Young visitors: a tale of Iranian and Soviet defectors
John Wain — johnwain.com
During the recent Winter Olympics, a disquieting story hit the headlines: an Iranian female team refused to sing their national anthem. While some immediately sought political asylum, which was swiftly granted, others chose the fearful path of return, concerned for the fate of their families left behind in Iran.
This disturbing situation is not without precedent. It reminds me of The Young Visitors, a novel written many years ago by John Wain. Along with John Osborne and John Braine, Wain was one of the original “angry young men” of English literature. Knowing he was left of centre, the Soviet authorities had invited him on an all-expenses-paid visit to the USSR, hoping to co-opt him as a “fellow traveller”. He was received like royalty, met leading literary figures, and even saw his novels translated into Russian. However, upon his return to England, Wain repaid the Soviet advances not by toeing the party line, but by rejecting his hosts completely and writing The Young Visitors, which appeared in 1965.
The novel recounts the story of a delegation of young Soviet citizens permitted to travel to England to study local government. The Soviet Embassy in London, ever vigilant against the “marvel of capitalism”, worked strenuously to prevent the group from mixing unsupervised with locals. Their attempt to manage the group led them to introduce the Soviets to “reliable British communists”. This plan backfired spectacularly when one of these reliable comrades turned out to be a philanderer who promptly seduced one of the girls. Worse still, a casual discussion the group had about their bosses in Moscow was secretly recorded. Taking no chances, the Embassy ordered every member of the delegation to the building, locking them in until they could be driven to the airport. They were forced to sleep on waiting room benches before their departure.
What was my role in all this? In 1956, I myself obtained political asylum in England, and ten years later, in 1966, I was elected an engineering Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford. As fate would have it, in 1973 John Wain was elected to the same college as Professor of Poetry—a position decided by all Oxford graduates. We became firm friends in a very short time, even writing jointly three radio plays on scientists of antiquity.
John Wain had the rare gift of being able to reproduce how Soviet citizens think and act. Had the Soviet Union still existed, The Young Visitors would be required reading—the best antidote to communist propaganda I have ever come across. It is my belief that the story of the Iranian female team had the same routes as that described in Wain’s novel.
This is because underneath all political labels there are only two types of dictatorships: secular and religious. Although both involve brainwashing and show trials, the latter are even more pernicious than the former, due to their representation of any opposition not merely as politically wrong but as morally wrong to boot.
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