The Ghost of Soviet Power in Britain: The Leeds Convention of 1917

The article deals with the Leeds convention of 1917, organized by the British left activists in June 1917 in solidarity with revolutionary Russia. The study focuses on the convention itself, on assessments of it in the newspapers and memoirs. The aim of the article is to examine the proceedings of the Leeds convention, the mood of the participants, the resolutions put forward, the discussion surrounding each of them. Special attention is paid to the unusual nature of the 1917 event, which brought together very different representatives of the British Left, including future members of the first Labour government (1924), who belonged to the right wing of British social democracy. The article pays attention to the fact that in subsequent years the Labour Party officially forbade its members from sharing a platform with pro-communist activists. This fact allows to speak of the uniqueness of the convention. The author used a comparative research method, allowing to compare the speakers’ views, the opinion of various contemporary activists and participants. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that the Leeds convention had not previously been the subject of special research in Russian historiography. The author introduces the full transcript of the convention into academic circulation. It allows to visualize the intensity of the emotions and the mood of the gathering at the Coliseum Theatre in 1917. The author comes to the conclusion that the convention was the result of the confusion among many left-wing contemporaries who later spoke very negatively of the Soviet regime and rejected the possibility of a similar scenario for Britain. It was found that the second resolution (calling for an early peace based on the right of nations to self-determination) and the fourth (proclaiming the formation of soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies in the United Kingdom), met with opposition from some participants of the convention.