Editing Manning Clark (section)

==''Meeting Soviet Man''==
In 1958, Clark visited the [[Soviet Union]] for three weeks as a guest of the [[Soviet Union of Writers]], accompanied by the [[Communist Party of Australia|Communist]] writer [[Judah Waten]] and the Queensland poet [[James Devaney]], a Catholic of moderate views. The delegation visited Moscow and [[Leningrad]], and Clark also visited [[Prague]] on his way home. While Waten wanted him to admire the achievements of the Soviet state, Clark was more interested in attending the [[Bolshoi Ballet]], the [[Dostoyevsky Museum]] and the [[Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius|St Sergius Monastery]] at [[Zagorsk]]. Clark annoyed both Waten and his Soviet hosts by asking questions about [[Boris Pasternak]], the dissident Soviet writer who was in trouble for having his novel ''[[Doctor Zhivago (novel)|Doctor Zhivago]]'' published in the West. Nevertheless, he was impressed by the material progress of the country after the devastation of [[World War II]] and by the [[Nikita Khrushchev#Leader (1956–1964)|limited political liberalisation]] which was taking place under [[Nikita Khrushchev]].{{Sfn|Holt|1999|pages=116-120}}

On his return he wrote a series of articles for the liberal news-magazine ''[[Nation (Australian magazine)|Nation]]'', which were later published in booklet form as ''Meeting Soviet Man'' (Angus and Robertson 1960). This work later became "exhibit A" for the charge that Clark was a communist, a communist sympathiser or, at best, hopelessly naive about communism. In it he gave ammunition to his enemies by denying that millions of people had died during [[Joseph Stalin]]'s collectivisation of agriculture. On the other hand, he was scathing about the cultural dreariness of the Soviet Union and about the greed and philistinism of the Soviet bureaucracy. Although he criticised Soviet society for the "greyness" of everyday life and the suppression of religion, he praised the Soviet state's ability to provide for the material needs of the people.<ref name="HowellIn">P.A. Howell, "In Khruschev's Russia," in Bridge, ''Manning Clark'', 56</ref> His comment that [[Vladimir Lenin]] stood on a par with [[Jesus]] as one of the great men of all time was later often quoted against him.

At the time, however, the book was not universally seen as pro-Soviet. Writing in ''Tribune'', Waten denounced it as misleading and "littered with half-truths and anti-Soviet clichés".<ref>''Tribune'', 2 March 1960, paraphrased by Howell in Bridge, ''Manning Clark'', 59</ref> Clark's son recalls:

:"The irony is that it was during the time of publication that my father's relationship with Judah was most strained, and the point of conflict was over the content of the book. Judah attacked ''Meeting Soviet Man'' for being too sympathetic to the west, and too critical of the Soviet Union. I recall one particularly tense meeting at Judah's house. To lighten up the atmosphere he spent the first hour regaling us with colorful stories about the professional boxing bouts he attended in Melbourne's old Festival Hall. Then he and my father retired to another room to talk the issue out. I could tell from the grim expressions as they emerged that there had been no resolution of their differences".<ref>[http://www.manningclark.org.au/papers/clark-on-waten.html Andrew Clark at the Manning Clark House website] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060820201301/http://manningclark.org.au/papers/clark-on-waten.html |date=20 August 2006 }}</ref>

Nevertheless, ''Meeting Soviet Man'' marked the beginning of Clark's reputation as a left-winger, something of which his work to that point had given no indication. James McAuley, hitherto a close friend, called the book "shoddy," and [[Donald Horne]], then a conservative and editor of ''[[The Bulletin (Australian periodical)|The Bulletin]]'', called it "superficial" and showing "too much sentimental goodwill" towards the Soviet Union.<ref name="HowellIn" />

It remains unclear what Clark's political views actually were, although it is clear that from the mid-1960s onwards he identified the [[Australian Labor Party]] as the party of progress and Australian independence, and particularly admired [[Gough Whitlam]] (who became Leader of the ALP Opposition in 1967 and [[Prime Minister of Australia|Prime Minister]] five years later) as the leader Australia had been looking for ever since the death of [[John Curtin]] in 1945. Stephen Holt wrote in his study ''A Short History of Manning Clark'': "Though never belonging to a party, he was intensely political, embodying the conflicting loyalties of inter-war Australia... He disturbed conservative and conventional opinion without himself becoming an unswerving left-wing believer".{{Sfn|Holt|1999|p=xi}} Peter Craven disagreed: "I'm not sure that he [Holt] is right that Clark was an intensely political figure. He seems in some respects to have been more of a political agnostic whose personal mythology became conflated with the dreary mechanisms of celebrity in this country so that both sides were ready to plague him".<ref>[http://home.vicnet.net.au/~abr/Aug99/cra.html A Man of Contradictions] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060923175304/http://home.vicnet.net.au/~abr/Aug99/cra.html |date=23 September 2006 }}, Peter Craven's review of Stephen Holt's book</ref>

Whatever his real views, Clark enjoyed praise and celebrity, and since he was now getting it mainly from the left he tended to play to the gallery in his public statements. "He was more popular and newsworthy, 'the best guru in the business,' as Geoff Serle put it in 1974".<ref>Macintyre, "Manning Clark's critics," ''Meanjin'', 446</ref> There is, however, no evidence that Clark had any real sympathy with Communism as an ideology or as a system of government. He visited the Soviet Union again in 1970 and in 1973, and he again expressed his admiration for Lenin as a historical figure. But in 1971 he took part in a demonstration outside the Soviet Embassy in Canberra against the Soviet persecution of the author [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]], and in 1985 he again took part in an anti-Soviet demonstration, this time in support of the Polish trade union [[Solidarity (Polish trade union)|Solidarity]].<ref>{{harvnb|Holt|1999|p=171}} Holt does not mention the Solidarity demonstration in his text, but reproduces a photo of Clark taking part in the demonstration.</ref> In 1978 he told an interviewer that he was not an advocate of revolution. He was torn, he said, between "radicalism and pessimism," a pessimism based on doubts that socialism would really make things any better.{{Sfn|Holt|1999|p=191}}

[[File:Manning Clark home.JPG|thumb|250px|left|[[Manning Clark House|Manning and Dymphna Clark's home]] in {{ACTcity|Forrest}}, [[Canberra]], where they lived from 1955 until Manning's death in 1991 and Dymphna's in 2000. The house is now open to the public.]]