Gerard Henderson to Lee Rhiannon – 6 October 2011

Subject: Some queries re your 1977 trip to the Soviet Union

Dear Senator Rhiannon

I understand from our previous correspondence that you do not want to discuss your political past – in particular your time in the Socialist Party of Australia and like-minded pro-Moscow communist movements. However, I thought that I should give you an opportunity to respond to the claim which is set out below.

A reader of my Media Watch Dog blog, who was a member of the Socialist Party of Australia delegation which travelled to the Soviet Union in 1977, has contacted me. He advises that the SPA delegation, soon after arrival in Moscow, split into two parts.

According to my source, a tour delegation (of which he was a member) travelled in the Soviet Union to such areas as Ukraine and Azerbaijan and then to Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. My source claims that there was also a study delegation (of which you and your husband Paddy O’Gorman were members) which remained in Moscow for a six month course at the Lenin School.

I give you the opportunity to answer the following questions:

1. Did you attend a study course in Moscow in 1977 which lasted for around six months at the Lenin School?

2. If so – what did members of this course study, who were the other students, who taught the courses and who paid for your accommodation?

I am sure there will be some interest if a contemporary Greens Senator in Australia studied at the Lenin School during the time that Leonid Brezhnev ruled the Soviet Union. Especially since graduates of the Lenin School included such Stalinist operatives as Wladysaw Gomulka from Poland and Erich Honecker from East Germany.

If you decline to answer this letter I will understand. But, as previously indicated, I want to give you the opportunity to answer the questions listed above.

Yours sincerely

Gerard Henderson

From Media Watch Dog

The Watermelons are just a commie plot.