Robert
Conquest, the son of a wealthy American, was born in Malvern on 15th
July, 1917. After Winchester he studied
politics, philosophy and economics at Magdalen
College, Oxford. While at university
he became a member of the Communist Party.
In
1939 he joined the British Army
after
the outbreak of the Second World War. For the
next six years he served in the Oxford and Buckingham Light Infantry.
After the war Conquest
joined the British Foreign Office and while serving in Bulgaria
he saw the communists overthrow the government. In 1948 he moved to
the Foreign Office's Information Research Department. Conquest's work
included combating Soviet propaganda and acquiring evidence for its
secret anti-communist campaign.
In 1963 Conquest became
literary editor
of the Spectator. He also wrote
several books about Joseph Stalin and
the Soviet Union. This has included Power
and Politics in the USSR (1960),
Common Sense About Russia (1962), Russia
After Khrushchev (1968), The Great
Terror (1969), The Nation Killers
(1969) and Lenin (1970).
Conquest supported the
Labour Party until Margaret
Thatcher became leader of the Conservative
Party. In recent years has written speeches for several right-wing
politicians including Margaret Thatcher
and developed what has become known as Conquest Law: ""Everyone
is a reactionary about subjects he understands."
In 1981 Conquest was offered
a post at the Hoover Institution in California. Books published in
recent years includes Inside
Stalin's Secret Police (1985), Stalin
and the Kirov Murder (1989), Stalin,
Breaker of Nations (1991) and Reflections
on a Ravaged Century (1999).
(1)
Neal Ascherson, writing about the impact of The Great Terror published
in 1969.
He was very influential in that he immensely encouraged
one side and was dismissed by the other, because people were in such
entrenched positions. This meant that people accepted his facts; but
they didn't accept his conclusions. People were detained in condemning
him by the fact that he was a very good poet. That was well known.
Everyone by then could agree that Stalin was a very wicked man and
a very evil one, but we still wanted to believe in Lenin; and Conquest
said that Lenin was just as bad and that Stalin was simply carrying
out Lenin's programme.
(2)
Andrew Brown, The
Guardian (15th February, 2003)
He is also the boldest theorist of the pro-American
lobby in British politics. He would like Britain to withdraw from
the EU and form part of a much looser association of English-speaking
nations, known as the "Anglosphere". This is very close
to Mrs Thatcher's visceral loathing of Europe, but informed by a much
greater experience of European life and languages.
"Margaret Thatcher
is the only person in politics, along with Condi Rice, with whom I
am on cheek-kissing terms," Conquest says. Asked through an intermediary
to help her with a speech on Russia in 1976, he wrote a draft, "and
I met her: that was the first Iron Lady speech".
They get on very well together,
according to Garton Ash. He also likes Ronald Reagan, describing him
and Alec Douglas-Hume as "the only two politicians who wanted
to get something out of you in conversation rather than tell you their
views".
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