_It is with deep apology that I venture to swell the ranks of those
people who write their little books after their little visits to
Russia._
_In defence I can only say that this was not written for publication. I
have always kept a diary, in monotonous as in eventful days. In
publishing a record of my stay in Moscow I am submitting to pressure
without which I would not venture upon such a line. Mine is not the
business of writing, nor are politics my concern: I went to Moscow where
some portrait work was offered me._
_There are people in England who are indignant at my doing Lenin and
Trotsky. There were people in Moscow who were horrified because I had
done Churchill, and expressed a desire to do d’Annunzio, but as a
portraitist I have nothing to do with politics; it is humanity that
interests me, humanity with its force and its weakness, its ambitions
and fears, its honesty and lack of scruples, its perfection and
deformities._
_There are of course people who are pleasanter to work for than others,
people in whose environment one feels happier and more at ease._
_In this diary are written freely the impressions of a guest among
people who have been much talked about._
_From this point of view, and without any political pretentions, I offer
it to whomsoever it may interest._