THROUGH THE HAZE OF YEARS
HERMAN, LOUIS JAY
Through the Haze of Years LEAVES FROM A RUSSIAN DIARY AND THIRTY YEARS AFTER By Piliriw. A Sorokin. The Beacon Press. 346 pp. $:t 50 Reviewed by LOUIS JAY HERMAN HEAD of the Sociology Department...
...Today, twentysix years later, he seems to have...
...No one else to whom he had shown the place could gel up enough courage to clo it...
...What then is the cure...
...By Bernard M. Bloom field...
...He dared me to ring the great bell that called all the sisters to assembly...
...Westheimei has written a very good book...
...Reviewed by RODERICK CRAIB THE MAGIC FALLACY of youth is "that magnificent delusion ot the young that nothing in life i. ugly," Every child i.s endowed with the magic fallacy as his portion of the human inheritance...
...Sorokin's insight into the Hamlet like moral paralysis of the Government in the face of unscrupulous enemies was incisive: "High-minded and idealistic, they do not know the ABC of the science of government____ [Kerensky] believes that it Is entirely possible to rule by kind words and lofty sentiments...
...devotion to the ancient homeland of the Jewish people...
...Bloonifield's unsuccess lul attempt to stage- a private invasion of the Lebanon...
...It Is good te> cling to youth and the magic fallacy of youth...
...Imprisoned by the Czar for revolutronary activity, he was later twice jailed by the Bolsheviks and, at one time, condemned to death before being finally banished from Russia...
...Sorokin was in a Bolshevik prison...
...This truly amazing "courage" i.s matched by frequent generalizing outbursts against "the British," a rathe) shortsighted depreciation of "the Arabs," and a more than ordinary interest in oral satisfaction...
...However, it is now merely (to phrase it in Prof...
...His most recent book...
...The first 310 pages of bis book, dealing with his experiences during the first five years of Bolshevik rule, were originally published in 1924 as Leaves From a Russian Diary...
...In view of Professor Sorokin's pre-eminent academic standing, however, it is disappointing to find that his straight narrative far surpasses his later philosophical judgments in trenchaney and value...
...Lenin, he found, had a face like "those ot congenital criminals" (and, interestingly enough, was "a dull Speaker...
...Iowa, is the author of many books and articles on Europe and the Middle East...
...The son was so inspired by what he saw in Israel that he wanted lo share his experiences not only with his wife back home (whom he sent daily notes on his travels) but also with the world at large...
...When Joe Albert meets his friend again, fifteen years after the main events of the story, he finds that Pershing Williams had long since been despoiled of Unreality of the youth Joe remembered...
...A good man, but a poor leader, in fact a perfect type of the Russian intelligentsia...
...But with all of this, the great surging spirit of Israel has left its mark on this diary as it will leave its mark on every honest and open minded visitor...
...The Republic of Israel...
...The primary objective in writing Unhook seems to have been to pos«' this question, and to answer it as Mr...
...He returned to Petrograd and the University, where he barely sustained life by supplementing the second-class ration card issued to "parasites" like himself with food acquired on the flourishing blac k market Less hardy colleagues died of malnutrition and the diseases it induced, Ol were dispatched by Bolshevik filing squads...
...How thin fundamental metamorphosis in political and social mores is to he achieve*] nnd whether Stalin is likely to play along, lie fails to say...
...This being the ease, "il is futile to try to stop these processes by building a cordon sanitairc around the Soviet bloc: since the germs of the disintegration are as virulent and numerous...
...At length, he was released through the intercession of an admirer...
...W M Joseph Dunner, Professor of Political Science at Grinnell College, Grinnell...
...His advice to the Duma to disperse the Soviet and arrest its members might have changed the course of history, had it been heeded...
...An even greater folly i.s to attempt to cure Ihe disease* by mutual aggressiveness, toughness, 'cold war...
...The University was gradually staffed with incompetents whose only qualifi c ation was then Bolshevik orthodoxy and, in 1921, he was forbidden to teach Finally, in 1922, he was ordered out of the Russian Soviet Republic on pain of arrest...
...Crown Publishers...
...All the subterranean forces of violence and tenor erupted , lo the surface Vividly, he tells how (arousing soldiers drowned in wine from broken casks in the cellars of the Winter Palace, where the Provisional Government had made its last stand, as the Bolsheviks ushered in their proletarian millennium...
...Lost Youth THE MAGIC FALLACY...
...Bloomfield himself...
...the techniques of love- instead of hate, of creative construction rather than destruction, of reverence' for life m place of serving death, of real freedom instead of coercion and pseudo-freedom...
...SOROKIN emerges from his account of these early days as a shrewd observer of political events...
...Westheimer does "It i.s good to know love slowly and to mature' slowly...
...the effect of this valuable, enlightening and often fascinating bonk...
...Prof...
...to be desired...
...The result is Israel Diary, an eye witness account by ;i man who quite obviously has never written before for publication...
...On the basis of the story lietolls in The Mnyie Fallacy, this is theright answer, but m the limited number eif pages available' in the novella form he has chosen, it is impossible for the author to do more' than examine one segment of Pershing Williams' life Within the limitations of the novella form unci of his thesis, Mr...
...To quote: "We visited the nunnery of St...
...ONCE AT LIBERTY, he promptly began publication of an underground anti-Bolshevik .newspaper...
...Despite his forebodings, he stoutly supported the Provisional Government, fn July, he became Prime Minister Kercnsky's private secretary The virtually unopposed lawlessness incited by the Bolsheviks and the mass shootings of officers at the front convinced him of the powerlessness of Kercnsky's government of moderate intellectuals, hobbled by democratic scruples about the use,, of force, to guide the fledgling democratic state through a time of unparalleled turbulence...
...One by one, he watched his cell mates led away to execution by the Chekists...
...Sorokin prescribes only "a basic- reintegration of our culture...
...Report From Zion ISRAEL DIARY...
...2.0(1...
...There is a report on Mr...
...At first, lie was charged with com plicity in an attempt on Lenin's life...
...Contemporary society "was already falling apart and would have died eventually (Vvcri) if there had been no Russian Revolution...
...a younj.' business man from Montreal, went to Israel to plant the first young trees of a forest in the memory ol his father, an ardent Zionist who had implanted in his children a never tiriiij...
...will be published by Whittlesey House...
...Louis J.iy Herman is a frequent contributor Jo The Xeiv Lender...
...Thirty Years After is but thirty-four pages in length and hence only slightly vitiate...
...He quickly saw in the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, set up in.opposition to the authority of the Provisional Government, the source of the infection which would one day ravage and destroy the democratic stab...
...Thirty Years After...
...There is some criticism too...
...1917...
...His judgments of the Bolshevik leaders were harsh and uncompromising...
...He felt like a "man who tries to stop with his hare hands a great movement of ice from the mountains" The November Revoution confirmed his worst fear...
...BLOOMFIELD...
...John the Baptist, run by Russian Orthodox nuns...
...retired from the arena of mundane affairs to some lofty philosophical eminence, wrapping his discussion in cloudy, sterile generalities...
...Westheimer's book, the story of Pershing Williams, who lost his innocence before his youth was gone, is told retrospectively by his somewhat younger friend...
...Then Meysels, Sr., said he would test my courage...
...Its History and Its Promise...
...Reviewed by JOSEPH DUNNER MR...
...SOROKIN'S grasp of the na tore of Bolshevism and how to deal with it in this period left little...
...In the midst of one crisis, the Prune Minister, on whose firmness of will hinged the fate of Russian democracy, remarked to Sorokin: "If I could only resign, g/et away from all this and retire to some quiet village, 1 would be the happiest man in the world...
...PROF...
...Sorokin's special jargon) 'cine of the four clearest manifestations of the disintegration of our Western seiisati' socio-cultural order, the others being the two World Wars and the Fascist-Nazi revolutions...
...At which, I gave the rope a brisk pull...
...when the Romanov dynasty toppled...
...By David Westhehncr...
...There are many pages filled with admiration and enthusiasm for the pioneers and soldiers of the new state...
...Joe Albert...
...He had written his last letters and was fully prepared for the end when he once more miraculously regained his freedom -this time under a new Bolshevik policy of seeking to win the allegiance of "useful" intellectuals of the other political parties...
...Altogether there is, too much talk about food and too little insight into the real problems of the new commonwealth...
...Thereare some vivid and sympathetic descriptions of Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jem salem, Galilee, the Negev...
...Mr Bloomfield is disturbed by the high prices in the hotels, the apparent shoi I age of good hotels, the greed of some of the taxi drivers (always ready to take the innocents from abroad for a ride), and the poo...
...The Cheka was soon at his heels and he was forced to spend five weeks in'a trackless forest near Arch.ir.ged with a single companion, living off whatever game they could catch Discouraged, he gave himself up and n tinned lo pi ison, where, be cihseivsi jocularly, he found the only oasis of free speech and "real Communism" in Lenin's Russia This time, he was condemned to death...
...182 pp ,$2..r...
...On September 24, he and bis wife crossed the border to freedom, "That night, after five years, we lav down to sleep without asking ourselves, 'Will they come tonight or not?'" * • «¦> PROF...
...Theie are a few exhibitions of poor tiiste on the part of Mr...
...The Mother Superior came running out, clucking furiously, to see what was happening...
...in the West (i e, the non-Communist portion of the Western world | as in the East, a cordon sail iter ire will not eliminate' them...
...Ztnuviev was "an extraordinary moral and mental degenerate", Trotsky was a "theatrical brigand " After the abortive Bolshevik putsch in July, he wanted to "execute a few thousand ruffians in order to save millions of Russians," but the Government again decided against the resolute action which alone might have saved the situation...
...manners of some of the American tourists...
...In Mr...
...t 50 Reviewed by LOUIS JAY HERMAN HEAD of the Sociology Department at Harvard and author of many books of the sort commonly refolded to'as "tomes," Prof Surokin is an academician par excellence He has also, as the present volume elotfliently attests, seen more of life, of rts tempests and its suffering, than the vast majority of men...
...Macmillan...
...IN MARCH...
...The- bei 1 tolled loudly and we went quickly on...
...Prof...
...AH the more striking, therefore, is the contrasting attitude evinced in his epilogue...
...In 1924, deeply-graven recent experience impelled him to come fearlessly to grips with the problem...
...He still finds it "as despotic a government as is known in the entire course of human' history...
...An to what u "sensato socio-eultural order" might be and why ours is disintegrating, we are referred to the author's Social and ˆ*ultaral Dynamics, which comprises four volumes, Fortunately...
...The present edition includes the supplementary section, Thirty Years After, a retrospective appraisal of the Revolution from the vantage of 1950...
...When that failed to hold up, he was accused of the sublimely inclusive offense nf participation in creating a psychical dmosphere favorable to attempts against the Bolshevist Gov ernment...
...moderated his condemnation of the Soviet, i c-gi nr...
...Sorokin was a Right Social Revolutionary member of tire Duma and Professor of Sociology at Petrograd University He was soon appalled by the wanton brutality uu leashed in the masses even by the first, democratic Revolution, and discerned in it the forces destined to destroy the Kerensky regime...
...Time, to be- sun-, has in no wis...
...Two months later...
...While in prison, he received a foretaste of the new Bolshevik ethic when he re .id newspaper accounts of speeches he had ostensibly delivered in the Constituent Assembly then in session...
Vol. 33 • April 1950 • No. 17
