Geoffrey Swain
speaker
127 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 14 Jul
Geoffrey Swain’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 3.
Appearances
Everything that I've done is to try and advance the cause of humanity.
From Moscow's perspective, the Yugoslav Communist Party was full of squabbling intellectuals who were not managing to get anywhere with the working class.
He emerges in 1928 as a national figure because he tries to bring an end to the factional disputes within the Yugoslav Communist Party.
And then he's very quickly arrested.
But when he's released, it's remembered that he was seemingly playing a positive role.
And so when he's released, he's sent to Moscow for training.
They see that they've found someone with potential, someone with working-class roots, but he's still felt to need political training.
He basically lies low and listens and tries not to commit.
He learns to say yes and to keep quiet.
Because by 1938, people are being arrested left, right and center.
And there was a real danger.
The Polish Communist Party had been wound up completely.
There was a suggestion that the Yugoslav Communist Party should be wound up.
So he lies low and he does what he was supposed to do, which was to write reports.
And he kept the reports as bland as possible.
By the time he gets back to Yugoslavia, he knows what Stalin can be like at his worst.
Unlike many other of the communist leaders, he wasn't sort of hypnotized by Stalin's Russia and its success.
He'd been there enough to know what was really going on.
There's a lot of debate about this.
It is a name which featured in various family members, but there were also those who said it was because he would say, you there, so tea talk.
Showing 81–100 of 127 · page 5 of 7
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