Harold Macmillan in the Soviet Union in 1932

The article deals with the perception of the Soviet Union in the 1930s through the eyes of foreign contemporary. The subject of the study is the first trip of the well-known Conservative politician and future British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to the Soviet Union in 1932. The aim of the work is to reveal Macmillan’s views on the Soviet Union, his impressions of what he saw there, and to compare them with the comments of a number of foreigners who visited Moscow, Leningrad and the South of the USSR during the interwar years. Going to the USSR during the Great Depression, the future prime minister, who was on the left wing of the Conservative Party at that time, wanted to see the world’s first socialist state which avoided crisis and decrease in industrial production. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, examining Macmillan’s trip in 1932 inextricably linked to the specific historical circumstances that preceded it, as well as within the context of the development of British-Soviet dialogue as a whole. The author relied on principles of objectivity and a systems approach, and also employed comparative analysis, allowing Macmillan’s impressions to be compared with the opinions of other Britons who visited the USSR. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that despite Macmillan’s subsequent widespread fame, his 1932 visit to the Soviet Union has not previously been the subject of special study. Macmillan had the opportunity to see a number of prominent foreigners who lived in the USSR, as well as Soviet officials and party leaders. The work emphasizes Macmillan’s difference from most Conservative Party members during those years, as he believed in the necessity to expand trade between London and Moscow. The main conclusions are that visit to the Soviet Union in 1932 was far less official than Macmillan's widely publicized trip to Moscow in 1959. Macmillan was impressed by the economic reforms achieved in the USSR in the early 1930s. But the visit was accompanied by a certain disappointment. The traveler disliked the anti-capitalist propaganda he observed and the deep penetration of communist views into the consciousness of the Russian people.