Fire in the Streets: America in the 1960s/A People's History of the United States
Viorst, Milton & Zinn, Howard
BOOKS IN REVIEW - "Fire in the Streets: America in the 1960s/A People's History of the United States" AIlende received only 36.3 percent of the vote, he attempted to consolidate a revolution--without the support of the Chilean congress but with the backing of an extra-legal, para-military...
...Dennis Sweeney, on the other hand, is a dishonorable man...
...Zhukov's reward: immediate promotion to a full Politburo membership and shortly thereafter, upon his return from a foreign mission, a sudden dismissal from all his offices...
...Bulganin's fate...
...Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States is at least refreshing in that it does not make the slightest effort to grapple with the ambiguities of an essentially tolerant society...
...It is rather a standing conspiracy with at the most some 15 to 20 people being privy to what is going on, the Politburo members and a handful of others jealously guarding this special knowledge while attempting to formulate policies...
...I f one were looking for a doctrine that would justify the d e s t r u c t i o n of democratic institutions in this country, one would need look no further...
...How can this anomaly be explained...
...Brecht's remark that the regime had decided to "dissolve the people" upon receiving their complaints catches the spirit of what I have in mind...
...Thus, in attempting to explain the relative failure of past rebellions on the political left in the United States, Zinn comes forward with the following explanation: These rebellions, so far, have been contained...
...It is barely credible to Powers that an intelligent man of apparently good character should devote himself to an agency like the CIA, acquiesce in its activities, keep its secrets, remain loyal to his colleagues, and, throughout, maintain his conviction that what he has done is justifiable...
...This was an important time in Yugoslav and Soviet relations, a time when the Kremlin, having failed to rape the little country, was embarking on a gentler, if not a very subtle, course of seduction...
...Stalin's ghost was very much an enduring presence in the Kremlin generally...
...That something else, for lack of a better expression, is their penchant for ignoring those tangible aspects of the American experience which soundly contradict their arguments...
...sometimes he interprets as he relates...
...Thus, he chooses not to provide footnotes for the numerous sources which he routinely quotes from throughout the book...
...Zinn's penchant for representing socialism (vaguely defined) as the best answer for America is combined with an arrogant attempt to explain an unpleasant fact: that most Americans have little interest in the socialist alternative...
...But they exist only because the "system" is ultimately interested in making a profit...
...Their story, so Zinn a s s e r t s , has r a r e l y been told, and he sets forth to even the score by chronicling a tragic series of cruelties and misfortunes which have befallen the helpless and the poor throughout American history, from Columbus to the present...
...Although certain aspects of Lowenstein's service in the civilrights and anti-war movements, and his role in the "defrocking of Lyndon Johnson," may be criticized from any number of angles, he was, for all of his misplaced energy, a good and honorable man...
...He begins his account, laudably, by acknowledging the ironic (but predictable) fate of protest movements in a society which remains responsive to the demands of excluded groups: Blacks, whatever their economic disadvantages, were never freer to pursue the lives of their choice, and so were women, homosexuals and other minorities...
...This subtle and penetrating novel by the veteran writer and Founder Member of the | Irish Academy of Letters is a must for the t h o u g h t f u l | reader...
...But how unsentimental those inhabitants of the Soviet Olympus...
...b St...
...For Zinn--and he is anything but alone, as a trip to Teheran or the UN will easily show--the American experience is, from beginning to end, a story of political manipulation and control exercised by the s t r o n g over the weak...
...Apart from throwing a vivid light on the historical context in which Soviet and Yugoslav relations function even today, the book tells a good deal about Soviet politics during the period of transition between Stalin's despotism and what eventually emerged as the oligarcho-bureaucratic leadership with which we have been familiar for the past 15 years...
...What I'm going to tell you right now is before this thing is over with, somebody is going to die...
...In Diana, for instance, Powers traced the history of the daughter of a prominent Midwestern business family from her home in Dwight, Illinois, through Madeira School and Bryn Mawr, and into SDS and the Manhattan townhouse where she and her friends fell victim to the bombs they concocted for "the system...
...FIRE IN THE STREETS: AMERICA IN THE 1960s Milton Viorst / Simon & Schuster / $14.95 A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES Howard Zinn / Harper & Row / $20.00 John Starrels A l l a r d Lowenstein was not the best congressman New York had to offer...
...What would Zinn have us do, given his rather angry interpretation of the American scene...
...Individuals (Eric Hoffer), movements (pro-Viemam war parades), and values (a belief in merit and racial equality) that obviously stand at variance with the interpretations of the authors are simply ignored...
...Like the departed Hungarian Communist, Eugene Varga, Zinn is a proponent of the "two-camp theory" of history...
...This was not only because of the configuration of forces within the Party, but because of some compulsion within Khrushchev which, even after he bad initiated laudable and bold reforms, would pull him back to an essentially orthodox, quasi-Stalinist position...
...If Powers knows that the United States did not bring down the Allende government, he never makes it clear, which is outrageous if for no other reason than that it was Helms's conviction for lying about a related aspect of CIA activities in Chile that brought him, wrongfully, such notoriety and public denigration...
...Thus, Khrushchev goes on a state visit with his faithful companion, Nikolai Bulganin, in 1957...
...d~'.~.dr',dF'~F',dV'~P",d~, To: Order Dept...
...In the spirit of the 1960s, even the handicapped, prisoners, and union members insisted upon, and won, a wide range of new rights...
...In " t h a t i n e v i t a b l e taking of sides which comes from selection and emphasis in history" he elects to depict the United States as a society which p a r a l l e l s the Soviet Union in its cynical recourse to political control...
...And somebody did...
...In order to conspire properly at keeping their own people, and the outside world, in the dark about what decisions are being made and how, Soviet leaders plot constantly, and watch constantly for the plottings of others...
...Americans, furthermore, participated more directly than before in every level of government, including selection of the president, and even acquired the legal authority to have the FBI turn over the files it had kept on them...
...Instead of intimidation and subversion, the Soviets had begun, in 1955, to resort to cajolery and honeyed words, accompanied Adam B. U/am is professor of government and associate of the Russian Research Center at Harvard...
...Hence, in what can only be described as an inadequate rendering of the immediate postwar situation, Zinn confidently maintains that the two emerging superpowers simultaneously "acted to control their own populations, each country with its own techniques--crude in the Soviet Union, sophisticated in the United States--to make ttieir rule secure...
...But the moral dimension of Sweeney's crime will probably go unexplored, for an important part of our culture, represented most clearly by the media and intelligentsia, remains loyal to the "movement" even now...
...Latest in a line of novels of distinction...
...We cannot compete with the mass houses in terms of promotion and distribution...
...Thomas Powers has a continuing interest in people who structure their lives around a political cause and he is especially interested in the kind of politics that mixes violence with visions of the public good...
...Our aim is to bring good books to the diseerning reader...
...He betrayed his earlier pledge of nonviolence (long forgotten, no doubt) by murdering his former friend and John Starrels is a political analyst living in Washington, D.C...
...Yet, he cannot withstand the temptation to return to the ideological touchstone that has guided both his selection and treatment of subjects throughout the book...
...This, combined with his lively intelligence and Montenegrin charm, made him Tito's logical choice as envoy to the Soviet Union in 1956...
...With a country so rich in natural resources, talent, and labor power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority...
...Even that grudging admiration the Soviet leaders felt toward Tito resulted from their dread of Stalin, apparently unmitigated by t2 Tilt...
...As for the practices of democratic politics generally in the country of his "history's" subject, he shows only contempt...
...It is, I suppose, a mark of the times that Powers seems more puzzled by Richard Helms than by Diana Oughton...
...Obviously one could not let everyone know right away how extensive the intrigue against the First Secretary had been, so for a few more months he continues as prime minister and travelling companion-then finally he is consigned to the memory hole...
...For Zinn, as with Herbert Marcuse a decade ago (who Zinn fails even to cite), the culprit is the "system" itself...
...Well, one might say, in any case a vast improvement over what used to be done under similar circumstances in Stalin's time...
...First, Viorst refuses to acknowledge the simple fact that the 1960s, even in its social disorder, was not the special p r e s e r v e of the "movement...
...I f A People's History reflects many of the worst excesses of the liberal intelligentsia, its conclusion is almost quaint...
...Before 1948 Mi~unovi~ had been, like nearly all Yugoslav Communists of the time, a worshiper of the Fatherland of Socialism...
...Longship Press is a small publisher...
...Thus, having concluded that the 1960s represented one of the more triumphant periods in the history of liberal movements generally, Viorst ends with this qualifier: "But the lesson in the 1960s, I think, is that the country, given the provocation, could once again turn away from its political institutions and take its controversies into the streets...
...At times these recollections forcefully call to mind certain important stages in the evolution of the "movement," an evolution which begins in Greensboro in 1960 and ends at Kent State ten years later...
...Despite Zinn's insistent desire to make sure that we understand how much suffering has gone into the da THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1980 largely successful American experience, his main argument is hardly convincing...
...The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history...
...I The critics say: "...simply the leanest, most sophisticated and most incis...
...On the other side are the victims of unequal treatment...
...is a major theme of Francis Stuart's A Hole in the Head...
...Freedom of the press, including the right of opposition papers to circulate freely, he _ /[ TERRORISM...
...That the "liberal" intelligentsia in particular should recognize the silliness of this way of thinking is obvious, but of course they are always the last to know...
...ire novel on contemporary Ireland available...
...This is why he can share with us all kinds of"inside" information about the CIA--about the people at the upper levels of the Agency, about their alliances and rivalries, and about the matters that preoccupied, and divided, them--without finally telling us anything about the meaning or morality of either the men or their actions...
...Even so, a certain ambiguity c h a r a c t e r i z e s his " t r e a t m e n t " of both men...
...At the other end of the decade, the words of two student activists, James Mellen and Alan Canfora, typify, in their general depravity, the degeneration of the anti-war movement from an effort to criticize the Johnson and Nixon administrations in some form of civilized discourse into a movement bent on glorifying violence and degrading reason...
...Dublin Sunday Press...
...All of which leaves the ultimate value of his contribution to the "movement" and its ideals in question, to say the least...
...Viorst seems unable to make up his mind whether Kerr, the Chancellor of Berkeley during the "Free Speech Movement," engineered his own fall from power there or whether he fell victim to the kinds of overblown expectations which generally afflicted the liberal "empire builders" of the 1960s...
...AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUI.Y 1980...
...As the two books under review here show in several ways, the sixties are still very much with us...
...of c o u r s e ) - eludes him completely...
...With the help of Marshal Zhnkov, Khrushchev succeeds in summoning the Central Committee together and turning the tables on his playful comrades...
...In Powers's view, Helms remained silent about Chile during his congressional testimony in order to avoid answering those questions about national character which Powers himself is only too happy to take up: "If no one knows what we did, he might have told himself, then we aren't that sort of country, the CIA isn't that sort of secret institution, and I'm not that sort of man...
...Louis - Post Dispatch "An exemplary w o r k . . . " Chicago Tribune...
...To indicate every source of information in the text," he explains, "would have meant a book impossibly cluttered with foomotes...
...But even there Soviet officials, any one of whom some years before would have quaked before him, are told to treat Molotov like dirt--and they do...
...MOSCOW DIARY Viljko Mi~unovi~ / Doubleday / $15.95 Adam B. Ulam By both temperament and training Viljko Mic'unovi~ was especially wellsuited to be Yugoslavia's ambassador in Moscow between 1956 and 1968, that period of turbulence in Communist politics which might well have been a turning point in the history of Communism, and perhaps in the history of the world, had the West been more perceptive and resourceful...
...He is obviously very much at ease with someone like E.D...
...It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to so many of its citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased...
...I n Fire in the Streets Milton Viorst tries to d e s c r i b e , and discover the causes of, "the phenomenon of social disorder" that characterized the sixties by piecing together the recollections of 14 major " s u r v i v o r s " of the period...
...Zinn is not at all interested in reconciling those paradoxes of democracy that at certain times seem to bother Viorst...
...On his return he is greeted with embraces and flowers by his colleagues, driven to the Kremlin, and informed that he has just been fired as First Secretary, one of the main plotters being Bulganin himself...
...Order direetly from us -- we ship within 48 hours - - or from your bookstore...
...t h e most interesting Irish writer alive...
...Too bad...
...This political game, in which MiEunovi~ himself played such an important part, is the subject of this instructive and frequently amusing book...
...We can, however, in terms of literary quality...
...Remembering the drama surrounding the first black boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, for instance, E.D...
...AIlende received only 36.3 percent of the vote, he attempted to consolidate a revolution--without the support of the Chilean congress but with the backing of an extra-legal, para-military force...
...But he did a reasonably good job while in office, and nobody ever accused him of being dishonest or of consciously working against the public interest...
...Viorst is not always a n e u t r a l chronicler...
...That Sweeney was a disillusioned member of the "movement" --that "amorphous conglomeration of cultural alienation, political protest and racial unrest" (as one reviewer has called it) of the 1960s, not the least important derivation of which was a violent social disorder--might go a long way toward explaining his behavior: Violence and idealism in this case are probably not unrelated...
...Nixon, and yet rightly appalled by the excesses of the black power and anti-war movements, excesses that are a part of his conversations with, among others, Clark Kerr and Stokely Carmichael...
...D e s p i t e the value of many of Viorst's portraits, Fire in the Streets suffers from two fundamental weaknesses...
...That major historical characters, like Alger THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1980 41 Hiss, are left on of the narrative is not surprising, given Zinn's ideological predilection...
...Nixon, one of the unsung members of the early civil-rights movement, repeats his remarks on the eve of the boycott: "I told the people there, this is going to be a long-drawn-out affair...
...Name Address City, State & Zip [ ] payment of $10.95 enclosed ($9.95 + $1.00 shipping) i (no shipping charges, 2 or more books) [] bill me [ ] send as a gift - name and address (and a card) enclosed [ ] mail information on other I Longship books does not deny...
...Indeed, a number of the "moveTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1980 39 ment's" most prominent figures, like Tom Hayden and Stokely Carmichael, have taken on a kind of cultural legitimacy since the 1960s, as have their ideas...
...Against the reality of that desperate b i t t e r b a t t l e for r e s o u r c e s made scarce by elite control," Zinn goes on to say later, " I am taking the liberty of uniting those 99 percent as 'the p e o p l e . ' " Zinn is obviously much more intere s t e d in peddling p e d e s t r i a n leftwing interpretations of the American experience, present as well as past, than in writing a history...
...Through it all, though, he managed to retain his affection for the Russian people...
...Concerning both Viorst and Zinn, something else needs mentioning...
...The fir-st glimmering of his "vision" appears in a chapter he calls "The Socialist C h a l l e n g e . " There he a s s e r t s the idea that socialism will provide the United States with its long-awaited moral and political salvation: "There was an idea in the air, becoming clearer and stronger," Zinn explains at one point, " a n idea not just in the theories of Karl Marx but in the dreams of w r i t e r s and a r t i s t s through the ages: that people might cooperatively use the treasures of the earth to make life better for everyone, not just a few...
...That the very essence and conduct of Soviet domestic and foreign policy sharply diverge from thoge of the United S t a t e s - - w o u l d the author seriously compare the Attica riot with the Gulag Archipelago...
...by melancholy protestations that their now sincere affections were not being adequately reciprocated, and by occasional remonstrations about Yugoslavia's illicit liaison with the West...
...But it is Powers himself who is avoiding the truly important questions...
...Choice...
...A single misstep --whether a political blunder, an incautious phrase, or an unpropitious absence from Moscow--and a Soviet potentate may find himself instantly transmogrified, if no longer into a corpse as in Stalin's time then into a powerless potentate "emeritus...
...But one of his pre-1956 posts stripped him of any illusions about the nature of the Moscow regime: As deputy minister of the interior, Mi~unovi~ was one of those responsible for fighting the Soviet subversion of the Tito regime...
...It suited Tito's purpose to show himself not unresponsive to the wooing, while nimbly eluding the kind of Soviet embrace he knew would smother his country's hardwon independence...
...mentor, Lowenstein...
...For sharing in the antiKhrushchev intrigue, Molotov is named, a s a kind of sadistic joke, ambassador to Mongolia, the climate of which is rough on the old man's, and especially his wife's, health...
...Often enough, portrayals of the 1960s, or of earlier periods of American history, are debaucheries of the living record, and these books are not exceptions...
...The right to vote is viewed at best as a "diversion," at worst as a tool of cynical manipulation...
...that the United States neither prevented the election of Allende nor sponsored the coup that deposed him...
...And when ignoring the obvious proves too difficult, as for both authors in their last chapters, explanations are provided which rationalize a tendency to ignore majoritarian preferences when they clash with the received liberal intellectual vision...
...The second weakness is Viorst's distorting bias, best represented by his a p p a r e n t decision to end an otherwise sympathetic but reasonably "balanced" account of this decade by resorting to rhetoric about the dangers awaiting America...
...On the one side are the "people's" oppressors: the colonialists who steal land from the Indian, the slave owners who oppress black people, the robber barons who sweat the poor black and the poor white alike, and, of course, the establishment, which dominates the affairs of us all...
...Even his choice of "movement" representatives ignores a number of people, like Joan Baez, who deserve a good deal more attention, especially in light of what has happened since, than many of those people Viorst chooses to talk about (for instance, Jerry Rubin...
...And Sweeney betrayed no less the political causes which he once--again, with Lowenstein--championed with so much idealism...
...As Mic'unoviUs book makes clear, Russia's government is not--and was not usually even before the Revolution--a government in the proper sense of the word...
...Similarly, in Viorst's description, Stokely Carmichael comes off as admirably bright and possessed of a certain raw courage, but also capable of resorting to crude anti-Semitism when the occasion moved him...
...Those years " b e - longed" to a much more diverse, and intellectually more creative, group of people than is represented in the pages of Viorst's book...
...A product of this dreadful system, Khrushchev intermittently tried to reform it, but he did not, and could not, alter it in any fundamental way...
...Longship Press RFD 1, Box 124C Brooks, Maine 04921 I would like to order Francis Stuart's novel A Hole in the Head...
Vol. 13 • July 1980 • No. 7
