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Anna Louise Strong was part of the first generation of those westerners who reported extensively and sympathetically on socialist revolutions. Born in Nebraska in 1885, she obtained a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1908, became involved in the labour movement in Seattle where she helped organize the general strike in 1919 and went first to the Soviet Union in 1921 on the advice of Lincoln Steffens. She became during the 1920s and 1930s probably the best-known American journalist reporting on the domestic policies of the Soviet Union. Her reportage was unswervingly sympathetic – what doubts she had were hidden in letters to friends, in strained disavowals, in odd turns of phrase in her many articles and books.

Anna Louise Strong was part of the first generation of those westerners who reported extensively and sympathetically on socialist revolutions: She had written up three interviews she had had with Mao Zedong, the first in 1959, the second in 1964, the third in 1965. She had not received permission to publish any of these at the time they were conducted. Anna Louise Strong died in China in 1970. In 1980, T. Strong and H. Keyssar found the manuscript of the interviews in the Beijing Library. Text of the interviews with notes from Tracy Strong and Helene Keyssar. (DÜI-Sen)