Catalogue description Manessah LESSER, aliases Mortimer LESSER, Sam LESSER, Michael de LESSEPS, Sam RUSSELL,...

Manessah LESSER, aliases Mortimer LESSER, Sam LESSER, Michael de LESSEPS, Sam RUSSELL, Stuart RUSSELL: British. A member of the Communist Party from 1934, he first came to notice in 1935, while a student at University College London, as a member of the executive committee of a student group at the London School of Economics (LSE) which published 'Student Front'. In 1937 he was wounded serving in Spain in the International Brigade, and as Sam RUSSELL began to write from there for the Daily Worker in 1938. Later he was the Daily Worker's correspondent in Paris and Brussels and worked for the paper in the UK as its diplomatic and later foreign correspondent from 1943, concurrently providing broadcast material for Polish Radio. From 1955 to 1959 as the Daily Worker's Moscow correspondent he was friendly with Donald Maclean, then returned to London as foreign editor. The file contains much of Sam RUSSELL'S intercepted correspondence and transcripts of conversations at Party Headquarters referring to him