4 MAY 1991, Page 25

Alice in Commieland

Sir: Gary Kasparov, the World Chess Champion, has often accused communist regimes of being lands of mirrors, where true values are inverted. The parallel with Lewis Carroll's chess-based story Through the Looking Glass and What Alice found There is obvious, but I had not realised until I read Florin Bican's article (Books, 27 April) how close the parallels were. Bican mentions 'the episode of the with- ered leaves painted green in honour of the Conducator's visit'. Surely the inspiration for this comes directly from the incident in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (playing cards here being the theme) when Alice comes across the two, five and seven of hearts. 'Would you tell me please,' said Alice a little timidly, 'why you are painting those roses?' . . . Two began in a low voice, 'Why the fact is, you see miss, this here ought to have been a red rose tree and we put a white one in by mistake; and if the queen was to find out we should have our heads cut off, you know.'

Could it be that we have been mistaken all this time and communism has been consciously based on the texts of Lewis Carroll and not the theories of Karl Marx? Raymond Keene

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