British Students at the International Lenin School 1926-37: A Reaffirmation of Methods, Results, and Conclusions

Alan Campbell, John McIlroy, Barry McLoughlin, and John Halsteadhave offered a sweeping, if incoherent, criticism of the researchpresented in ‘Stalin's Sausage Machine’, our recentarticle on British students at the International Lenin School.By expanding upon and reaffirming the methods, results, andconclusion of our original article, we address each of the maincriticisms made and show that none can be substantiated. Usingstatistical analysis based on matched samples, we demonstratethat we did not underestimate the school's impact on the apparatusof the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). We also showthat none of the supposed ‘significant deficiencies’in our handling of qualitative analysis has any foundation.We deal briefly with the sole alternative explanation our criticsoffer for the CPGB's internal leadership changes, namely ‘lifeitself’ and natural causes. We suggest that such a de-politicizedinterpretation not only lacks any evidential basis but revealsa profound ignorance as to the internal workings of communistparties and flies in the face of all available literatures onthe subject. We also document the contrast between our critics'methodological pretensions and the ways in which their casedepends for its plausibility on methods of an extremely dubiousnature. Every possible academic rationale for the attack uponus is disposed of. We therefore end with a plea for a less personalizedapproach to the writing of Communist Party history.