The Kirov Affair

...We're not discussing the work of some In a work of fiction, Ulam is free to young thriller-writer making his novel- bring into play his immense intuitive istic debut, you know...

...Consider, for example, uses The Kirov Affair to poke fun at the the Cuban Missile Crisis...

...truth turns out to be considerably less In Adam Ulam's new novel, The portentous than we had been led to Kirov Affair, the 1934 murder of Sergei believe, even such a critic would have Mironovich Kirov, Communist boss of to grant that as a means of generating Leningrad, is the McGuffin...

...And it is also likely that Columbia or Williams...

...Well, as a matter of fact, about five years ago Professor Feuer did write f course, the Cuban Missile Criprecisely such a novel...

...The result is a porissues as the spiritual crisis of modern- trait of Soviet history that is at once ity, which would be unbearably tedious familiar yet somehow new and illuminif presented in a more straightforward, ating—a portrait that conveys an overscholarly fashion...

...It is obvious that Ulam is acquire Fingerspitzengefuhl is obviously drawing on a deep and bitter well of a complex question, but perhaps the personal experience in describing these best way to begin is by immersion in the academic quacks...

...And, in one especially the Germans call Fingerspitzengefuhl—a funny scene, he brings together a group sense of how things really work in the of Sovietologists asked to advise the Soviet Union that has much more in U.S...

...Ulam...

...we're talking gifts, his feel for how Khrushchev's about a book by Prof...

...50 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1988 In The Kirov Affair, Ulam carries his By presenting his criticisms in fictional vendetta against professional Sovietol- form, Ulam can let off steam without ogists a step further...

...It is called The sis is just one of many historical Case of the Revolutionist's Daughter: incidents described by Ulam in The Sherlock Holmes Meets Karl Marx and, Kirov Affair...

...It can refer to something and terrible secret known only to one that all the characters are trying to get man, Mikhail Kondratiev, the principal their hands on—like the statue in The protagonist of Ulam's novel...

...Would Prof...

...He regales his point is that in studying Soviet afus with Western analyses and conjec- fairs, all the methodologies in the world tures that are intelligent, plausible—and are useless unless one is gifted with what invariably wrong...

...As he recently of reputable, non-Communist authors...

...delegation to the arms control common with the novelist's insight than talks in Geneva—with results that defy with the computer's printout...

...From the origins of the in my humble estimation, it is one of Cold War to the Soviet invasion of the unrecognized classics of contem- Afghanistan to the current crisis of the porary fiction...

...But hold on just one moment here...

...regime, like the ex-Mensheviks...

...Since when he has Khrushchev exclaim to his when does a man of his stature sudden- Politburo colleagues, "I shall also say ly involve himself with popular fiction...

...he would delight in the fictional accounts a la The problem with Ulam's argument Koestler or Victor Serge...

...Rather, ment, but for entertainment...

...Let me invoke a fictiearly fall of 1962...

...another part of the bargain would have had His friend Y had an equal ambition to the United States lifting its protective shield learn, but his taste ran to the non-scholarly over Taiwan, the concession which Khrush- and melodramatic...

...It is an ex- pretensions of his academic colleagues...

...He shows us how bruising too many egos...

...He put it in Foreign Affairs: grounded himself on the writings of the Webbs and Sir John Maynard Keynes...

...to the Americans]: We offer to pull out After all, would Prof...

...According to the Dictionary of hind this murder, which ushered in a Film Terms, a McGuffin is a period of mass purges and terror "plotting device for setting a story in- throughout the Soviet Union, is a dark to motion...

...Not unHitchcock's Family Plot...

...And how did Sergei missing heir, for example, in Alfred Kirov really meet his Maker...

...torian London...

...TurnThere is a great deal of circumstantial ing to the American academicians, he evidence that the Soviet missiles were in- followed the studies of the Soviet govern-tended to be used for bargaining: Washing- ment, law, and various aspects of Soviet ton would agree to a German treaty on society which might have come from the Soviet terms as the price for withdrawal of pen of a professor at Chicago, Harvard, the missiles...

...But with Ulam the have been in a better position to understand novelist, it's another matter altogether...

...Indifferent to objectivchev hoped (over-optimistically) would in- ity, he would seek the key to Soviet politics duce Mao to give up Chinese plans to ac- in the writings of the avowed enemies of the quire nuclear weapons...

...the nature of Soviet politics under Stalin...

...Adam Ulam, the mind worked, how the Politburo director of the Russian Research Center operates, and how devious Soviet at Harvard University and the author foreign policy maneuvers can be...

...In fact, til the very end of The Kirov Affair, whatever provides the "element of dear reader, do we learn the answers to dramatic curiosity" in a film—and by these questions, and although a cap-extension, a novel—can qualify as a tious critic might point out that the McGuffin...

...John treaty, guaranteeing that no such P. Roche ever produce a black comedy weapons will be produced or stored on about LBJ and the intellectuals...

...What makes Feuer's Soviet regime, everything is examined book so interesting is that he uses the by Ulam, but with a novelist's rather medium of fiction to address such than a scholar's eye...

...In the absence of genuine the one between Lenin and Martov, or documentation, there is simply no way the dispute about "socialism in one counthat Ulam the scholar can make a real- try...

...traordinary fact that, to this day, no Some decades ago, Ulam expressed his one knows for sure what led Khrush- disenchantment with the state of Soviet chev to introduce ballistic missiles in- studies in his customary witty and pro-to Cuba during the late summer and vocative way...

...Gertrude Him- those damnable weapons from Cuba, melfarb ever stoop to concoct a his- each and every one of them . . . if your torical romance about John Stuart Mill government signs a German peace and Harriet Taylor...

...members of the Politburo eagerly seek Of course, Ulam's indictment of acaout Western analyses of Soviet af- demic Sovietology is not meant to be a fairs—not for purposes of enlighten- put-down of scholarship per se...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1988 51...

...all sense of Soviet foreign policy withSimilarly, Adam Ulam uses fiction out getting too bogged down in facts, to make some important points about dates, and footnotes...

...Soviet diplomatic history that he could In addition to treating Soviet history not make nearly as effectively in a more in a novel (pardon the pun) way, Ulam scholarly work...

...He would infuriate X by insisting that there were as- is that what looks like "a great deal of pects of Soviet politics which are more circumstantial evidence to one scholar easily understood by studying the struggle is nothing but the "merest speculation" between Al Capone and Dan Torrio than to another...

...Lewis Feuer, that great authority not just a plausible reading of Khrushon Marxism, ever write a mystery chev's motives, but the only explanathriller about Karl Marx set in Vic- lion that makes sense...

...But it is equally ob- collected works—fictional and non-ficvious that Ulam is too much the old- tional—of the remarkable Adam fashioned gentleman to name names...

...Which of our fictitious characters would ly convincing case...

...So of some sixteen scholarly tomes...

...Would German territory," we feel that this is Prof...

...For be- suspense and keeping reader and novel in constant propinquity, Kirov's murder Joseph Shattan, a frequent contributor, is the perfect McGuffin...

...is a writer living in Washington, D.C...

...Ulam, however, has about the Soviet Union, X, between roughly 1930 and 1950, read nothing but the works a different explanation...

...How to description...

...Most scholars believe tious case of two fictitious characters," that Khrushchev's move reflected a he wrote, "X and Y": desire to alter the strategic nuclear balance in Moscow's favor, but that's just a guess, and not an especially in- In his attempt to learn as much as possible spired one, at that...

...What is Maltese Falcon or the gem in The Pink this awful secret that, even fifty years Panther—or it can apply to someone after the event, haunts poor Mikhail who is lost and being sought—the- Alexandrovich...