A Short View of Russia

Keynes and his wife, Lydia Lopokova, visited Russia in September 1925 soon after their marriage, he as official representative of Cambridge University at the bicentennial celebrations of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Following the visit, he wrote the three articles which were later published as (A Short View of Russia'. The articles first appeared in the Nation and Athenaeum, 10, 17 and 25 October 1925, and were reprinted by the Hogarth Press as one of the series of Hogarth Essays in December of the same year. A shortened version appeared in Essays in Persuasion. Keynes's visit to Russia was a defining moment for him, setting him off on a track of thinking centring on the conflict between economic efficiency and moral efficiency'. Keynes started to use the phrase (love of money' to describe the psychology of capitalist civilization. This essay was penned before the Stalin dictatorship had taken hold. It characterizes Soviet Communism as both a religion and an economic system.