| Book Review | Labour History, 96 | The History Cooperative

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BOOK REVIEW

*Kevin Morgan, Labour Legends and Russian Gold, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 2006. pp. iv + 315. £18.99 paper.*
This book is the first of a three-volume series on Bolshevism and the British Left which examines the links between various institutions of the British Left during the first half of last century. This volume explores the financing of a range of publications and other activities by the USSR. The second volume examines the Webbs and the Soviet Union, and the third is a biographical study of the militant unionist A.A. Purcell.	1
The focus of this volume is on funding and the provision of political resources emanating out of Moscow. As Morgan concedes there have been previous valuable accounts of Moscow 'gold'; however, these have not explored the impact of the lines of funding on recruitment, internal functioning, organisational effectiveness and the broader political relationships of various communist parties.	2
As Morgan points out, given the association between dependence on Moscow and a corresponding independence of domestic constituencies, any examination of Moscow 'gold' inherently involves an exploration of counterbalanced pressures of autonomy and control which sometimes fortified democratic centralism but which also had the capability to destabilise it. There was a certain inevitability about such tensions as a consequence of the ambiguities in the funding objectives – to underpin the Comintern's control over its national sections and to aid their greater political influence and effectiveness. Yet many in the Left welcomed the new source of funding – trade union funding was often tied to specific industrial constituencies and gave the unions substantial leverage over the selection of political candidates. Moscow 'gold' held the promise for some of greater independence.	. . .

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