Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation? was published by Longmans, Green in two volumes in 1935. The question mark in the title was removed in the second edition of 1937 — a small typographical change that has become one of the most famous gestures in twentieth-century intellectual history, symbolizing the transformation of a question into a conviction that would haunt the Webbs’ legacy.
Sidney and Beatrice Webb visited the Soviet Union in 1932, when they were in their seventies and at the height of their prestige. They spent three weeks touring factories, collective farms, schools, and institutions, guided by Soviet officials who showed them what they wanted them to see. They returned to England convinced that the Soviet system represented a genuine alternative to capitalism — a planned economy that had abolished unemployment, a political system that (they believed) combined central direction with democratic participation, and a social order that had eliminated class distinction and empowered women.
The resulting book — over 1,200 pages in the two-volume edition — is an extraordinary document of intellectual self-deception. The Webbs analyzed Soviet institutions with the same meticulous detail they had brought to English local government, but they accepted Soviet statistics, official explanations, and propaganda at face value. The collectivization of agriculture, which had caused a famine killing millions in Ukraine and elsewhere, is discussed as an administrative challenge. The purges, which were already underway when the book was published, are not mentioned. The NKVD (secret police) is described as a necessary instrument of social hygiene.
How could two of the most rigorous social investigators in Britain have been so catastrophically wrong? Several explanations have been offered. The Webbs were old and tired, disillusioned with capitalism after the Depression, and looking for evidence that planned economies could work. Their Fabian training — which emphasized institutional analysis over human testimony — made them susceptible to the kind of evidence the Soviets excelled at providing: official documents, organizational charts, production statistics. They lacked the instinct for totalitarian deception that contemporaries like Malcolm Muggeridge and George Orwell possessed.
The book was widely criticized even at the time. Muggeridge, who had reported from Moscow for the Manchester Guardian, called it “the most preposterous book ever written.” Bertrand Russell, the Webbs’ old Fabian colleague, was appalled. But the book also had defenders, and it sold well — many readers in the 1930s were genuinely unsure whether Soviet communism might not be preferable to a capitalism that seemed to be collapsing.
The removal of the question mark in 1937 — just as the Great Purge was reaching its peak — ensured that Soviet Communism would be remembered not as a scholarly inquiry but as a monument to credulity. It remains essential reading, not for what it tells us about the Soviet Union, but for what it reveals about the limitations of even the most disciplined intellects when confronted with ideological temptation.
Collecting Soviet Communism
First edition (Longmans, Green, London, 1935): Two volumes, blue cloth. Title includes the question mark.
Second edition (1937): Question mark removed from title.
Market values:
- First edition with question mark, two volumes: $40–$100
- Second edition without question mark: $20–$50
- Later editions: $10–$25
The first edition with the question mark is the bibliographically significant state. The contrast between the two editions tells a story in itself.