Russia in the Shadows is a book by H. G. Wells published early in 1921, which includes a series of articles previously printed in The Sunday Express in connection with Wells' second visit to Russia (after a previous trip in January 1914 to St. Petersburg and Moscow) in September and October 1920. Wells was at the height of his fame, having recently completed The Outline of History, and was paid 1000 for the articles by the Sunday Express. During his visit to Russia he visited his old friend Maxim Gorky, whom he had first met in 1906 on a trip to the United States, and who arranged Wells' meeting with Lenin. Wells portrayed Russia as recovering from a total social collapse, "the completest that has ever happened to any modern social organisation." He minimized the role of the Bolsheviks in the fall of the Russian state, and presented this explanation of their "While all the rest of Russia was either apathetic like the peasantry or garrulously at sixes and sevens or given over to violence or fear, the Communists were prepared to act." In a chapter devoted to an interview with Lenin at the Kremlin Wells describes the leader and founder of Russian communism. Wells portrays Lenin as a pragmatic leader who "has recently stripped off the last pretence that the Russian revolution is anything more than the inauguration of an age of limitless experiment." While Wells in Russia in the Shadows, as always, rejects Marxism on principle (Das Kapital impresses him as "a monument of pretentious pedantry"), he argues that "we should understand and respect the professions and principles of the Bolsheviki" in order to make a "helpful intervention" in Russia, lest its social collapse drag down Western civilization with it.
Author
Herbert George Wells was born to a working class family in Kent, England. Young Wells received a spotty education, interrupted by several illnesses and family difficulties, and became a draper's apprentice as a teenager. The headmaster of Midhurst Grammar School, where he had spent a year, arranged for him to return as an "usher," or student teacher. Wells earned a government scholarship in 1884, to study biology under Thomas Henry Huxley at the Normal School of Science. Wells earned his bachelor of science and doctor of science degrees at the University of London. After marrying his cousin, Isabel, Wells began to supplement his teaching salary with short stories and freelance articles, then books, including The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898). Wells created a mild scandal when he divorced his cousin to marry one of his best students, Amy Catherine Robbins. Although his second marriage was lasting and produced two sons, Wells was an unabashed advocate of free (as opposed to "indiscriminate") love. He continued to openly have extra-marital liaisons, most famously with Margaret Sanger, and a ten-year relationship with the author Rebecca West, who had one of his two out-of-wedlock children. A one-time member of the Fabian Society, Wells sought active change. His 100 books included many novels, as well as nonfiction, such as A Modern Utopia (1905), The Outline of History (1920), A Short History of the World (1922), The Shape of Things to Come (1933), and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1932). One of his booklets was Crux Ansata, An Indictment of the Roman Catholic Church. Although Wells toyed briefly with the idea of a "divine will" in his book, God the Invisible King (1917), it was a temporary aberration. Wells used his international fame to promote his favorite causes, including the prevention of war, and was received by government officials around the world. He is best-remembered as an early writer of science fiction and futurism. He was also an outspoken socialist. Wells and Jules Verne are each sometimes referred to as "The Fathers of Science Fiction". D. 1946. More: http://philosopedia.org/index.php/H.\_... http://www.online-literature.com/well... http://www.hgwellsusa.50megs.com/ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.\_G.\_Wells
