Soviet Union under the First Five Year Plan with Britain during the Great Depression. He toured the Soviet Union in 1934 and again in 1937, claiming 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 United States as Soviet Power in 1941), which included a preface by the renegade Brazilian Roman Catholic bishop Carlos Duarte Costa. Johnson defended his positive accounts of life in the Soviet Union, emphasising 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 Soviet Union of which Johnson was chairman. World War II During World War II, Johnson strictly followed the Soviet line. After the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, he opposed the war even though Britain was at war against Germany, and he was accused of spreading defeatist propaganda. After Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, he supported the war; his MI5 file reports that it was still judged "undesirable for the Dean of Canterbury to be allowed to lecture to troops". Johnson was arguably the most prominent of the Western church leaders who are said to have persuaded Joseph Stalin to restore the Moscow Patriarchate. Stalin was successfully convinced that such a move would improve his relations with the Western Allies. Dmitri Volkogonov argued: "It was not the vanity of a former seminary dropout that moved the Soviet leader, but rather pragmatic considerations in relation with the Allies." Post-war At the end of the war Johnson was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour, in recognition of his "outstanding work as chairman of the joint committee for Soviet Aid", and in 1951 received the Stalin International Peace Prize. After the war, Johnson continued to use his public position to propound his pro-Soviet views. From 1948, he was the leader of the British-Soviet Friendship Organisation. His influence began to wane, particularly after public sympathy for