Шотландское общество поддерживало культурные связи с СССР во время Холодной войны

WHY would a butcher from Kirkcaldy hand-deliver his haggis to the Soviet Union in the middle of the Cold War? It was only about two years ago, during a conversation with my grandma, that I learned her father, William (Bill) Keith, had travelled to Moscow several times. The invitation came from the Scottish-USSR Society, an organisation that spent decades building cultural links between Scotland and the Soviet Union. The society wasn't underground, but admittedly, even as a former student of Russia and Eastern Europe in Glasgow, I didn't realise its existence, nor that my own great-grandfather had ties to the group. READ MORE: Fascist-style protests in Scottish cities 'reminiscent of Hitler' A seemingly inconsequential flat on Glasgow's Belmont Street served as the organisation's base for three decades. The group was unusual because it operated separately from its UK counterpart, despite the wider Communist Party historically being unified across the United Kingdom. It was in the mid-70s that Gordon Hepburn, marketing director of Nairn Travel in Kirkcaldy, approached the Glasgow-based society to ask for help arranging a dedicated trip for Scots to celebrate Robert Burns in Moscow. A group of around 100 people were rounded up, all either members of the society or suppliers to the Moscow Burns Supper. Keith wasn't just asked to supply his haggis, but to attend the event in person in 1976 and again in 1991. In return for his prized haggis, he was presented with gifts, including a birthday of Lenin 1-ruble coin and coins honouring the Moscow Olympic Games. But most significantly, he received a Robert Burns poetry book printed in Russian. This book, now with yellowed pages, was translated by Samuil Marshak (Самуил Маршак), considered one of the few people who could translate Scots to Russian. It was physically gifted to Keith by Marshak’s son. The affection for Burns is clear in Marshak's own words, when he was quoted as saying: "The poetry of Robert Burns is part of our daily life. "Our young people quote him in their love letters." READ MORE: Bob Vylan to sue BBC following Glastonbury set row But why did the Soviet Union form a cultural relationship with Scotland, separate from the rest of the UK? And what was the interest in our Robert Burns? I put these questions to Niall Marcus Gray, a PhD candidate at the University of Strathclyde, who recently published research into this transnational society. He said that while John McLean's contribution as a leading figure of Red Clydeside is relatively well known, what came after is less so. Gray said: " I noticed that John McLean came out with all these, I think it would be fair to say, esoteric ideas about Scotland having this unique connection with communism, going back to the clan system. "Friends, kind of abandoned him because of these very ideas. But what I uncovered was that McLean's ideas might not have survived in electoral politics, but culturally they took on a life of their own. And the Scottish-USSR society was the outcome of this." While Gray says the group was essentially a wing of the Communist Party, it acted differently. Apart from a similar Northern Irish group which existed for a short period, the Scottish organisation was "the only enduring example of a friendship society in the world that catered to a country that wasn't a state". "The one thing I've noticed in my work is that Scotland did have a sort of active role on the global stage, but it wasn't like a traditional one. It was like a cultural role that transcended traditional divides," he said. On the peculiarity of my great-grandad's Burns book, Gray said research has found "the Soviets loved the romantic nationalist genealogy of Burns". In the Soviet Union, poets were often celebrated or suppressed depending on how their work aligned with the state, and Burns was seen as a man of the cause. He continued: "The Soviets were looking for poets to justify their form of government and to justify the socialist revolution. They thought Burns was proof of the fact that socialism was an existing system. "They used this in their enduring relationship with Scotland. The interest in Burns as this proto-socialist poet became a wider interest in the country as well. "They talked about the common man; it was seen as something that could escape its nationality." Examples of Burns’ political writing include A Man’s a Man for a’ That, widely interpreted as a celebration of egalitarianism, and Address of Beelzebub, in which he used satire to criticise the power of the ruling elite and their treatment of Highland communities. Though operating in a widely considered left-wing city, the Scottish-USSR society wasn’t free from backlash in Glasgow, and when the Soviet Union entered Hungary following a popular uprising, the society’s base was firebombed. With Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, its wars against its neighbours, and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, that sense of friendship feels more distant and unlikely to return. But my great-grandad's Burns book, now sitting on my shelf, is a reminder of a time when East-West connections could survive even the deepest divides of the Cold War.