From: bridegam@pacbell.net   
      
   There's a letter in the Orwell Complete Works dated February   
   1946 in which Orwell adds his signature to a letter being   
   circulated as a kind of petition by the Revolutionary   
   Communist Party, which the CW editor, Peter Davison,   
   describes as "a British Trotskyist Party."   
      
   I thought it might be of interest to folks here because it   
   indicates that as of 1946 Orwell was still willing to make   
   common cause with surprisingly hard-left Marxists so long as   
   they weren't supporters of the Soviet regime.   
      
   The petition letter to which Orwell adds his signature calls   
   for setting the record straight on charges that had been   
   made by Stalin's prosecutors at the notorious Moscow Trials.   
   The charges had included allegations -- most likely false --   
   that Trotsky and other old Bolsheviks had collaborated with   
   the Nazis. The petition letter notes that, as of 1946,   
   prominent Nazis and their records are now in Allied hands,   
   and it asks that the Nuremburg tribunal take the opportunity   
   to establish for the sake of historical accuracy whether   
   Trotsky or anyone acting at his direction collaborated with   
   Nazis or not.   
      
   The text of the petition letter, and a cover letter Orwell   
   sent with it, are in the Complete Works, Vol. XVIII, item   
   2900A, dated 15 February 1946, addressed to "W. Wood,   
   Secretary, Revolutionary Communist Party." The cover letter   
   reads:   
      
   "Dear Comrade:   
      
   Copy is signed herewith, but you haven't got nearly enough   
   people on the list you are circularising. I am making out &   
   sending separately a list of suggestions -- even if they   
   won't all sign, some will, & the more the better."   
      
   A subsequent letter to Wood, appearing a few pages later in   
   the Complete Works, suggests ten names, including those of   
   Stephen Spender and the historian Michael Polanyi.   
      
   Of course, by the time Orwell wrote this "Dear Comrade,..."   
   letter to the RCP man, *Animal Farm* was already in print.   
      
   /M   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)