Ralph Winston Fox

Ralph Winston Fox (30 March 1900, Halifax, United Kingdom – 28 December 1936, Lopera, Jaén, Spain) was a British journalist, novelist, and historian, best remembered as a biographer of Lenin and Genghis Khan. Fox was one of the best-known members of the Communist Party of Great Britain to be killed in Spain fighting against the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War.

Fox was born 30 March 1900 in Halifax, Yorkshire, England to a middle-class family. Fox studied modern languages at Oxford University, where he was drafted into an officers' cadet regiment. Although commissioned as a lieutenant, the war ended before Fox was sent to the front lines.

In 1919 Fox became active in the effort to halt British blockade and military intervention to overthrow the Bolshevik government which had assumed power in the Russian Revolution of 1917. He was active in the Oxford 'Hands Off Russia' Committee and was instrumental in helping to organise the local unit of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).

In 1920 as the dust was settling from the Russian Civil War, Fox travelled to Soviet Russia, an experience which further moved him towards lifelong identification with the communist political movement. Fox returned to Oxford, where in 1922 he graduated with a first in modern languages.

In the summer following graduation, Fox returned to Soviet Russia, this time as a worker with the Friends Relief Mission in Samara. Back in Great Britain, he went to work as a functionary for the CPGB in its propaganda department. He also studied in at the School of Foreign Languages and wrote his first major book, People of the Steppes, which was published in 1925.

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