Betrayal of the Left
Betrayal of the Left was a book of essays published on 3 March 1941 by the Left Book Club, edited and largely written by Victor Gollancz. The book
had a preface by Harold Laski.
Other contributions included two essays by George Orwell, "Fascism and Democracy" and "Patriots and Revolutionaries" that condemned the Communist Party of Great Britain for backing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 and for taking a revolutionary defeatist position in the war against Nazi Germany. Betrayal of the Left also
contained an essay by John Strachey attacking totalitarianism.
It was particularly critical of the Communist Party-organised People's Convention of January 1941, the high point of the party'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 Communist Party.
