20 JUNE 1970, Page 26

Shadow of the Urals

Sir: Professor Laqueur (Letters, 6 June) does not seem to have understood the drift of my criticism about his reference to Stalin's view that Voroshilov was a British agent. What I intended to convey was that the fact that Khrushchev said this about Stalin, after Stalin's death, is a statement which, given the record of Russian leaders in telling deliberate untruths, can hardly be accepted at its face value by an historian. No court of law would accept this as evidence, nor would I.