Betrayal of the Left

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Betrayal of the Left was a book of essays published in early 1941 by the Left Book Club, edited and largely written by Victor Gollancz (but with significant contributions from George Orwell and others) that condemned the Communist Party of Great Britain for backing the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 and for taking a revolutionary defeatist position in the war against Nazi Germany. It was particularly critical of the CP-organised People's Convention of January 1941, the high point of the CP's revolutionary defeatism during the period of Stalin's alliance with Hitler. It marked a decisive break by the democratic left from its 1930s alliance with the CP.