“In 1937, Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov was working for the Central Commitee of the Bolshevik Party. A bourgeois nationalist, he had close ties to opposition leaders and with the Central Committee members from the Caucausus. In his book The Reign of Stalin, he regrets that Tukhachevsky did not seize power in 1937. He claims that early in 1937, after his trip to England, Tukhachevsky spoke to his superior officers as follows:
‘The great thing about His Britannic Majesty’s Army is that there could not be a Scotland Yard agent at its head [allusion to the role played by state security in the USSR]. As for cobblers [allusion to Stalin’s father], they belong in the supply depots, and they don’t need a Party card. The British don’t talk readily about patriotism, because it seems to them natural to be simply British. There is no political ‘line’ in Britain, right, left or centre; there is just British policy, which every peer and worker, every conservative and member of the Labour Party, every officer and soldier, is equally zealous in serving…The British soldier is completely ignorant of Party history and production figures, but on the other hand he knows the geography of the world as well as he knows his own barracks…The King is loaded with honours, but he has no personal power…Two qualities are called for in an officer — courage and professional competence.”
– Ludo Martens, “Another View of Stalin.”
The Espresso Stalinist 