The Socialist Sixth of The World
Johnson came to public prominence in the 1930s when he contrasted the economic development of the USSR under the First Five Year Plan to Britain during the Great Depression. He toured the Soviet Union in 1934 and again in 1937, reporting on each occasion the health and wealth of the average Soviet citizen and that the Soviet system protected the citizens' liberties. He collected his articles in the book The Socialist Sixth of the World (Gollancz, 1939; published in the USA as Soviet Power in 1941) which contained a preface by the renegade Brazilian Roman Catholic Bishop Carlos Duarte Costa. His observations and views have drawn extensive criticism from commentators who point out that the Soviet Union in the 1930s was actually an oppressive totalitarian society with few or no redeeming features. Yet Johnson defended his positive accounts of life in the Soviet Union, emphasizing that he had visited "five Soviet Republics and several great Soviet towns," that he had wandered on foot "many long hours on many occasions and entirely alone," and that he saw "all parts of the various towns and villages and at all hours of day and night." It later emerged that much of the book was copied word for word from pro-Soviet propaganda material produced by organisations such as the Society of Cultural Relations with the USSR.
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