OBJECTIVITY' AND THE USSR
Counts, George S.
'Objectivity' and the USSR THE GOVERNMENT OF THE SOVIET UNION. By Samuel N. Harper nnd Ronald Thompson. Van Nostrand. 369 pp. $5.00. Reviewed by GEORGE S. COUNTS THIS BOOK IS A REVISION of a...
...For some reason difficult to ascertain, Professor Thompson excludes from his bibliography the two most profound ahd best informed books written by American correspondents— The Russian Enigma by William Henry Chamberlin and The Great Challenge by Louis Fischer...
...Scholarly objectivity obviously does not mean the acceptance of the average or median of a series of estimates as correct...
...IN EACH CASE the book or the author is briefly characterized...
...Also it seems quite likely to the present reviewer that the reaction of the junior author has by no means run its course...
...But as the years passed and he renewed his visits to Russia, he found himself becoming more friendly...
...Nor is it to be gained by any simple formula...
...And the revision is very substantial...
...Ha is the author of many books and articles on tha Soviet Union...
...The author, like many others, finds an apology for Soviet...
...Professor Harper tended to accept for the most part the view of the Webbs that the Soviets were developing a "'multiform democracy" with power distributed over the Party, the government, the planning organs, the trade unions, and the cooperatives...
...It reveals a vast amount of .erudition...
...They have sought to guard against irrational bias and distortion of the facts...
...In its first edition it was reprinted seven times and was widely regarded in colleges and universities as the standard work on Soviet government...
...Despotism is the correct word to apply to both of these totalitarian systems...
...Most recently, he and Dr...
...Professor Thompson, on the other hand, like many others of his generation, was attracted by the promises of the revolution and began his career as a student of Soviet affairs with a feeling of good will and optimism...
...The attitudes of the authors toward the Soviet Union since the Revolution reflect a common American experience...
...He also assumes incorrectly that the Pole* sent to the camps following the invasion of the Red Army in the autumn of 1039 were all liberated under the provisions of the Stalin-Sikorsky agreement...
...practice in the doctrine that the Russian people are incapable of self-government and must pass through a long period of tutelage under the direction of the all-wise members of the Politburo and the Central Committee...
...No one who has read Mr...
...Hitler were pure counterfeit, seem to be blinded by the synthetic effulgence of Stalin...
...Then he proceeds to say that "children will not betray their father, and, being children, they will lovingly accept from him any correction of their errors...
...Professor Harper was an American pioneer in the study of Russia...
...In his estimate of the population of these institutions in 1945 the junior author rejects the conclusions of both extremes and accepts those of the "cautious neutrals...
...While still in his early twenties he decided to devote his life as a scholar to understanding that strange civilization reaching from the Baltic Sea to the Bering Straits...
...This is of course helpful to the reader, provided the notations are relevant and illuminating...
...The Government of the Soviet Union is a good and useful book, but it is not the definite study that is so badly needed in America today...
...Shub's book could truthfully apply such a term to it...
...Professor Thompson has professedly endeavored to abandon this conception throughout and to put in its stead the idea of the "Soviet leviathan" with all phases of society coordinated and directed by the Party...
...THE ACHIEVEMENT OF "objectivity," however, is not easy...
...Let us hope that Professor Thompson will achieve this goal in the next edition...
...Professor Harper, with his commitment to liberal values, was at first outraged by the Bolsheviks and did everything in his power to expose the dangers inherent in their doctrines and methods...
...The junior author, while recognizing that the party enjoys a monopoly of political power and is at the same time monolithic in its organization, still speaks of "mass participation" as possessing a signicant measure of validity...
...The revision was undertaken and serried to completion entirely by the junior author, a former student of Professor Harper...
...Bullitt's The Great Globe Itself is "an alarmist account of Soviet plans for world conquest...
...The difficulty is >eteafty revealed in the treatment of the labor camps...
...Dark Side of the Moon is called "very depressing...
...The two editions differ fundamentally in the over-all conception of the Soviet system...
...By revoking the citizenship of the latter and placing them in exile rather than in the camps, for which no authority is given, he reduces the population of the camps, to approximately twoVnd one-half million "actual Soviet citizens...
...Perhaps the most extraordinary notation of all is the author's characterization of David Shub's Lenin as "scholarly though one-sided muckraking by a Menshevik opponent...
...The important thing is its quality in terms of truth...
...Eastman's Artists in Uniform is an "unfavorable account of the impact of "bureaucracy' on literature...
...The authors have canvassed the literature in^buth English and Russian relevant to their subject...
...As a matter of fact, whether a study is "proSoviet" or "anti-Soviet" in its conclusions is entirely irrelevant to scholarship...
...By this method he arrives at a "total figure of about six million" persons, of whom two and one-half million are German and Japanese prisoners of war and one million "members of the five minor Soviet nationalities transplanted to the east during World War II...
...some frontier, and not at a point equidistant from all sides...
...One is reminded here of Dostoevsky's contention that civil liberty would be established in Russia "on an integral scale, {more complete than anywhere else in me world...
...He saw this sublime achievement resting "not upon a written sheet of paper, but upon the children's affection of the people for the Tsar, as their father...
...It is clear that no book could be "scholarly" and "muckraking" at the •same time...
...In the opinion of the reviewer, "participation" that does not involve the sharing of power is utterly spurious...
...THE CENTRAL WEAKNESS of the study is to be found at this point...
...It seems quite likely that if the senior author had lived on into the postwar hears, he would have had a similar experience...
...It is the duty of a scholar to appraise a study in terms of its thoroughness and competence, not in terms of the consensus of opinion of any group...
...If we change one word in this quotation, if we change "Tsar" to "Stalin," we have the controlling principle of the Soviet political order...
...In this admittedly difficult matter of the labor camps Forced Labor in Soviet Russia by Dallin and Nicolaevsky is clearly of more value than all the other studies put together...
...The number of chapters has been increased from twelve to fifteen, every section has been worked over, the account has been brought down to 1948, an annotated bibliography of 250 titles has been added, and the text has been enlarged by fifty per cent...
...George S. Counts is professor of education at Toachara College, Columbia University...
...Many who could see that the ja ja elections of...
...Any work on Soviet government should make this entirely clear...
...Muckraking is the antithesis of scholarship, since by definition it involves the making of "sweeping and unjust charges...
...Nucia Lodge wrote "The Country of the Blind...
...Thus the study by Dallin and Nicolaevsky is disposed of by the words: "Two Mensheviks press their charges against the labor camp system...
...This suggests a final feature of the book—the bibliography...
...He visited Russia many times both before and after the Revolution and taught Russian language and institutions at the University of Chicago from 1905 to the time of his death in 1943...
...He seems to attribute such qualities even to the do da elections...
...At the same time he includes Soviet Pouter by Hewlett Johnson—a work of sheer fantasy...
...The frontier of knowledge is always on...
...The volume is scholarly in method...
...A careful reading of the book, however, shows that he has not succeeded fully in achieving this transformation...
...Chamberlin's Rinsw'r Iron Age is "the 'new socialist offensive' (1929-34) as seen by a disillusioned journalist...
...It is comprehensive and thorough...
...Here is a valuable addition to the first edition...
...Reviewed by GEORGE S. COUNTS THIS BOOK IS A REVISION of a book of the same title written by Samuel N. Harper and published in December, 1937...
...Thus he seems to think the fact meritorious that of the two-hundred and fifty titles "some 10% are official Soviet productions, 20% are otherwise classifiable as 'pro-Soviet,' 20% are classifiable as 'anti-Soviet,' and the remaining 50% are ¦ either * 'neutral^x^objective,' or reasonable facsimiles thereof...
...Unfortunately in not a few instances they are calculated to turn the reader against the book by meaningless or ad hominem references...
...They have also striven for objectivity, as every scholar should...
...He states in his preface, however, that in the process of revising the book he found himself becoming more and more critical...
...One really good study is worth any number of poor ones...
...All of this is admirable...
...Yet Professor Thompson seems to have been governed here too by the idea that truth lies in a careful balancing of friendly against hostile books...
Vol. 33 • March 1950 • No. 9
