Journey from Holland to Utopia:
The Soviet Union, Cosmopolitanism and Dutch Travellers in the
1930s
Master Thesis in European Studies Graduate School for Humanities University of Amsterdam Author: Arthur Tomassen Student number: 1082525
First supervisor: Dr. A.M. Kalinovsky Second supervisor: Dr. A. van Heerikhuizen Number of words: 17.140
Summary
In this study there has been analysed to what extent the experiences of Dutch travellers in the 1930's to the Soviet Union, have described from a contemporary perceptive, a cosmopolitan society. By analysing five Dutch travel narratives about the Soviet Union in the 1930s, this study has attempted to reveal a different side to the Soviet Union during a time that is known for the its repressive form of Stalinism. Cosmopolitanism is in connection to this study a con-temporary term that has been used to examine the experiences of the travellers. It is not some-thing that the travellers or the Soviet Union identified themselves with in the 1930s. Each of the five travellers has described the Soviet Union in a unique way. Except for one traveller, all their experiences have described from a contemporary perceptive, the Soviet Union as a cos-mopolitan society.
Table of Contents
List of Abbreviations v
1 Introduction 1
2 The attractive power of the Soviet Union 6
2.1 Travel writing about Russia 6
2.1.1. Eastern Europe in travel writing 6
2.1.2. Russia’s historical connection with the West 8
2.1.3. Superiority-inferiority complex 9
2.2 The Soviet Union in the interwar period 10
2.2.1. Soviet cultural policies in the 1930s 10
2.2.2. Cosmopolitanism 12
2.2.3. Internationalism 15
2.3 The attraction of the Soviet Union for Western visitors 17
2.3.1. Russia’s image in the travelogues of early Western European travellers 17
2.3.2. Western travellers to the Soviet Union in the interwar period 19
2.4 The intellectual interwar context 21
2.4.1. The European intellectual context of the interwar period 21
2.4.2. The Dutch intellectual context of the interwar period 23
3 Three Dutch communists in the Soviet Union 25
3.1 Jef C.F. Last - Het Stalen Fundament 25
3.2 Heleen Ankersmit - Een Maand in de Sowjet-Unie 30
3.3 Roestam Effendi – Van Moskou naar Tiflis 34
4 The Soviet Union from a non-communist perspective 39
4.1 Bartholomeus van der Jagt - Een Hollander in Sovjet-Rusland 39
4.2 W. van Amstel - Studiereis naar de Sowjet-Unie 43
5 Conclusion 47
List of Abbreviations
BSDVC The Dutch League of Social-Democratic Women's Clubs (De Bond van Soci-aal-Democratische Vrouwenclubs)
CPH The Communist Party Holland (De Communistische Partij Holland)
CPN The Communist Party Netherlands (De Communistische Partij van Nederland) NSB The Dutch National Socialist Movement (Nationaal Socialistische Beweging in
Nederland)
RSVB The Revolutionary-Socialist Women's Union (De Revolutionair-Socialistische Vrouwenbond)
SDAP The Dutch Social-Democratic Labour Party (Sociaal-Democratische Arbeids-partij)
VOKS The All-Union Society For Cultural Ties Abroad
VVSU The Association of Friends of the Soviet Union (De Vereniging van Vrienden der Sovjet-Unie)
1 Introduction
The early twentieth century was a period of bloodshed and sorrow. The First World War changed the definition of warfare through its unprecedented scale and destruction. Millions of people died during this war, and several great dynasties vanished. One of these dynasties, the Romanovs, found its end during the war as a result of the Russian Revolution.1 As a conse-quence, the Bolsheviks came to power and the autocratic regime of the Tsar was forever dis-mantled. From this revolutionary period, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic emerged and eventually the Soviet Union. Here the concept of Marxism met reality, with the abolishment of capitalism as a result. The newly established Soviet Union was very different from existing Western states, as it was based on the principles of communism. It was a collec-tive society with a centrally planned economy. In the years after the Revolution, the Soviet Union underwent rapid industrialisation and slowly became a new world order that could threaten the supremacy of capitalism. As a result it was both despised and admired by West-ern observers, who wanted to understand the complex nature of the Soviet Union.2
Admiration for the Soviet Union by Western visitors was at its highest during the 1930s. This was, however also the period during which the Soviet Union experienced the most repressive form of Stalinism. To understand the Soviet Union in the 1930s as merely an authoritarian power that used repression as a means to bring its citizens into line, is simplify-ing a complex situation. The Western admiration that flourished dursimplify-ing this time of great re-pression can be explained by the cosmopolitan character of the Soviet Union as argued by Katerina Clark. While the Soviet Union was developing as a unique civilisation during this period, there was also simultaneous interaction with Western intellectuals and culture. Clark’s approach has been groundbreaking in the field of Soviet-Western cultural relations and has added a new dimension to the analysis of the Soviet Union in the 1930s.3 It also contributes to the already existing research field of travel writing in connection to the Soviet Union. Much has already been written about how travellers experienced the Soviet Union and what attract-ed them.4 These works have mostly focussed on European and American travellers, but have
1 The ‘Russian Revolution’ includes in this study both the Russian February Revolution and the Russian October
Revolution of 1917. For consistency this study will only use the term ‘Russian Revolution’.
2 Michael David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet
Union 1921-1941, Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press 2011, pp. 1-4.
3 Katerina Clark, Moscow, The Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism and the Evolution of Soviet Culture
1931-1941, Harvard: Harvard University Press 2011, pp. 4-8.
4 See for works on cultural and intellectual relations between the Soviet Union and Western states: Choi
left the Dutch situation underexposed. To build on Clark’s research and to shed light on the Dutch perspective of the Soviet Union, this study offers an analysis of five Dutch travel ac-counts about the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The research question hereby is as follows: ‘To what extent could be concluded that the experiences of Dutch travellers in the 1930's to the Soviet Union, have described from a contemporary perceptive, a cosmopolitan society?’ It is crucial here to understand that the five travellers did not see themselves as cosmopolitans, just as the Soviet Union did not identify with this term in the 1930s. The travellers did not travel to the Soviet Union with the intention of seeing a cosmopolitan society, as in connection to the Soviet Union, ‘cosmopolitanism’, is a contemporary term. This study attempts instead to reveal that from a contemporary perspective, their descriptions do, however, describe the So-viet Union as a cosmopolitan society in the 1930s.5
The five Dutch travel accounts are part of the genre of travel writing, which has a hy-brid character and has gained increased academic interest over the last years. It is often seen as a genre that combines several other genres, but it can also be seen as a collective term ac-cording to Jan Borm. It includes all kinds of texts whose main topic is travel and does there-fore not necessary have to be seen as a genre.6 Carl Thompson analysed travel writing to be about the confrontation between the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’, which is created by travel through space. This tells the reader something about the culture from which the traveller originated and about the culture for which the text is meant.7 Casey Blanton describes that travel writers have the desire to convey the foreign as something that is familiar. They often describe strange and hazardous places, and by converting this into something more familiar, they help the reader to understand the world better. The journeys that the travellers undertake often also have a symbolic meaning. The traveller is on a personal quest of self-improvement during the journey, and the traveller’s inner and outer worlds can collide during his or her journey. Trav-el accounts can be focussed on an objective such as exploration or trading, as has often been the case in the past, or they can have a more autobiographical meaning, whereby emotional issues are of greater importance than hard facts. These emotional issues can be the prejudices
York: Routledge 2013; David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment; David Engerman, Modernization on the
Other Shore: American Intellectuals and the Romance of Russian Economic Development, Cambridge: Harvard
University Press 2003; Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers 2009; Ludmilla Stern, Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union,
1920-40: From Red Square to the Left Bank, New York: Routledge 2007.
5 Clark, Moscow, The Fourth Rome, p. 5.
6 Jan Borm, ‘Defining Travel: On the Travel Book, Travel Writing and Terminology’, in: Glenn Hooper and Tim
Youngs eds., Perspectives on Travel Writing, Aldershot: Ashgate 2004, pp. 13-26.
and preconceptions that every traveller has before commencing a journey.8 In this sense one
may wonder what arrives first, the imagination or the traveller, according to Andi Mihalache.9
The 1930s were a period during which travel writing was still connected to imperial-ism, according to Helen Carr. She analyses the period of 1880-1940 as a period in which trav-ellers experienced the world as modern, but also a period in which the lines between ‘civi-lised’ and ‘savage’ became blurred. Globalisation as a condition became central in travel writ-ing. Writers became concerned with Western civilisation and the pressure of globalisation upon the white race. They began to look for alternatives in this period. Travel writers in this period had two features that distinguished them from other periods: They had the desire to create distance between themselves and the great masses of tourists, and they stopped describ-ing their journeys along the lines of the Grand Tour. The 1930s and the rest of the interwar period in travel writing can be described as an escape from reality or as an quest for a differ-ent, truer form of being.10
The five Dutch travellers who are analysed and compared in this study were a very diverse group of people. All five of them were Dutch citizens, but they came from different layers of society. They have in common with each other that they travelled to the Soviet Un-ion in search of something, which they could not find in the Netherlands, for example em-ployment, a solution to colonialism and a new civilisational model. The travellers range from a fisherman from IJmuiden to a member of parliament with an Indonesian background. This great variety offers a chance to understand how Dutch citizens with different political views and with different social backgrounds perceived the Soviet Union. For the coherency of the study, they were divided into two different groups based on their political opinions before their departure to the Soviet Union. The first group of travellers includes three writers who were communists or had sympathy for the Soviet Union: The optimistic Jef Last, who trav-elled through the Urals in Het Stalen Fundament: Reportage over 2500 K.M. Zwerftochten
door de Oeral (1933), feminist Heleen Ankersmit who stayed in Moscow in Een Maand in de
8 Casey Blanton, Travel Writing: The Self and the Other, New York and London: Routledge 2002, pp. 1-29. 9 Andi Mihalache, ‘Metaphor and Monumentality: The Travels of Nicolae Igora’, in: Wendy Bracewell and Alex
Drace-Francis eds., Under Eastern Eyes: A Comparative Introduction to East European Travel Writing on
Eu-rope, New York: Central European University Press 2008, pp. 237-266; The phrase has also often been used by
Alex Drace-Francis during the European Studies Master course of the University of Amsterdam, ‘Encountering Diversity’ in the first academic semester of 2016.
10 Helen Carr, ‘Modernism and Travel (1880-1940)’, in: Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs eds., The Cambridge
Companion to Travel Writing, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002, pp. 70-73 and 79-83; The Grand
Tour was a journey through Europe, meant for young men from the upper classes of society from 17th till 19th
century. See for more information Edward Chaney, The Evolution of the Grand Tour: Anglo-Italian Cultural
Relations Since the Renaissance, London: Frank Cass Publishers 2000; Chloe Chard, Pleasures and Guilt on the Grand Tour: Travel Writing and Imaginative Geography 1600-1830, Manchester: Manchester University Press
Sowjet-Unie (1936) and the Dutch-Indonesian member of parliament Roestam Effendi who
travelled through the Soviet republics of the Caucasus in Van Moskou naar Tiflis: Mijn Reis
door de Nationale Sowjet-Republieken van de Kaukasus (1937).11 The other group of travel texts includes two writers who had a neutral political opinion towards the Soviet Union: The fisherman Bartholomeus van der Jagt, who describes his time as an foreign fishing expert in the Soviet Union in Een Hollander in Sovjet-Rusland (1935), and W. van Amstel who went to Moscow as a critical observer in Studiereis naar de Sowjet-Unie: Met Tekeningen van den
Schrijver (1936).12
These five travel texts were selected from the archives of the International Institute for Social History through a selection process that eliminated irrelevant sources.13 These archives were chosen because they offer one of the largest collections of Dutch sources about the So-viet Union in the 1930s. The number of sources on this subject is, however, limited. As a re-sult, three of the five used sources are from pro-communist writers, and the Association of Friends of the Soviet Union (VVSU) published two of these sources.14 This suborganisation of the Communist Party Holland (CPH) helped organise trips to the Soviet Union during the interwar period.15 It must therefore be taken into account that the sources published by the VVSU might be biased and do not necessary provide a neutral representation of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Together with the other sources they do, however, provide a good exam-ple of how a variety of Dutch peoexam-ple, including communists, viewed the Soviet Union. This
11 Jef C.F. Last, Het Stalen Fundament: Reportage over 2500 K.M. Zwerftochten door de Oeral, Amsterdam:
Boekengemeenschap der Vrienden van de Sowjet-Unie 1933; Heleen Ankersmit, Een Maand in de Sowjet-Unie, Amsterdam: V.V.S.U. 1936; Roestam Effendi, Van Moskou naar Tiflis: Mijn Reis door de Nationale
Sowjet-Republieken van de Kaukasus, Amsterdam: Pegasus 1937.
12 Bartholomeus van der Jagt, Een Hollander in Sovjet-Rusland, Rotterdam: Drukkerij Libertas 1935; W. van
Amstel, Studiereis naar de Sowjet-Unie: Met Tekeningen van den Schrijver, Amsterdam: Nieuwe Cultuur 1936.
13 The International Institute for Social History is part of the Royal Dutch of Academy of Sciences and offers
access to more than 1.200 archives. In the selection of the source material for this study, the institute’s online catalogue has been used. The search term was ‘Rusland’ and the filters were 'books and brochures', language: Dutch’ and ‘year of publication: 1930-1939’. This resulted in 233 results, from which 11 results appeared to be relevant to the study. From these 11 results, 6 were travel texts, which could be analysed. One travel text did however turn out to be a copy of one of the other travel texts, published anonymously. See for access to the web-site’s catalogue: ‘International Institute of Social History’, https://socialhistory.org/en/news/dutch-russia-russians-netherlands, consulted on 12 June 2017.
14 The accounts of Jef Last and Heleen Ankersmit were published by the VVSU. The Boekengemeenschap der
Vrienden van de Sowjet-Unie, which had published Last’s account is a different name for the VVSU; Last, Het Stalen Fundament; Ankersmit, Een Maand in de Sowjet-Unie.
15 The Association of Friends of the Soviet Union is called in Dutch: De Vereniging van Vrienden der
Sovjet-Unie (VVSU); The Communist Party Holland (Communistische Partij Holland, CPH) would in 1935 change its name to the Communist Party of the Netherlands (Communistische Partij van Nederland, CPN).
study does not present a complete historical overview of all Dutch travellers to the Soviet Union in the 1930s; instead, it offers a glimpse of various opinions.16
In order to obtain an answer to the research question, it is necessary to understand the context in which the Dutch travellers undertook their journeys. This will be done in the se-cond chapter. The first section of the sese-cond chapter examines both the historical portrayal of Eastern Europe in travel writing and perspectives in travel writing on Russia and the Soviet Union as its successor. In the second section, an overview is given of Soviet cultural policy in the 1930s and the Soviet connection with cosmopolitanism and internationalism. The third section offers an analysis of accounts and literature about travellers to Russia and the Soviet Union. It also offers a comparative point of view on the travel accounts of the Dutch travellers in the later chapters. The last section of this chapter describes the European intellectual con-text of the interwar period and also looks at the Dutch situation in this period. The following third and fourth chapters focus on the five Dutch travel texts and compare the descriptions from these accounts to the context of the second chapter. The conclusion follows last, in which the results of this study are repeated and discussed.
16Gerrit Voerman, ‘Culturele vrienden van de Sovjet-Unie. Het Genootschap Nederland-Nieuw Rusland en de Vereniging Vrienden van de Sovjet-Unie’, Spiegel Historiael, no. 11-12 (2001), pp. 504-509.
2 The attractive power of the Soviet Union
2.1 Travel writing about Russia2.1.1 Eastern Europe in travel writing
The historical perspective on Eastern Europe often also applied to Russia and is therefore im-portant in the understanding of the Russian position in travel writing. Eastern Europe is in this sense an invention made up by Western Europe in the eighteenth century, according to Larry Wolff. The old Renaissance distinction between the barbaric North and the civilised South changed during the Enlightenment to the civilised West and the barbaric East. Eastern Europe was a region that was somewhere between barbarism and civilised; it was seen as the connec-tion between barbaric Asia and civilised Europe.17 The creation of Eastern Europe can be seen from the perspective of Wolff’s mapping of civilisation during the Enlightenment, but it can also be seen through the eyes of Eastern European intellectuals, who identified Europe as out-side of Eastern Europe.18 The region was not constructed on Western principles, like freedom and the separation of powers, which had made the West successful. Instead it was a story of failures, and Eastern Europe could be seen as ‘lands of absence’, as Ezequil Adamovsky coined the phrase. Adamovsky argues that the stereotypes that were usually connected with the Orient were also being connected to Eastern Europe. He calls this process
‘Euro-Orientalism’, which stands for the manner in which Western Europe maintained a relationship with Eastern Europe.19 Wolff also examines the connection between Orientalism and Eastern Europe. He analyses the connection already in existence in the eighteenth century, which is inexplicable according to Adamovsky, as there had been no supporting institutions or scholar-ship at that time. These were crucial to the emerging discourse and would not emerge until the nineteenth century.20
It was after the First World War that Adamovsky’s Euro-Orientalism emerged. The maps of Eastern Europe had to be redrawn, which resulted in increased academic attention to
17 Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilisation on the Mind of the Enlightenment, Stanford:
Stanford University Press 1994, pp. 4-5 and 13.
18 Ibid.; Wendy Bracewell and Alex Drace-Francis, Under Eastern Eyes: A Comparative Introduction to Eastern
European Travel Writing on Europe, New York: Central European University Press 2008, p. viii.
19 Ezequil Adamovsky, ‘Euro-Orientalism and the Making of the Concept of Eastern Europe in France,
1810-1880’, The Journal of Modern History, no. 3 (2005), pp. 591-592.
20 Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, pp. xi; Adamovsky, ‘Euro-Orientalism and the Making of the Concept of
Eastern Europe in France, 1810-1880’, pp. 592-594; Edward W. Said, Orientalism, London: Penguin Books 2003, pp. 1-2.
this part of Europe. The idea that Europe was divided between the communist East and the free West emerged during this period and consolidated after the Second World War.21 The
borders of Eastern Europe were, however, not automatically considered to be negative. West-ern travellers were enchanted to cross the seemingly European border of civilisation and enter a culture that was very different from their own.22 In this sense, travel is also connected to the conception of time. Travellers are not only travelling through regions, but also through sym-bolic time. They are travelling forwards in search of resolutions and a truer form of being, as has been mentioned by Carr. They can also move backwards through time, in search of lost aspects of the past. They want to find in the regions where they travel the things that have become outdated at home. Travelling to Eastern Europe can in this sense be an escape from the Western present, just as travelling from Eastern to Western Europe can be seen as journey to the future. Travel to the Soviet Union could, however, also be seen as a journey to the fu-ture, as it offered an alternative to Western civilisation.23
In the understanding of travellers who went to Eastern Europe, it is also important to understand the difference between a traveller and a tourist, according to Barry Curtis and Claire Pajaczkowska. When travellers are confirming their own self-identity and do not par-ticipate in the environment, they are merely tourists instead of travellers. Travellers undergo a change and transformation by their contact with ‘Otherness’.24 This experience of ‘Otherness’ is a reason why travellers often use the ethnographic present in describing the foreign. They use the present tense to describe cultures and societies that are different from their own. To understand the accounts of the Dutch travellers, it will be important to analyse whether they also use the ethnographic present or if they are less generalising and more objective. As travel to the Soviet Union can also be seen as a journey to the future and therefore the ethnographic present would less likely be used.25
21 Adamovsky, ‘Euro-Orientalism and the Making of the Concept of Eastern Europe in France, 1810-1880’, pp.
609-613.
22 Andrew Hammond, ‘Frontier Myths: Travel Writing on Europe’s Eastern Border’, in: Richard Littlejohns and
Sara Soncini eds., Myths of Europe, Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi 2007, p. 204.
23 Carr, ‘Modernism and Travel (1880-1940)’, pp. 70-73 and 79-83; Barry Curtis and Claire Pajaczkowska,
‘Get-ting There: Travel, Time and Narrative’, in: George Robertson, et al. eds., Travellers’ Tales: Narratives of Home
and Displacement, London: Routledge 2005, pp. 199-203; Ronald Grigor Suny, The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2011, pp. 307-313.
24 Curtis and Pajaczkowska, ‘Getting There: Travel’, pp. 206-207.
25 Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object, New York: Columbia University
2.1.2 Russia’s historical connection with the West
Throughout time, Russia has been inside and outside of the mental maps of Europe. Religious borders between the Roman and Orthodox Church have separated Russia from Europe, while its culture included elements of European culture and borrowed from European ideas and morals. Russia could be seen as being situated in Europe, but at the same time being very dif-ferent from other European states. Especially after the Russian Revolution of 1917, Russia began to exclude itself from general European cultural advancement.26 Russia also played an essential role in defining the European identity by acting, as Europe’s ‘Other’. It was a Chris-tian nation, but not Roman Catholic; instead Russia had aligned itself with the Eastern Ortho-dox Church. Further, because it had been under Mongol rule for more than two centuries, one could argue that Russia did not experience a Renaissance. Russia also maintained serfdom for a far longer period than Western Europe, and it grew more restrictive rather than less so, as Western Europe did. It also did not have a strong independent middle class as most European states did have and a robust capitalist tradition.27
At several moments in Russian history, Russia saw itself as being part of Europe. It was during the eighteenth century that Peter the Great and his successors, tried to change Rus-sia into a real European state. Peter wanted RusRus-sia to be on the same military and political level as the rest of Europe. New technologies were introduced, and new ways of thinking were tried. Catherine II continued to explore these revolutionary policies, which would even-tually cause Russia to become stronger than before. Russia became a great successful Europe-an power Europe-and gained a great deal of influence on EuropeEurope-an matters. The RussiEurope-an Revolution put an end to this process and proved to some extent that Russia remained a region very dif-ferent from the rest of Europe despite the modernization waves.28
According to Katya Hokanson, despite the modernisation attempts by Peter the Great and Catherine II, Russia remained, in the descriptions of critical foreigners such as the Polish poet Mickiewicz, a land that was unaffected by the flow of time.29 It was a land of emptiness and far stretching stretches of land between towns and cities. At the centre lay the capital of St. Petersburg, a city full of architectural marvels. Nevertheless, St. Petersburg had a periph-
26 Adamovsky, ‘Euro-Orientalism and the Making of the Concept of Eastern Europe in France, 1810-1880’, pp.
612-613.
27 Ibid., pp. 622-625; Mauricio Borrero, Russia: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present, New
York: Facts on File 2004, pp. xiii-xiv.
28 Geoffrey A. Hosking, Russia: People and Empire 1552-1917, Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2001, pp.
75-76 and 118-119.
eral status when compared to the centres of culture in Europe. Great projects like St. Peters-burg and the expansion of territory were all connected with the Russian confrontation with the West. Russia’s expansion and imperial project can be seen as an attempt to compensate for its backwardness. By expanding Russia, the Russians could see themselves as Europeans in comparison to the people they had conquered. The southern and southeastern provinces be-came an Orient in this way for Russia. Under Catherine II’s reign, southern Ukraine and Cri-mea became part of Russia. Here, the Russians used simplified techniques of otherisation, according to Sara Dickinson. Russia could in this way make it clear to the rest of the world that it was more European than other nationalities, for example the Tatars of Crimea or the Ottoman Turks.30
2.1.3 Superiority-inferiority complex
Eastern Europe and especially Russia have often been portrayed as being the periphery of Europe. Russia’s inferiority complex grew because of this process but eventually transformed into a superiority complex. Sara Dickinson describes this process as a three-way dynamic between the West, Russia and the South (Ukraine and Crimea). She uses the psychological term triangulation: ‘Interpersonal relationships in which an absent third party conditions the interaction between two others.’31 Western civilisation as the third absent party can be said to have defined the desires and projects of Russia. Crimea was used by Russia as a connection between its culture and classical European civilisation, for it was in Crimea that the ancient Greeks had built settlements.32
Russia’s superiority-inferiority complex follows a cyclical pattern. There are periods in Russia’s history when it pursued Europe, and there are periods wherein Europe was por-trayed as decadent and rotten. This cycle arises from the backwardness of Russia throughout the centuries; it can be seen as Russia’s leading narrative throughout time, from feeling supe-rior after the Napoleonic wars to feeling infesupe-rior after losing the Crimean war. Stalin’s turn away from the broader international Marxist front to socialism in one country can also be seen
30 Ibid., pp. 6-9; Sara Dickinson, ‘Russia’s First ‘Orient’: Characterizing the Crimea in 1787’, Explorations in
Russian and Eurasian History, no. 1 (2002), pp. 3-5.
31 Dickinson, ‘Russia’s First ‘Orient’, p. 5. 32 Ibid.
in this light. 33 It was a process by which Stalin stepped away from a European and
interna-tional approach towards a focus on internal affairs.34
Travel writing can be seen as an instrument to better understand the world. In the case of the Eastern Europe, travel writing can be seen as a confrontation between the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’. Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union / Russia have been Western Europe’s ‘Other’ for centuries.35 After the First World War, travellers began to search for alternatives to West-ern civilisation, for a system that had caused the death of millions. The Soviet Union seemed to offer this alternative; it was an escape from Western reality and offered a view into an al-ternative future, a socialist future. Throughout this socialist future runs the
superiority-inferiority complex that had been a main narrative in Russia for centuries and has also had an effect on the Soviet Union. The 1930s were a period in which travellers encountered the cy-clical pattern of this complex, a period in which inferiority changed into superiority. 2.2 The Soviet Union in the interwar period
2.2.1 Soviet cultural policies in the 1930s
The 1930s were a period in which art and culture were no longer free in the Soviet Union, as opposed to how they had been to some extent in the 1920s. Artists were now obligated to be-come a functional part of society: They had to bebe-come both the engineers of the soul and a functional tool in the construction of a socialist community. It was also the time of the Cultur-al Revolution (1928-1931), the continued fight of the proletarian class on the culturCultur-al front.36
The term ‘culture’, as an element of socialist state building, was already described in Vladimir Lenin’s work On Cooperation, in which he connected the term to revolution.37 The new leftist intellectuals fought against all aspects of culture that were not in line with the socialist view of society. In this new society, it was not allowed to go too far beyond the given cultural boundaries, in place to create a new unified Soviet society. The Soviet Union itself consisted
33 Iver B. Neumann, ‘Russia’s Europe, 1991-2016: Inferiority to Superiority’, International Affairs, no. 6 (2016),
pp. 1381-1399.
34 David Brandenburg, ‘The Fate of Interwar Soviet Internationalism: A Case Study of the Editing of Stalin's
1938 Short Course on the History of the ACP(b)’, Revolutionary Russia, no. 1 (2016), pp. 2 and 11-14; David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment, p. 316.
35 Adamovsky, ‘Euro-Orientalism and the Making of the Concept of Eastern Europe in France, 1810-1880’, pp.
612-613.
36 Suny, The Soviet Experiment, pp. 291-296.
37 Rouslan Khestanov, ‘The Role of Culture in Early Soviet Models of Governance’, Studies in Eastern
of multiple sovereign states that had united to form a union. In the formation of this union, the states lost a lot of influence and power to the centre. They were governed and controlled by national branches of the central Communist Party and therefore had to adhere to the socialist cultural guidelines. On the other hand, they also retained much of their local autonomy until the mid-1930s. National cultures were promoted, and there were cultural and educational in-stitutions in which the national languages were used.38
The idea that the Soviet Union saw itself as a promising model for a world order in which the rights of all member states would be respected was closely linked to the creation of national republics. It was believed by the Communist Party that by treating non-Russians fair-ly, their diaspora abroad would support their compatriots inside the Soviet Union. The Cultur-al Revolution of 1928-1932 further promoted the nationCultur-ality policies. New languages were created for people who had never had a written language, and land alongside the Chinese bor-der was allocated to Jews living in the Soviet Union. The major shift in these nationality poli-cies occurred in 1932, at which point they began to focus on uniting and homogenising minor nationalities. The number of ethnic groups inside the Soviet Union decreased from 188 to 107 as a result of this change. There was no place anymore for smaller nationalities, who had to be integrated into larger ones. It was also at this moment that the Soviet language changed from internationalist to nationalist and pro-Russian. This policy made the Russian language the first foreign language in the national regions of the Soviet Union. It began to be promoted and to be seen as part of high culture. However, not all non-Russians considered this a failure of the internationalist agenda. The change could also be seen as a possibility of escape for non-Russians. They could become free from their own nationalities and integrate into a more Rus-sian cosmopolitan world, where there would be more social mobility in society.39
The Soviet culture of the 1930s became known as Socialist Realism, which was de-clared to be a mandatory approach to all culture after 1932. It was a combination of a utopian vision of society and realistic form of art and literature that was understandable to the general population. Writers worked under the authority of the state and were utilised to promote the governmental agenda. Culture remained of great importance to the leadership of the Com-munist Party. They saw themselves as leaders of a new belief system, besides being the lead-ers of the state and the Party. It was for this reason that institutions played an important role in the cultural leadership. Culture was also of great importance because it was a tool for legiti-mising the Soviet state. The Bolsheviks, who had rebelled against and destroyed the Russian
38 Suny, The Soviet Experiment, pp. 307-313. 39 Ibid.
Empire, were in dire need of legitimacy because they had never been officially elected through a democratic process.40
The regime began creating institutions to further control and supervise culture. The creation in 1932 of the Union of Soviet Writers was an example of this process. Writers and artists had to be creative within the boundaries of state supervision. As long as they did not go directly against Soviet principals, they could risk expressing unconventional ideas. The pro-tection of important intellectuals like Maxim Gorky would be of great importance in shielding writers from persecution who went outside the Soviet boundaries of culture.41
The Soviet Union tried to build an alternative civilisation that could challenge the mass culture that existed in the Unites States and in Europe. It also tried to build a culture that was internally controlled. According to Barbara Keys, the cultural policies of isolation were, however, not completely successful. Examples of this are the popularity of jazz and what she sees as the ‘Stalinization of Hollywood’, whereby Soviet filmmakers tried to imitate Western movie styles. She also analyses the birth of a transnational sport culture after the First World War: The Soviet Union at first tried to break away from this transnational sport culture, but eventually, in the 1930s became part of it. These examples reveal that the Soviet Union in the 1930s still had connections with the outside world.42
2.2.2 Cosmopolitanism
The cultural policies of the Soviet Union began to change in the 1930s, becoming more con-trolling, and boundaries were created. As has been analysed, this policy of internal control was not completely successful. The examples that have been given are remainders of a more international setting. This second subsection examines if the Soviet culture of the 1930s could be seen as cosmopolitan. According to Clark, Soviet society could indeed be seen as having cosmopolitan elements in this period while remaining connected to Soviet patriotism and in-ternationalism. There was a desire among intellectuals to interact with people and cultures from outside of the Soviet Union. This desire came forth from a need among intellectuals to
40 Katerina Clark and Evgeny Dobrenko, Soviet Culture and Power: A History in Documents, 1917-1953, New
Haven & London: Yale University Press 2007, pp. xi-xvi and 139-140.
41 Isaiah Berlin, The Soviet Mind: Russian Culture under Communism, Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution
Press 2011, pp. 1-6; Maxim Gorky was also known as Alexei Maximovich Peshkov. He lived from 1868 until 1935 and was an important writer and contributor to Socialist Realism.
42 Barbara Keys, ‘Soviet Sport and Transnational Mass Culture in the 1930s’, Journal of Contemporary History,
widen their countrymen’s intellectual horizons and their own.43 These intellectuals did not
however, identify with the term ‘cosmopolitanism’. The term was almost never used in the Soviet Union during the 1930s and even had a negative meaning that emerged in the late 1940s, connected to official anti-Western campaigns. Clark still describes these intellectuals as cosmopolitans, as they had the desire to interact with the outside world. These Soviet cos-mopolitans maintained, however, a dual allegiance. On the one hand they were coscos-mopolitans who wanted to interact with the outside world, and on the other hand they were Soviets with a patriotic and local attitude, which is in line with the change in the 1930s to a nationalist and pro-Russian setting, as has been analysed by Suny.44
Clark uses the term cosmopolitanism in a way that is different from more common us-age. In general it is associated with world citizenship and a moral and political notion.45 Cos-mopolitanism is, however, a multi-layered term that can be explained in many different ways. Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen have analysed the following six different possible defini-tions of cosmopolitanism: It can be analysed as a social-cultural condition whereby there is a cosmopolitan culture. It can also be seen as a philosophy or as a worldview in which everyone is or becomes a world citizen. Cosmopolitanism can also be a political project with transna-tional institutions like for example United Nations or the European Union. The fourth option is that of a political project with multiple subjects. The fifth is an attitude or disposition and the last definition sees cosmopolitanism as a practise or as a competence.46
Clark also analyses a ‘Great Appropriation’ of elements of other states into Soviet culture. There was the idea that some elements of international culture were also essential for the Soviet Union and should be integrated into its cultural system. In Clark’s view, this is the model for interaction between the Soviet Union and the outside world: Moscow (the Soviet Union) has in her vision two different sides, one a centralized state and at the other a centre of an intellectual community from across nations.47 Soviet intellectuals interacted with their Western counterparts, and many Western travellers visited the Soviet Union in the interwar period. This interaction can be seen as cultural diplomacy undertaken by the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s. The Soviet Union was internationally orientated at its beginning, as the leadership had always thought that a revolution on a worldwide scale would occur.
43 Clark, Moscow, The Fourth Rome, pp. 5-7 and 143. 44 Ibid.; Suny, The Soviet Experiment, pp. 307-313.
45 David Held, ‘Cosmopolitanism in a Multipolar World’, in: Rosi Braidotti, Patrick Hanafin and Bolette
Blaa-gaard eds., After Cosmopolitanism, New York: Routledge 2012, pp. 28-30.
46 Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen eds., Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context and Practice, New
York: Oxford University Press 2002, pp. 9-14.
Class, rather than nationality, was in the first couple of years after the Revolution, the most important aspect of Soviet citizenship, and there were already some Western visitors who travelled to the Soviet Union. However, after the immense famine of 1921, the number of foreign travellers grew considerably. The crisis and the public relations disaster that it caused were the starting signal of Soviet international attention. As a result, there was not only an increase in travellers, but the Soviet Union would also began attempting to influence the pub-lic opinion of Western Europe.48
The increase in travellers and the change in Soviet international relations resulted in the establishment of several cultural institutions. There was a need after the famine to im-prove the status of the Soviet Union in the eyes of foreigners. The image of the Soviet Union had to be improved on an international scale. This led to the establishment of cultural institu-tions such as the All-Union Society For Cultural Ties Abroad, or VOKS. This institution was meant to establish ties between the Soviet Union and revolutionaries abroad.49 David-Fox also explains that at the end of the 1930s, the Soviet Union under Stalin’s rule began claiming su-periority over Western culture. This eventually led to a change in the attitude of the Soviet Union leadership. Cultural ties with anyone from abroad were eliminated, and the Soviet Un-ion became isolated on a political level. This also meant that cultural institutUn-ions like the VOKS became victims of this change.50
Cosmopolitanism can also be analysed as a negative term in the context of Russian and Soviet ideology. Throughout time, this concept has almost never been understood as hav-ing a positive value in Russian-controlled lands. Frank Grüner argues that there even existed an anti-cosmopolitanism ideology during the Soviet rule and in accordance with David-Fox, Grüner argues that a turning point was the 1930s. It was in this period that a Soviet patriotism with a Russian national element was established. He does, however, acknowledge that the Soviet regime was more open during its beginning phase than in later periods; it was more orientated towards the international community, and there was a more active global exchange during this period. Grüner, however, does not see these developments and the Soviet interna-tional movement as an illustration of a cosmopolitan Soviet Union.51
48 David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment, pp. 1-7, 28 and 30. 49 Ibid., pp. 29 and 33.
50 Ibid., p. 316.
51 Frank Grüner, ‘”Russia’s Battle Against the Foreign”: The Anti-Cosmopolitanism Paradigm in Russian and
2.2.3 Internationalism
The cultural policy of the Soviet Union in the 1930s is of a complex nature. Instead of being viewed as cosmopolitan, the Soviet attitude can also be analysed as an example of interna-tionalism. The social developments and the international ties of the Soviet Union do not have to be examples of cosmopolitanism, as Grüner already mentioned.52 The Soviet Union was constructed around the concept of an international struggle. Through internationalism, the Russian Social Democratic movement had the opportunity to present itself to the outside world as the leader of a global undertaking and revolution. The Comintern, which was found-ed in 1919, was also an example of the usage of internationalism.53 The Soviet Union took very seriously how it was looked upon by other states. It was at the end of the 1930s that this policy of internationalism came to an end, as has been already analysed and in accordance with David Brandenburg. In his view, this turn can be seen from two different perspectives. Leftist observers saw this turn as a betrayal of the international revolution, and right-wing observers saw it as an attempt by the Soviet Union to become a more conventional state.54
Scholars like Clark and David-Fox have researched this turn away from international-ism by looking at intellectuals and international contacts.55 This turning point could also be analysed from several different perspectives: ‘Marxist revisionism, Russian nationalism, etatism, administrative pragmatism, security concerns, mobilizational populism, autarchy, xenophobia, the Great Terror, the threat of war’.56 The most important aspect was, however,
that Stalin began changing the direction of the Soviet Union, according to David Branden-burg. Socialism in one nation instead of several became the main narrative after 1938. This narrative could be found in the Short Course History of the All-Union Communist Party
(Short Course), a textbook on communist history and the ideology set forth by Lenin and
Marx. The book was crucial in defining the Soviet history for several decades to come. It was purged of anything that related to things outside of the Soviet Union. The Comintern was no longer of any importance; instead all the attention was on the Party. The story focussed on a usable past that related to how the old regime was overthrown and how a new socialist society was created.57
52 Ibid.
53 Also known as the Third Communist International.
54 Brandenburg, ‘The Fate of Interwar Soviet Internationalism’, pp. 1-3.
55 Clark, Moscow, The Fourth Rome, pp. 7 and 25; David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment, pp. 28 and 30. 56 Brandenburg, ‘The Fate of Interwar Soviet Internationalism’, p. 11.
The Soviet Union perused international polices through the Comintern. Before 1938, the Comintern had been of great importance to the Soviet leadership, as it was the transmitter of international communism. When Stalin became concerned with his own supremacy in the Soviet Union in 1936, a dark shadow was cast over the Comintern.58 The Comintern had been the place where all of the national divisions of the world communist party could consult with each other, and despite the Stalin’s abandonment of international communist politics, it re-mained in existence until 1943. It was used as an instrument to promote communism and the revolution outside of the Soviet Union. At the beginning of 1922, there were communist par-ties in almost all of Europe.59
Internationalism can also be examined from the perspective where it is a political man-ifestation of cosmopolitan theory. In the notion of socialist internationalism, class is the most important actor for creating solidarity among people, according to Alejandro Colás. In his view, worldwide class solidarity is the result of the universal experience of class exploitation. In this sense, class-cosmopolitanism has served as the foundation for extending the Soviet moral community beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. People from different religions, nationalities and ethnicities worked together through loyalty to their class. It was, however, difficult to make class-based cosmopolitanism a truly global matter, as it was founded on the thought that capitalism would homogenise the working class into moral agents on a universal scale. The working class was, however, not the only internationalist form of agency. Further-more, the idea became unjustifiable because world capitalism had also created other agents on an international level, such as anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism, which had to be accepted into the socialist international movement before it could become a truly worldwide affair.60
When comparing the arguments in favour of cosmopolitanism or internationalism, it becomes clear that the Soviet Union included features of both. There was a desire under Sovi-et intellectuals to interact with the outside world, and through institutions like the Comintern, the Soviet leadership had tried to spread its international message abroad. When the cultural policies of isolation began in the 1930s, they were not entirely successful, as has been shown in the first subsection. Foreign cultural elements remained part of Soviet culture, the internal control. Clark sees this period as one in which Soviet nationalism, internationalism and cos-
58 Johnathan Haslam, ‘The Soviet Union, the Comintern and the Demise of the Popular Front, 1936– 39’, in:
Helen Graham and Paul Preston eds., The Popular Front in Europe, London: Macmillan Press 1989, pp. 152-153 and 159-160.
59 Tim Rees and Andrew Thorpe, International Communism and the Communist International 1919-43,
Man-chester: Manchester University Press 1998, pp. 1-10.
60 Alejandro Colás, ‘Putting Cosmopolitanism into Practice: the Case of Socialist Internationalism’, Journal of
mopolitanism were intertwined. Instead of being distinct, they overlapped to a certain degree. Soviet cosmopolitanism was inseparable from Soviet patriotism and internationalism, but could not be simplified to either. The clearest fracture in the international orientation of the Soviet Union was in 1938, when Stalin adapted to socialism in one country. Before this peri-od, Soviet internationalism could also be seen as the political manifestation of class-based cosmopolitanism, as Colás analysed. An international community existed based on moral val-ues, with obligations towards the common goal, and interacted with the outside world. Soviet culture could therefore be seen as having a cosmopolitan character intertwined with interna-tionalism and Soviet nainterna-tionalism and connected to the notion of global class-based solidari-ty.61
2.3 The attraction of the Soviet Union for Western visitors
2.3.1 Russia’s image in the travelogues of early Western European travellers
For a greater understanding of the Dutch travel accounts of the Soviet Union, it is necessary to also understand how travellers have experienced Russia in previous centuries. These expe-riences have created a long-lasting image of Russia that could have influenced how future travellers experienced the Soviet Union. One scholar who made an important impact on the European opinion of seventeenth century Russia was Adam Olearius.62 In his book Travels in
Seventeenth-Century Russia, Olearius provides the reader with detailed accounts of his
sur-roundings, primarily and almost only in the ethnographic present. His tales are very generalis-ing and subjective, which accordgeneralis-ing to Johannes Fabian are aspects of ethnographic writgeneralis-ing.63 The Russian people are, in Olearius’s view, a people very different from the rest of Europe. Their manners and customs are different and cruder than those of Europeans. They are, in his opinion, a people who know only arrogance and cruelty and must therefore be treated strictly by their leaders.64
It was after the seventeenth century that Russia began to be more open and openheart-ed towards foreign travellers. The reputation associatopenheart-ed with Russia did, however, not disap-
61 Clark, Moscow, The Fourth Rome, pp. 4-5; Colás, ‘Putting Cosmopolitanism into Practice’, pp. 515 and
530-534.
62 Andrej Kreutz, Russia’s Place in the World: The Struggle for Survival, New York: Algora Publishing 2016, p.
21.
63 Adam Olearius and Samuel H. Baron ed., Travels in Seventeenth-Century Russia, Stanford: Stanford
Universi-ty Press 1967; Fabian, Time and the Other, pp. 80-81.
pear, and the general conception of Russia remained the same in Europe. According to Kreutz, Russia’s new policy even led to a worsening of Russia’s reputation. The opening up of Russia’s society created, together with Russian interventions in European politics, even more mistrust among Europeans. The shifting power position of Russia in the early eighteenth century had as an effect that Russia began to play a more leading role in European politics. The rest of Europe became afraid of a powerful Russia. This Russia was perceived as a great horde that easily could overrun Europe. Russia began to be seen as a problem that had to be dealt with by Europe.65 This attitude can be seen in the stories of the French nobleman Mar-quis de Custine, who wrote very negatively and aggressively about Russia. In his book
Em-pire of the Czar, he acknowledges that the Russian people are different from the rest of
Eu-rope: ‘Among this people bereft of time and of will, we see only bodies without souls, and tremble to think that, for so vast a multitude of arms and legs, there is only one head.’66
Rus-sia is, in his opinion, an unchanging society, or as the title of his book already mentions, an eternal society that stands still in time.
During the eighteenth century, travellers explored the frontiers of European civilisa-tion. Russia belonged to these areas, forming the periphery of Europe, as Dickinson analysed. European travellers were no longer only travelling along the old lines of the Grand Tour. In-stead, they began searching for the European identity, and they began to include Russia in their new tours. 67 At the end of the eighteenth century, it became slowly more common for travellers to partake in these Russian tours. Readers accepted all of the travel accounts from these Russian tours as true and genuine, which shows how little was known about Russia at the time, according to Anthony Cross. The tours also continued into the nineteenth century, when they began to describe life not only in the Russian cities but also the country. They were, however, no longer guided by tutors as they had been in the past, and many travellers remained ignorant of the Russian language during the nineteenth century and did therefore did not truly understand the Russian character.68
65 Kreutz, Russia’s Place in the World, pp. 21-22.
66 Marquis de Custine, Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia, New York: Doubleday 1989, p.
102.
67 Dickinson, ‘Russia’s First ‘Orient’, p. 5.
68 Anthony Cross, In the Lands of the Romanovs: An Annotated Bibliography of First-Hand English-Language
2.3.2 Western travellers to the Soviet Union in the interwar period
The twentieth century changed a great deal about travel. Modern innovations made travel relatively easy, and mass tourism was born. The First World War put an abrupt end to travel, but in the interwar period, travel once again became common. In this period, Soviet Russia was the destination of many foreign travellers, for example, the American writer and journal-ist Theodore Dreiser, who was initially very sceptical and negative about the Soviet Union but who changed his opinion after seeing a skyscraper in the middle of an empty landscape. This is an example of how not only images provided by earlier travellers but also the political opin-ions of travellers and experiences abroad were all connected. The Soviet Union was a popular travel destination for travellers, as it offered a wide variety of different attractions, from women’s rights and emancipation to modernisation. They were part of the Soviet attempt to reach out to the West.69
Travel in the interwar period was different from previous periods, as the European perception of Soviet Russia was changing. Russia was no longer seen as part of Europe’s pe-riphery. Instead it was seen as an alternative to Western civilisation, as has been mentioned by Suny.70 James Casteel argues that the perception of German travellers of Russia changed dur-ing this period. They began to see Russia as a new kind of society that offered a different identity than the Western American identity. The travellers who went to this new world were not only leftist but rather had all kinds of different political opinions. They were interested in the Soviet Union’s wide scale of attractions, as has been described by David-Fox.71 The
trav-ellers were hopeful, and most of them looked forward to seeing the Soviet Union. They re-solved to believe almost anything they were told by the Soviet officials. They were Western scholars and writers who were enormously enthusiastic at the beginning of their travels but who usually lost their admiration of the Soviet system after a few years. Their admiration was for a system that had, in their perception, the fundamentals of a utopia, a bohemian place of self-realisation. It was the land of sexual equality and modern education. In Paul Hollander’s view, these visitors failed at first to see the Soviet Union in its true form. It was a place of strict discipline, and the Soviet system was against any form of bohemianism and
self-
69 David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment, pp. 1-4. 70 Suny, The Soviet Experiment, pp. 307-313.
71 James Casteel, ‘Searching for the ‘New World’, Finding Asia’, The Journal of Social History Society, no. 2
realisation. Most travellers seemed unable to cope with the harsh reality of life in the Soviet Union.72
The reasons for travellers to come to the Soviet Union and to pledge their loyalty and support were various. Western intellectuals had aspirations of gaining influence over how the Soviet experiment should continue, and they gained the trust of the Soviet Union. These men and women became so-called fellow travellers, or friends of the Soviet Union. Friendship could in this case be seen as a contract in which intellectuals defended the Soviet Union in exchange for status.73 Not only European intellectuals travelled to the Soviet Union; also Americans made the journey. In Americans Experience Russia, Choi Chatterjee and Beth Holmgren, examine together with other scholars, American journeys to the Soviet Union and Russia from 1917 to the twenty first century. They argue that most of the American accounts of the Soviet Union were overshadowed by censorship from Soviet officials and archive re-strictions. In addition, they were also filtered by the authors’ self-censorship. Relatively few accounts have observed how the experience of the Russian culture and people has shaped the ideas of authors about the Russian ‘Other’ and about their self-identity as in accordance with Thompson’s definition of travel writing.74
At the end of the 1920s, the Soviet Union changed its policy towards foreigners. In-stead of focussing on Western intellectuals, it began to focus on foreign proletarians. Through Intourist, the Soviet Union opened up to social tourism, instead of the small delegations that were invited by VOKS.75 In 1936, Intourist reached the highest number of foreign visitors in
its history, namely 13.497 people. The end of the 1920s was also a period in which the Soviet Union began recruiting foreigners with industrial or agricultural expertise. These Western experts gathered during the late 1920s and early 1930s, approximately 20.000-30.000 people. They were there to assist with the forced Soviet industrialisation. These foreigners were placed in special housing with their own facilities, so that the Soviet Union would not have to face the negative publicity from travellers who had seen the dark side of forced industrialisa-tion. While negative publicity did exist, most of the accounts in the 1930s were positive, de-spite of the Soviet situation. Ludmilla Stern explains this phenomenon by examining the jour-ney of the French writer Jean-Richard Bloch, who made a jourjour-ney to the Soviet Union in 1934. He was influenced by Soviet intermediaries who became his friends, and he had a privi-
72 Hollander, Political Pilgrims, pp. 102-106.
73 David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment, pp. 207-209.
74 Chatterjee and Holmgren eds., Americans Experience Russia, pp. 1-2; Thompson, Travel Writing, pp. 9-30. 75 Intourist was responsible for the guidance and managing of tourists in the Soviet Union. It was established in
1929 and acted as the Soviet Union’s official travel agency. See for a definition: David-Fox, Showcasing the
leged position as a foreign writer. He was shown the perfect Soviet life, and through his per-sonal friendships he began to repeat the opinions of Soviet intellectuals. His Soviet friends systematically misled him, and Bloch also wanted to believe the unbelievable. For example, he made general statements about the food condition of Soviet society based on a banquet in Moscow. Bloch can be seen as an example of most of the foreign visitors tot the Soviet Union who became very loyal to the Soviet ideas. Some of them eventually turned away from their Soviet loyalty, while others, like Bloch, were never able to detach themselves from it.76 2.4 The intellectual interwar context
2.4.1 The European intellectual context of the interwar period
The years between the First and the Second World War were a period of European decline and of disillusion in the hearts of the people. It was also a period in which the West endured an intellectual crisis, as the war had challenged the supremacy of Western civilisation. The First World War had intensified the social and economic problems faced by the European states and had caused a bitter mood among intellectuals, who felt disillusioned and trauma-tised. There was revolutionary turmoil in the form of the Russian Revolution and authoritarian and fascist parties that arose as a result of the unstable political situation that was created by the aftermath of the war. The people had also become conscious of politics during the years of the war. Their suffering caused them to become critical of the ruling powers and to gain growing expectations about the future. They no longer accepted the old assumptions on which the principles of democracy rested.77
After the First World War, the longing for normalcy was a common desire under most Europeans, who wanted the world back from before the war. This world seemed brighter and rosier than it ever had, and its image had become a seductive dream. The reality with its pes-simistic outlook nurtured a sense of loss among Western intellectuals. Europe had lost its in-nocence, and the confidence in the European civilisation was declining. It was, however, also a period of cultural experimentation and of modern art. While this new outburst of culture enjoyed great attention among intellectuals and young artists, it was also seen by most as de-generate and as an example of the problems of the interwar period. Many people saw this new
76 Ibid., pp. 176-178 and 183-188; Stern, Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, pp. 16-23.
77 Frank Furedi, First World War: Still No End in Sight, London: Bloomsbury Publishing 2014, pp. 39-41;
Mar-jet Brolsma, ‘Het Humanitaire Moment': Nederlandse Intellectuelen, de Eerste Wereldoorlog en het Verlangen
art form as an example of the downfall of the old order and as a symbol of the chaos that ex-isted in Europe.78
The Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union have to be seen in light of this crisis of European civilisation. The Soviet Union formed both a different model of civilisation and a threat to the ruling classes and order of Western civilisation. The Revolution did not spread to the rest of Europe, as a large division remained between moderate socialists and those who wanted revolution, just as there was in Russia between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. The Revolution in Russia had caused great unrest among the ruling forces of Europe, result-ing in an extension of votresult-ing rights and social reforms intended to stop further revolutionary commotion. Lastly, the threat of the communist revolution also caused counterrevolutionaries to stand up against socialist elements in Western society.79
The Revolution did not spread physically to the rest of Europe, but in a spiritual sense it gained a foothold among intellectuals in the early 1920s. The war had reinforced the notion that the European cultural crisis was a matter of concern for the entire continent and that the eastern parts of Europe, which still were original and unspoiled, could serve as a source of purification. Russia retained a special position, as there was a strong fascination for Russian culture and literature based on several factors. First, there was a deep disappointment in the morally corrupted capitalist-imperial West. Second, there were Russian emigrants who after the Russian Revolution had settled mostly in Paris and Berlin and who had made Russian culture and literature known to a Western audience. Last, the strong attraction of Russia on Western intellectuals could also be explained through the perception of the Bolsheviks’ achievements during the Revolution and how this perception was linked to the older Russian stereotypes: Russia as the most important ‘Other’ of Europe and as a mysterious place with a renewing potential. It was an artistic utopia, with a new form of art and culture, which rein-forced the notion that Russia was, in contrast to Europe, a renewing force. Western intellectu-als wanted to see this Soviet-Russia for themselves, because it was very difficult in the first years after the war to truly estimate the situation there. There was an urge among intellectuals to comprehend what was going on in the Soviet Union and to unlock the puzzle of Soviet-Russia.80
78 Richard J. Overy, The Inter-War Crisis: 1919-1939, London: Longman 2007, pp. 3-11. 79 Ibid., pp. 18-19 and 21-24.
2.4.2 The Dutch intellectual context of the interwar period
While the war had not reached the Netherlands, the interwar period was still experienced as a difficult time of cultural crisis. During the war, there was the constant fear that the Nether-lands would become involved in the conflict. This resulted in a tense situation in which the Dutch military forces were constantly on high alert. There were also other consequences of the war that the Netherlands had to face: Hundreds of thousands of Belgian refugees, prison-ers of war in detention camps, and the rationing of provisions. In the aftermath of the war, the Netherlands also experienced to a lesser extent the economical and social difficulties that were caused by the war. They further strengthened the idea that the Netherlands was in crisis. During this time, the greatest fear remained, however, that the unrest would also spread to the Netherlands and that revolutionary elements would try to seize power. From this point of view, the Dutch situation was not very different from that in the rest of Europe.81
The interwar period became a period of intense social tensions in the Netherlands. Political democratisation collided with antidemocratic reactions, and secularisation generated pleas for religious renewal. Reactionary voices seemed to prevail at the cost of more con-servative forces, especially after the economic crisis of 1929. The social difficulties expressed themselves in the form of reactionary political parties. The Dutch National Socialist Move-ment (NSB) and the CPH were formed as a result of the social problems and tensions.82 The CPH attracted three of the Dutch writers used in this study, and two of them were members of the party.83 The CPH and its suborganization the VVSU published the travel stories of Jef
Last and Heleen Ankersmit, among others, with the intent of making the Soviet Union more understandable to the Dutch people. The VVSU had as explicit goal to bring together all of the Soviet Union's sympathisers and to promote the Soviet Union. The organisation often used politically unbiased individuals to write about living conditions in the Soviet Union, as the Dutch population found it less difficult to believe the opinion of a non-communist than that of communist. It did, however, also support writers who were aligned with the CPH, as a great part of the organisation’s membership also belonged to CPH. The writers experienced
81 Ibid., pp. 38-45.
82 The Dutch National Socialist Movement is called in Dutch: Nationaal Socialistische Beweging in Nederland
(NSB).
83 Jef Last kept a favourable opinion of the Communist Party Holland and Heleen Ankersmit and Roestam
Ef-fendi were members; Last, Het Stalen Fundament; Ankersmit, Een Maand in de Sowjet-Unie; EfEf-fendi, Van
all kinds of attractions in the Soviet Union and were often very positive about their experi-ence. This helped to create an image of the Soviet Union as a place of modernity.84
Before the intellectual appeal of reactionary parties, a considerable number of Dutch intellectuals were united throughout the 1920s by their humanitarian ideals. They had the wish to restore the European community of intellectuals that had been wrecked by the war, and to prevent any further conflict. The Soviet Union and the preceding Russian Revolution were seen from mixed perspectives. There was general admiration among intellectuals for the way the Soviets had created a sort of socialist utopia, a place of modern education and of equality between men and women. On the other hand, there was also aversion towards the bloodshed with which the Soviet Union had come into existence. The 1930s, however, brought change to the humanitarian ideals of the 1920s. The economic crisis of 1929 and the advancement of National Socialism and fascism overran the intellectual humanitarian ideals. Reactionary parties also gained a foothold in the Netherlands and worsened the crisis of Eu-ropean civilisation.85
84 Jan van Bavel and Jan Kok, De Levenskracht der Bevolking: Sociale en Demografische Kwesties in de Lage
Landen, Leuven: University Press Leuven 2010, pp. 9-22; Voerman, ‘Culturele vrienden van de Sovjet-Unie’, pp. 504-509; Hollander, Political Pilgrims, pp. 102-106.
