Maisky was a Marxist. But he never doubted the significance of the individual in history. Thus he took careful stock of its most important specimens in inter-war England. He despised Simon and distrusted Halifax. He loathed, but also feared, Chamberlain. He continually rated Lloyd-George (an “astonishing man”) highest of all, at least before 1941. He did his best to bully lesser political fry, like Butler (with little effect), and to influence sympathetic officials, like Vansittart (with rather more success).  He exploited the credulity of indigenous fellow-travellers for all they were worth. Their value varied. Even Maisky was surprised by quite how idiotically Dr Hewlett Johnson interpreted his duty to be useful (“I consider . . . Stalin’s Russia . . . to be the only truly Christian country in our day”). In contrast, the Webbs’ commendable socialist orthodoxy was hampered by their residual “snobbery” (his word). Hence Beatrice’s efforts to hinder his cultivation of Churchill (“He is not a true Englishman, you know. He has negro blood . . . inherited from his mother. You can tell [by] his appearance”).

In these, as in so many other respects, Maisky’s Diaries are endlessly illuminating.  But they cannot be taken at face value.  There are long gaps in the narrative, witness to those moments when even Maisky felt too frightened to write. The instinct for self-preservation also persuaded him to ascribe his own ideas to others, sometimes to a degree wholly at odds with reality. He was invariably disingenuous in his descriptions of Stalin. That was, no doubt, wise. So what remains must be carefully interpreted. Gorodetsky has achieved this feat by continually placing Maisky’s words in the context of other contemporary documents, both Soviet and foreign. He has also compared Maisky’s private and public accounts of events — his were perhaps the most self-serving of memoirs. The editor’s frequent but discreet commentaries give voice to the silences and correct the misapprehensions.  They allow the reader not simply to follow the story but comprehend the text. It is a magnificent editorial achievement.

What The Maisky Diaries, rightly read, reveal is not simply the Soviet perspective but the Soviet dimension to European relations during the decade after Hitler’s rise to power. This has the effect of changing our view on seemingly well-understood events, again and again. We long knew that Hitler was dissatisfied by Munich. We can now appreciate why Stalin regarded that agreement as a disaster. Conversely, the Polish guarantees had the unanticipated effect of making Soviet Russia the pivot of Europe’s balance of power. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was not Stalin’s desperate response to allied procrastination over a Russian agreement.  He and Molotov had long since contemplated the greater advantage to be gained from a rapprochement with Hitler. This became their long-term plan. That, rather than asinine self-deception, better explains Stalin’s seemingly craven appeasement of Hitler up to the summer of 1941. By the same token, the Japanese neutrality treaty was not an inspired, last-minute, defence of Russia’s eastern flank. It was part of a premeditated effort “to collaborate extensively with [our] Tripartite Pact Partners”.  It took two years hard slog — down to Stalingrad — to reverse the impact of that misjudgement. No wonder Stalin took such pains to conquer Eastern Europe after 1944.