In an essay in 1946 on ‘The prevention of literature’, George Orwell wrote that ‘There can be no question about the poisonous effects of the Russian mythos on English intellectual life. Because of it, known facts are suppressed and distorted to such an extent as to make it doubtful whether a true history of our times can ever be written.’ Happily, Orwell's fears were exaggerated. But for a long time many people on the Left in British politics regarded criticism of the Soviet Union as unacceptable. Stories of atrocities were ignored, dismissed as anti-Soviet inventions, or explained away as inevitable collateral damage in the building of socialism.

Giles Udy's book is about this ‘seduction of the British Left’. Interestingly, he originally intended to write a very different book. He begin researching the history of the labour camps in Norilsk, in the Soviet Arctic. He discovered that many of the prisoners there had been transferred from the White Sea labour camps. The White Sea region's only resource was timber, large quantities of which, cut by gulag labourers, were exported to Britain in the early 1930s. Many of the labourers were so-called kulaks (‘rich peasants’), deported from agricultural areas in the south as part of the process of forced collectivisation.

There was a campaign to persuade the Labour government of 1929–31 to end the trade, on the grounds that the timber was being produced by slave labour, but the government refused, despite all the evidence which was produced. Giles Udy quotes tellingly from the minutes of a Cabinet discussion in February 1931, which decided against the appointment of a committee to enquire into the conditions of labour in the Russian timber trade, on the grounds that ‘there was little doubt that an investigation would show that Russian timber was handled by forced labour’. This chapter of the book is entitled ‘The Cabinet admits the truth and does nothing’. It seems a fair summary. When the matter was debated in the Commons a month later, George Strauss, giving the opening speech for the government, said that it had not been proved ‘that this labour is used for export and that these appalling conditions really do exist’, and claimed that the stories of brutality had been put forward ‘on political grounds with political motives’. Only after the Labour government fell, later in 1931, was the trade finally brought to an end by the succeeding National government.

The story of Soviet timber exports is at the heart of the book. But Udy also goes into detail about other aspects of Soviet persecution, and how it was for long denied on the Left. He gives details of the persecution of religion (‘Of Moscow's 500 churches, 224 were still open on 1 January 1930, and only 87 two years later’, and ‘by 1930, 10,000 out of 12,000 mosques had been closed’). A decree of 1929 defined as a kulak anyone ‘having any other income obtained not through labour (included in this category are members of the clergy)’.

Udy tells his readers a great deal about the campaign against Soviet persecution. It is striking to read of the role of Prebendary Alfred Gough, the vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton (particularly interesting in view of Holy Trinity's more recent history). Gough led the creation of the Christian Protest Movement (CPM), launched at a mass meeting at the Albert Hall in December 1929, which campaigned through meetings, leaflets, articles and books, and inspired similar organisations in many other European countries. Many church leaders took up the cause, including the archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang, who raised Soviet religious persecution several times in the House of Lords. A day of prayer for persecuted Christians in Russia was held on 16 March 1930, across Britain and in many other countries. It is extraordinary that the government banned members of the armed forces, including military chaplains, from taking part in the day of prayer. Even more extraordinary, both the government and many on the Left more generally went on claiming that there was no religious persecution, or else sought for as long as they could to downplay it. (But then in much more recent times, the meticulous documentation by the Keston Institute of religious persecution in Communist countries was portrayed even by some in the British churches as anti-Communist propaganda, rather than, as it actually was, giving a voice to the voiceless.)

Why did so many people on the Left for so long refuse to recognise the reality of what was happening in the Soviet Union? One reason was that much of the criticism of the Soviet Union came from the Right. But Udy suggests that the explanation goes deeper. He explains the hopes with which many on the Left greeted the Bolshevik Revolution. The Soviet Union was to be the first country in which true socialism was built, even if the route chosen was different from the one favoured by British socialists. It is a surprise to discover that even Ramsay MacDonald, nowadays regarded as a betrayer of the Left, wrote in 1919 that: ‘The Russian Revolution has been one of the greatest events in the history of the world … Labour is drawn to Lenin … because he is fighting its battle.’ Many people wanted to believe, with H.G.Wells, that the Soviet Union was ‘the future, and it works’. For as long as they could, they believed anything which seemed to fit with that view, and nothing which contradicted it.

All this, and much more, is carefully documented by Giles Udy. His research has been wide-ranging and thorough. In our own post-truth world, it is salutary to be reminded how easily even highly intelligent people can be convinced of things which are not true. This is a book of more than simply historical interest. At £30 for well over 600 pages, it is also remarkably good value.