Chronicle reveals secret mission

Lt Col Fuller and his travelling companion posed as tourists

An epic account of an intelligence mission through Communist Russia in 1931 has been re-discovered.

Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Fuller's journal was found at the Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office in Trowbridge.

Lt Col Fuller, who came from Jaggards, near Corsham, and his friend Duncan Sandys were travelling as tourists.

But the diary suggests they were really gathering intelligence about conditions under Stalin's regime for the then Conservative government of Britain.

Duncan Sandys served in Churchill's wartime cabinet and later become Lord Duncan-Sandys.

Tough conditions

Archivists said the pair journeyed across the country from the capital Moscow in the west to the River Ob in Siberia in the east and south to Tbilisi in Georgia and Baku on the Caspian Sea.

They spoke to workers and peasants and travelled to a labour camp in Kusnetsk in the east of the country.

Conditions were tough and accommodation was cramped, with many of the men forced to sleep outside in small 'hutches' during the severe Russian winter.

Lt Col Fuller also witnessed the demolition of the huge Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer in Moscow, as religion was forced underground by the Communist regime.

The church has been rebuilt since the fall of Communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The diary and photos can be seen at the record office in Trowbridge. They were part of the Fuller family archive which is kept at the site.