When Pollitt's personal friend Rose Cohen, to whom he had proposed marriage on a number of occasions, was put on trial in Moscow in 1937, CPGB opposed efforts by the British government to get Cohen released, describing her arrest as an internal affair of the Soviet Union. Pollitt privately tried to intervene on her behalf, but by the time he did so she had already been shot. 20 years after her death, Pollitt requested information from Moscow about whether she was still alive, stating, untruthfully, that there was press interest in Britain about her whereabouts.