James Klugmann papers

Catalogue record

Notes

Series CP/IND/KLUG: A student communist recruit of the early 1930s, James Klugmann was to attract more controversy than almost any of his party comrades. Partly this was attributable to his alleged involvement in spy-related activities in 1930s' Cambridge; partly to his wartime role in SOE in Yugoslavia, where he is said to have favoured Tito's cause, as indeed he might have been expected to. More certainly, Klugmann did, as noted elsewhere, write the terrible tract, From Trotsky to Tito, which has often been taken as a token of how far British communists were prepared to take their Stalinist commitments. Though his work as a party historian won few admirers beyond the party's own ranks, reform-minded communists of the 1960s and 1970s did remember him as a sympathetic figure, both through his role in the party education department and as editor of Marxism today. Sundry papers and educational materials give a glimpse of these activities. For those unable to use the Moscow archives, Klugmann's notes also provide a useful indication of some of the more important materials for the so-called 'Class against Class' period. Which materials he thought to include, and which to exclude, would provide an interesting insight into the mentality of the official party historian, but not surprisingly has yet to find a historian with the time and opportunity to carry out the necessary comparison.