Seven Years Solitary, by Edith Bone

[p022] Seven Years Solitary, by Edith Bone (Hamish Hamilton, 18s.) DR EDITH BONE was released, after seven years imprison- ment, in the course of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. She was trained as a doctor in the Budapest school of medicine and in 1919 went to Russia as a member of a Hungarian Red Cross delegation. She held some form of Left socialist views before she left Hungary, but was a member of no party. In Russia, she drifted into a job, found for her by Victor Serge, as English editor of the newly-founded journal Communist International. For many years after this she led the life of an official of the Comintern or its sections, work- ing for it in many countries of Europe. In the Stalinized party machine she met many such ‘model Stalins’ as Rakosi (‘Bela Kun’s office boy’). If we can believe that her mem- ories of this period are not too highly coloured by what she later suffered at their hands (and I think we can) she was always somewhat ‘unreliable’, as Communist Party. bureaucrats usually describe party members who have either backbone or grey matter. In 1933 she came to England and acquired British nationality by marriage. In 1939, mainly because of the Stalin-Hitler pact, she ‘dropped out’? of the British Communist Party, for which she had been working since her arrival in Britain. She rejoined in 1942 and became an active propagandist for the British Soviet Society. In 1949 she left for Hungary. It is important to know Dr Bone’s background if we are to understand her extraordinary psycho- logical toughness. In 1949 she was invited to Hungary to translate English scientific textbooks into Hungarian. At the same time, J. R. Campbell, editor of the Daily Worker, gave her credentials as Daily Worker Special Correspondent in Hungary. Later a member of Campbell’s staff was to deny this to the Budapest authorities—and so add to her sufferings. Vv What happened when she started on her journey back to England forms the main part of this book. She was arrested as an ‘English spy’, brainwashed (though Rakosi’s detergent signally failed with her), ‘interrogated’, bullied, tortured and finally imprisoned in solitary confinement, often in total darkness, for seven years. The corrupt politics which were the origins of her sufferings have been better described and much more accurately analysed by others. But the detailed account of how Dr Bone was able to survive these exper- Rta iences, how she battled against huge odds for Tife and sanity, ea i OR AE NOES UHM DN ae snobs py mnasnane MAOH IO PA 115

[p023] LABOUR REVIEW is one of the most important and challenging. psychological documents Of Our. time. ee eee cemey A summary is neither desirable nor possible. The tasks she set herself in relation to the authorities and her own activity, the thoroughness with which she organized her practical and intellectual life in the prison cell are, suddenly and strikingly, illuminated in the middle of the book when, she says that at a time when she could have little hope of ever being released she began to be annoyed at the shortness of the days. She found she needed more than twenty-four hours in a day to be able to get on satisfactorily with her © work. The book is a remarkable tribute to the human spirit. J.C.D. Tyranny Unnoticed