Conservative spotlight: Brian Crozier

Author Brian Crozier is yet another ex-leftist who has dedicated his life to fighting communism. Born in Australia he grew up in England and France, and met devout Communists who had a profound influence on him.

"Before World War II, I had a left-wing phase, unfortunately;' Crozier said in an interview with HUMAN EVENTS last week. "So did Bob Conquest," another detailer of Soviet crimes. "But I never joined any Communist Party," he added.

The Great Depression and the rise of Adolf Hitler helped make Crozier into a leftwing radical, as they did a number of people at the time who believed that only radical solutions could save the world. "I met a good number of Communists who were a bit older than I was," he said. "And I admired them because they seemed so earnest and dedicated to their principles."

But events began to change Crozier's views after the war, and James Burnham's 1947 book The Machiavellians, Defenders of Freedom played a large role. "So it's partly by coincidence that I succeeded him in his column, `The Protracted Conflict' in National Review," Crozier said. "He fell seriously ill in 1978 and they asked me to take it over." Crozier would write the column for the next 18 years.

Crozier has served at various times as a foreign correspondent for the Economist and Reuters and as a commentator for the BBC. He published his first book, The Rebels, in 1960, dealing with rebellions going on around the world, and has written a series of biographies, Franco (1967), De Gaulle (1973) and Chiang Kai-Shek (1976). In 1970 he founded the Institute for the Study of Conflict, a London-based group that studies insurgencies and terrorism, and Crozier has advised the British Secret Intelligence Service, the Information Research Department (IRD) of the British Foreign Office, and the CIA. His memoirs appeared in 1993 as Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941-1991.

His latest book is The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire (Prima Publishing). He saw an opportunity for the book, Crozier said, because of the huge number of new documents released from old Soviet archives. "A lot has been written about the Soviet Union;" he explained, "but no one has covered the entire period with the new documents." Stanford University's Hoover Institution, of which Crozier is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow on War, Revolution, and Peace, has eight million sheets of paper alone, he said, and he has added to their collection by selling his own archives to Hoover.

In his latest book, Crozier documents Stalin's massacre of unarmed Polish officers not only at the wellknown Katyn Forest, where 4,000 died, but also at other sites as well. In all, Crozier said, 22,000 lost their lives. He believes that 100 million people have died because of communism, including 65 million in China and 20 million in the Soviet Union.

He said that an extraordinary number of Western leaders did not oppose commonism with the vigor its evil demanded.

"The Western governments didn't seem to understand the problem:' he said. He told how, in the 1970s, the British Foreign Office forced the Freedom Association to move the site of a monument to the victims of the Katyn massacre to the outskirts of London from its original location in Kensington.

"And the Defense Ministry issued an order that no one could come to the dedication wearing a military uniform," he said. "Some showed up in uniform anyway. Nothing happened [to them]."

Even "Winston Churchill, who had been anti-Communist since the beginning in 1917, was taken in. Churchill came back [from Yalta] and said Stalin was the most truthful man. He wouldn't have said it if he didn't believe it. He expressed complete trust in Stalin."

Unsurprisingly, Crozier ascribes an enormous amount of the credit for the fall of the Soviet empire to Ronald Reagan. "One of the turning points was the invasion of Grenada. It was the first strategic and tactical retreat of the Soviet Union," Crozier said. "The effect of it was very startling." He told a surprising story about British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. "I had an appointment with Margaret on the day of the invasion," he recalled. "She was furious with Ronald Reagan. . . . `He didn't even have the decency to ring me and tell me what he was doing."'

Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative gambit played a large role as well. "The Soviets couldn't afford it and hadn't the means to compete:' he said.

And the Soviet Union's own Vietnam had its effect. To this day, Crozier said, no one knows why-or is saying why-the Soviets decided to invade Afghanistan despite having puppets in power there.

Crozier has another distinction: In 1988, he appeared in the Guinness Book of World Records for having interviewed the most heads of state or government, 58 in all.

Cruver may be reached through Prima Publishing, 3875 Atherton Rd., Rocklin, Calif 95765 (916-6324400; fax: 916-632-4405; wwwpnmapublishing.com).

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Nov 26, 1999
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