would run the organisation against the British interest. Conducting relations across an ideological divide is quite unlike dealing with a country broadly well-disposed towards one’s own.
