The author of The Diary of a Communist Schoolboy, M.
Ognyov, is thirty-six years old and has spent the greater part of his life in underground Communist propaganda, as is evident from the list of the author's aliases on the wrapper. This diary, published at 7s. 6d. by Gollancz and translated from the Russian by Mr. Alexander Werth, is fiction, but it gives an illuminating picture of the strangeness of outlook of a Communist boy who has never known pre-Revolution Russia. The children in this school, run on the Dalton system, are serious-minded, socially conscious individuals, who have " known famine and cold and anarchy ; we've had to feed the whole family, and have travelled a thousand miles in search of bread, and some of us have been through the civil war." It is not surpri,sing that they should have developed a sense of responsibility and a philosophical outlook on life. The diary is written in a delicate and natural style, which has not lost its individuality in translation.
Previous page
