This edited article about Mao Tse Tung originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 693 published on 26 April 1975.

Mao escapes from his capors and the vengeance of Chiang Kai-Shek, by Andrew Howat

When Mao Tse Tung proclaimed the Communist People’s Republic of China, on 1st October, 1949, there was no one alive who could recall a time when China was not the most wretched nation on Earth. Every stratum of Chinese life bore witness to this miserable status, from the arrogant foreigners, who creamed off the best trade, through corrupt incompetent government officials, all the way down to the huge mass of poverty-stricken peasants who picked a bare living from the land.

When Mao Tse Tung was born in 1893, in Hunan Province, peasant families like his usually lived in miserable hovels at the mercy of cruel landlords who took up to half of their tenant’s crops as rent. They existed in the constant fear of marauding Chinese warlords and rapacious tax-gatherers, and of disasters by flood, famine and disease.

Most peasants mutely accepted this unjust fate. Mao, however, refused to do so, and his rebellious attitude brought him into such sharp conflict with his more conventionally-minded father that in 1918, Mao left home and went to Peking.

He took a job in the university library there and met two professors who interested him in the then new creed of Communism. Mao was not only a quick, but a zealous convert and he soon became convinced that only a Communist government could free China from poverty and oppression. Soon, Mao and other young Communists were diligently spreading this revolutionary idea among peasants throughout China.

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This edited article about the Grand Duchess Anastasia originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 687 published on 15 March 1975.

Anastasia spoke of two soldiers who took pity on her and smuggled her out of Russia by Ken Petts

A frail, grey-haired lady sat in a timbered hut in the depths of a forest waiting for a court to deliver its final verdict. It was a final verdict she had waited more than 40 years to hear.

A verdict which would proclaim to the world either that she really was the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, daughter of the murdered Czar and heir to a vast fortune – or just a poor peasant woman.

The strange story of this woman which has intrigued the world has its roots in the blood-thirsty morning of July 17, 1918, at Ekaterinburg, now called Sverdlovsk, in Russia. On that day the great Russian revolution was in full swing, and in a wave of blood and violence the Communists overthrew the Russian royal family and gained power.

The Czar and Czarina – the equivalent of a King and Queen – were hiding with their family in one of their country homes, the Villa Ipatyev, just outside the town.

Suddenly on that early morning in Ekaterinburg, revolutionary soldiers, under Commissar Yankel Yurovskiy, burst into their quarters and ordered the Czar and his family to the cellars below.

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This edited article about Trotsky originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 687 published on 15 March 1975.

The assassination of Trotsky

The door to the study burst open and Lev Davidovitch Trotsky stumbled out, blood pouring from the deep wound in his head. He collapsed on to the floor, and lay there, moaning, cradled in the arms of his wife.

“They’ve succeeded,” Trotsky muttered faintly. “At last, they’ve succeeded.”

Trotsky had been struck down by a man whom he had believed to have been his friend, but whom he now knew to be an assassin working for his hated enemy, Joseph Stalin, the dictator of Russia.

The wound had been inflicted by an axe, and from it, twenty-five hours later, at 7.25 a.m. on August 21, 1940, Trotsky died in hospital in Mexico City. A delicate operation to repair the wound in his head had failed.

What had also failed was Trotsky’s attempt to find shelter in America from a fate that had been pursuing him ever since 1928.

For very many years, America had been a sanctuary for people seeking a new and better life than they had had in Europe. Some immigrants sought freedom to worship as they chose. Others came because they were poor, and America seemed to offer a fair chance of making money. Others came because the governments of their native countries were oppressive.

Lev Trotsky came to America for this last reason. More particularly, he was trying to escape the hatred of one very powerful man: Joseph Stalin, ruler of Soviet Russia.

Once, Trotsky and Stalin had worked together helping to overthrow the rule of the Russian Czars and establish, in 1917, the world’s first Communist state. However, by 1923, the two men were no longer colleagues, but deadly enemies, criticising each other harshly and constantly.

Trotsky did not begin to realise just how intense was Stalin’s hatred of him until after he was banished from Russia in 1928. As Trotsky fled from Russia to Turkey to Norway and finally, in January, 1937, to Mexico, a trail of death seemed to follow him: several of Trotsky’s supporters died mysteriously, and so did two of his secretaries and most members of his family.

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This edited article about space originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 680 published on 25 January 1975.

After docking the astronauts and cosmonauts share a meal in space by Wilf Hardy

American and Russian spacemen will shake hands in an orbiting sky station 130 miles above the earth this summer at the start of the most significant space flight so far.

This daring, joint enterprise stamps one of the seals on US-Russia friendship and may well open a chapter of co-operation between the two super powers for exploring not only our own solar system but also the inky vastnesses leading to the stars themselves.

The teams most likely to make the historic flight have been earmarked, although official confirmation has yet to come from the Russian and American space authorities. Target date for blast-off for both crews is July 15.

From the Russian space centre at Tyuratain near Baikonur in Central Asia, Colonel Alexei Leonov, the first man to “walk” in space in 1965 and one of Russia’s most experienced cosmonauts, and his colleague Valery Kubasov will take off in a Soyuz spaceship.

Seven hours later from Cape Canaveral, Brigadier General Tom Stafford, commander of the US crew, Major Donald Kent Slayton and Vance Brand will be shot into the skies over the Atlantic in an Apollo craft carrying special docking equipment to rendezvous and link up with the orbiting Russians.

As they close together, the jointly-designed docking module atop the Apollo spaceship will be aimed by pilot Brand through a sighting device at a six-inch target zone on the Soyuz craft. Once locked together, both teams will be able to visit each other through the docking module itself.

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This edited article about the Thirties originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 678 published on 11 January 1975.

The Spanish Civil War by Graham Coton

As the jack-booted Fascist troops of Benito Mussolini’s pre-war Italy crushed under foot the defenceless independent African state of Abyssinia, the 54 member states of the League of Nations met at their Geneva headquarters. Upon their decision that autumn day in 1935 hung the fate of the world.

The League, a kind of parliament of nations and the forerunner of the present-day United Nations, had come into being after the First World War, in 1920. For 11 years it had prospered. Then came the turning point.

It happened when a body of Japanese conspirators suddenly invaded Chinese Manchuria against the orders of their government. The year was 1934 – a year when the world was weakened and preoccupied by economic depression.

If the members of the League had acted quickly, they might have stopped the Japanese. Instead, they hesitated. While they dithered, the Japanese wrested four provinces from China.

And those nations who nurtured secret plans to expand, suddenly saw that the mighty League of Nations was just a paper tiger. It presented absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

Nothing seemed to go right for the League of Nations after the Japanese fiasco. The disarmament conference it had called in Geneva collapsed pathetically. In 1934 Hitler contemptuously withdrew Nazi Germany from League membership. The next year, Italy’s dictator Mussolini launched his attack on Abyssinia in the certain knowledge that he had nothing to fear from the League of Nations.

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This edited article about America originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 618 published on 17 November 1973.

Icons of America: the White House with Stars and Stripes and Abraham Lincoln by Angus McBride

You have seen the place many times in news-pictures and on television in recent months. A big room, the walls hung with drapes and the national flag at one end. A row of tables littered with microphones, blotters, ash-trays, pens and files, and opposite it, another row of tables bearing the same debris. The rest of the space filled with rows of chairs, television cameras and cables and a throng of men and women moving purposefully around the sides. It is the Caucus Room in the Senate buildings in Washington, where the Watergate hearings have taken place. Twenty years ago it was the scene of confrontations which were equally dramatic and equally damaging to America. For 1953 and 1954 were the years of the investigations of “subversion,” when a loud-mouthed bully could ruin anyone he chose with the words: “I suspect you of being or having been a Communist.”

His name was Joe McCarthy and he was a rough and ready senator from Wisconsin. He bullied you one minute and slapped you on the back the next. He made you relax with a joke and then accused you of being a traitor. He was the master of the political smear, the innuendo, and the unsupported accusation. What is more he knew how to get them into print or on to a television screen. Yet for those two years many people in America believed that “McCarthyism was Americanism.”

Anti-Communism in America had grown since the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War. In intellectual and artistic circles Communism had had a mild vogue in the ‘thirties but the size of the party in America was still very small. Nevertheless labour disputes helped to bring fear of it to the surface. Then between 1948 and 1950 several spies were arrested. Amongst those caught were Alger Hiss and Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were the first spies to be shot in peace time. Suddenly, fear of Communist infiltration turned into panic.

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This edited article about communism originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 600 published on 14 July 1973.

The Russians invade Czechoslovakia as tanks enter Prague; bottom picture  shows Brezhnev, Kosygin and Suslov, who had  left Russia together to negotiate with the Czech leaders. Pictures by Graham Coton

At 1 a.m. on the morning of Wednesday, 21st August, 1968 Prague Radio alerted listeners to stand by for an important announcement. At 1.30 a voice began: “Yesterday around 11 p.m. troops crossed . . .” Then the station went dead. It was not until three hours later that the people of Czechoslovakia learned that Russian. East German, Polish and Bulgarian troops had invaded their country. But by that time Russian tanks lined the streets of Prague.

Between 1963 and 1967 life in Czechoslovakia had become steadily worse. The country’s economy lagged behind that of her communist neighbours, so the government, led by Antonin Novotny, brought trade and industry under tight control. It didn’t stop there – the state interfered with the people at every level of their lives. In particular the population of Slovakia found itself subjected to decisions made in Prague, which took little account of its own local preferences.

Opposition to the government spread rapidly. Many students who had learned new forms of technology were frustrated by the government which prevented them from exercising their new skills for the benefit of their country. Nationalist resentment grew in Slovakia where the leading official, Alexander Dubcek, allowed it free expression. And writers and artists, whose work was severely censored by the state, bitterly resented the regime. The Czechs wanted socialism, they said, “but with a human face.”

In January 1968 the reformers came to power and Novotny was replaced by Alexander Dubcek. Dubcek allowed the deep desire for change, which had been repressed for so long, to break through with full force. Censorship was ended. Novotny’s hangers-on lost their positions throughout the state. And a new image of a socialist state was projected.

“The European of today,” said one of Dubcek’s supporters, “wants to know what is going on in this country, to understand it, to take part in deciding his fate and living conditions, to elect his own leadership.” In April the Party’s Action Programme promised freedom to hold meetings, freedom of the press and freedom to travel abroad.

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This edited article about espionage originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 897 published on 31 March 1979.

Communism and Russian might on show in a military parade

Britain’s intelligence chiefs – the spy-catchers in the cloak-and-dagger business of counter-espionage – were agog with excitement. The news had just arrived that a Russian Intelligence officer named Konstantin Volkov was willing to defect.

Volkov had called at the British Consulate-General in Istanbul and asked for political asylum. In exchange for money, he was prepared to hand over the equivalent of a barrel of dynamite in that nether-world of secrets – a list of the Russian agents working in Britain.

The year was 1946. The war was over and, despite the fact that Russia had been Britain’s ally against Nazi Germany, the free world was beginning to mistrust the intentions of the Communists. So Volkov, with his list of Russian spies, was a catch.

Harold “Kim” Philby, the highly efficient head of the anti-Communist section of the British Secret Service, studied Volkov’s request. A few vital days later, he was aboard the plane that was to take him to Istanbul and an interview with the Russian defector.

Hardly had Philby arrived in Turkey when Volkov was suddenly picked up by Russian officials and bundled into a Soviet plane without having handed over the spy list. He has never been seen or heard of since.

Philby, it was thought later, had badly mishandled the affair by exposing Volkov to a Russian swoop. In the light of the events that were revealed years afterwards, that was hardly surprising. For the man who was Russia’s chief spy in Britain – and who must have been on top of Volkov’s list – was Kim Philby.

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This edited article about the Cold War originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 861 published on 15 July 1978.

A Russian missile on a military parade in Red Square

When the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, came down to breakfast on 16th October, 1962, he found himself facing a crisis. On the previous Sunday, an American U-2 reconnaissance plane had taken pictures of Cuba.

Examining these, experts saw a launching pad, a series of buildings for ballistic missiles and a missile on the ground.

American intelligence sources later established that over 60 Russian-made missiles with a range of up to 3,000 kilometres had been set up right under the Americans’ noses. They would double the Soviet striking force against America.

America had three courses open to her. She could destroy the installations from the air and risk a nuclear war with Russia. She could take the matter to the United Nations, where the discussions could be so long that the installations could have been completed before the United Nations had decided what to do.

Thirdly, she could blockade Cuba and prevent the arrival of further missiles. It was this solution which Kennedy chose.

The blockade was set up and America gave Russia 24 hours to agree to dismantle the bases. Throughout one night, Kennedy and his staff sat by their phones, tense and anxious, waiting for the Russians’ reply.

Sunday 28th October dawned a brilliant day. At nine in the morning, a cable was received from Nikita Kruschev, Russia’s leader. This promised that work would stop on the missile sites. The missiles would be crated and returned to the Soviet Union and negotiations would begin at the United Nations for the continuance of peace between the two superpowers.

“We should like,” cabled Kruschev, “to continue the exchange of views on general disarmament and other problems relating to the relaxation of international tension.”

And so the crisis ended. That it concluded in the way it did was largely due to the resolution and resourcefulness of President Kennedy.

As he said during the first hair-raising days of the confrontation between Russia and the USA: “I guess this is the week I earn my salary.”

This edited article about Tibet originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 857 published on 17 June 1978.

The Dalai Lama fleeing the Chinese by John Keay

High in the mountain ranges, north of India, lies Tibet. For centuries it was a land of mystery that few outsiders had entered. Until the 19th century, many Tibetans themselves were barred from entering its capital, Lhasa, which became known as the forbidden city.

Even fewer had entered the Potala Palace at Lhasa in which lived the Dalai Lama. The Tibetans believed that the Dalai Lama was a god as well as a king and that when one died his spirit passed into a baby boy born soon after the Dalai Lama’s death.

Guided to the child by visions, and satisfying themselves by tests that they really had found the reincarnated Dalai Lama, the High Lamas would take possession of the child.

It was in this way that the present Dalai Lama was chosen at the age of four-and-a-half and taken to the Potala Palace. There he was enthroned in the “Hall of all good deeds of the spiritual and temporal worlds”. This occurred on 22nd February, 1940.

But he was not to have a peaceful reign. The Chinese had long had their eyes on Tibet. They had first invaded it in 1720 and eventually lost their control. Two centuries later, in 1950, they invaded Tibet from the east.

After nine years of Chinese rule, relations between the Tibetans and the Chinese had become so bad that the Dalai Lama decided to flee. Disguised as a soldier, the Dalai Lama, with 500 of his followers, crossed the border into the sanctuary of India with the Chinese in hot pursuit.

After an eternity of obscurity, the Dalai Lama had emerged to face the world – a king without a kingdom. He settled in a modest but closely guarded bungalow in Dharamsala, a former hill station of the British Raj in Northern India, just below Kashmir.

Thousands of Tibetans followed him into exile and made their homes on scattered hill tops all over India. And there, among his followers, the Dalai Lama has remained up to the present time.