Publications
At Dawn They Came
Soviet Terror and Repression 1917 - 1953
The Bolshevik coup d’état in 1917 ushered in a system of brutal repression. Millions suffered imprisonment or deportation. A network of thousands of prisons, labour camps and exile settlements, collectively known as the Gulag, was established over the vast reaches of the Soviet Union.
Conditions in the camps were harsh, with prisoners subjected to brutal physical and psychological abuse, extreme cold and near-starvation. Over two and a half million never returned home, dying in exile or captivity. Hundreds of thousands more were shot and their bodies now lie under the earth in mass graves all over the former Soviet Union and in the surrounding nations it occupied.
By the time of Stalin’s death in 1953, at least twenty million had perished. Collectively, the events of this period constitute one of the greatest crimes against humanity of the 20th Century. This is the story of how it unfolded.
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The Gulag and other forms of repression imposed by the
Soviet Union represent one of the greatest tragedies that has
ever befallen mankind. Millions of people from the Soviet
Union and from the countries it controlled were taken to
forced labour camps or into places of exile thousands
of miles from their homes.
The story is told here powerfully and with humanity.
Professor Aleks Szczerbiak
Professor of Politics at the University of Sussex
Chairman of the Foundation for the History of Totalitarianism
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Labour and the Gulag
Russia and the Seduction of the British Left
The Labour Party welcomed the Russian Revolution in 1917: it paved the way for the birth of a socialist superpower and ushered in a new era of Soviet governance. Labour excused the Bolshevik excesses and prepared for its own revolution in Britain. In 1929, Stalin deported hundreds of thousands of men, women and children to work in labour camps. Subjected to appalling treatment, thousands died. When news of the camps leaked out in Britain, there were protests demanding the
government ban imports of timber cut by slave labourers.
The Labour government of the day dismissed mistreatment claims as Tory propaganda and blocked appeals for an inquiry. Despite the Cabinet privately acknowledging the harsh realities of the work camps, Soviet denials were publicly repeated as fact. One Labour minister even defended them as part of ‘a remarkable economic experiment’.
Labour and the Gulag explains how Britain’s Labour Party was seduced by the promise of a socialist utopia and enamoured of a Russian Communist system it sought to emulate. It reveals the moral compromises Labour made, and how it turned its back on the victims in order to further its own political agenda.
‘The best book of British political history for years.’
Edward Lucas
‘A splendid book, an incredibly powerful
indictment of a generation of the Left.’
Andrew Roberts
‘A masterpiece.’
Tim Montgomerie
‘A scholarly and passionate indictment of Labour's complicity
with Soviet oppression. An important book on how a
'progressive' approach to foreign policy can conceal systematic murder on a vast scale.’
Lord Maurice Glasman
Blue Labour
‘A compelling work of history - at once scrupulous, angry and humane.
Told with a masterly eye for detail and an unflinching commitment to the truth.’
Michael Gove
TITLES IN PREPARATION
What's Wrong with Marx?
A examination and critique, drawn extensively from their own writings, of the corrosive political ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky
(Due 2025)
Tapesty of Tears - Journeys Into the Gulag
The history of the notorious Siberian Arctic Gulag camps of Norilsk, and the stories of those who were sent there
(Due 2027)
