Harrison Salisbury Sums Up
WHITNEY, TOM
Harrison Salisbury Sums Up An American in Russia. By Harrison E. Salisbury. Harper. 328 pp. $4.00. Reviewed by Tom Whitney Associated Press news analyst; Moscow correspondent, 1944-53 Harrison...
...And justice for all...
...For an America which destroys copies of Pravda lest they make Communists out of Americans, an America which hesitates for months over admitting a delegation of Russian Communist "student editors" lest they undermine American security, cannot be at the same time a lighthouse of liberty to brighten the hopes of Salisbury's architect from Leningrad or men of good will anywhere in the world...
...It's about Russia, yes, but from an American perspective...
...I had no good-byes to say to Russians, for, although I had come to know many people, I had made no Russian friends during five long years...
...The second, described in his current book, covered the period from February 1949 to September 1954, when he was the New York Times correspondent...
...This is the thread which runs through the Salisbury book and distinguishes it from the other books written so far about Russia...
...There are several possible different hypotheses of a general scheme for the "exit-Stalin" end game...
...This was the architect whom I had met in Leningrad on that winter's night so long ago, the man who was looking for a new 'truth' and who found only propaganda on the American broadcast...
...Salisbury proceeds to develop the theme that all Stalin's senior underlings were in serious danger...
...All this gave Salisbury the equipment to write a unique book about the Soviet Union...
...Each of them satisfies the few known facts...
...As Salisbury points out, the truth will probably never be known...
...In particular, he saw certain places like Yakutsk and Birobidjan in Siberia which no other foreigner has visited in many years...
...Salisbury learned Russian during his second stay in the USSR and used it in conversation, in his coverage of the Soviet press and other news, and in observation of Russian life...
...This, he considers, was the ultimate meaning of the "doctors' plot" announced on January 13, 1953...
...His long background as a newsman in the field of foreign news had given him a vast fund of information on Soviet affairs...
...He makes his case for Beria and for Molotov, to some extent for Mikoyan...
...Salisbury lakes one of them...
...He presents as a general picture the concept that Stalin had decided to do away with all his underlings in the Politburo save perhaps old Voroshilov...
...And this is precisely what he has done...
...It takes a different view from the previous three...
...Any account of the events preceding and following Stalin's death which attempts to tell what actually went on behind the scenes is a hypothesis...
...For it is more than just a fascinating story...
...Or else, perhaps, by a good fortune almost too good to believe in, they had a very lucky break and Stalin died...
...Not only Beria was to be liquidated, but also Molotov, Malenkov, Bulganin, Khrushchev, Mikoyan, Kaganovich the entire Old Guard...
...could it be known, it would turn out to be the most fantastic network of plot and counterplot of modern times...
...It moves swiftly from the start of his assignment, with Salisbury aboard the Red Arrow Express from Leningrad to Moscow, right to the finish at Vnukovo Airdrome outside Moscow as he boarded his plane to depart for good...
...This is the fourth discussion of the writings of Harrison E. Salisbury published in The New Leader since Stalin's death...
...During his second sojourn, he visited Leningrad, Stalingrad, Odessa, Soviet Georgia, Central Asia, Siberia and the Volga region...
...Describing his departure from Moscow in September 1954, Salisbury writes: "There was only one memory which concerned me seriously as I boarded the Aeroflot plane at Vnukovo Field and left Russia for the last time...
...I hoped that, if ever he should tune in on the Voice of America again, he would hear the real voice of the real America...
...Moscow correspondent, 1944-53 Harrison Salisbury served two tours of duty in the Soviet Union as a foreign correspondent...
...This requires a highly imaginative approach...
...One nation indivisible...
...For the others, it must be said, the proofs are not abundant...
...Better than any other book yet written, it pulls together into an intelligible pattern the complex events and intrigues of the end of the Stalin era and the beginning of the new one...
...The voice of freedom...
...But one Russian lingered in my mind...
...He read steadily about the Soviet Union before and during his stay, in both English and Russian sources...
...Salisbury traveled extensively in the USSR on both trips...
...Here was a man who had long since learned that there were worse things on earth than death...
...Previous appraisals by Eugene Lyons and Louis Jay Herman appeared on March 30 and April 13, 1953...
...Who is to decide, for instance, whether Nikita Khrushchev was the target of the Kiev trial of November 1952, as Salisbury assumes, or its initiator...
...Outmost recent piece, in which Mark Vishniak reviewed Salisbury's special series in the New York Times, appeared last October 18...
...It takes the known and partly known facts, makes certain suppositions, and then attempts to deduce from this a consistent story...
...But, Salisbury believes, Stalin's underlings did not wait for their liquidation but took action...
...This is the conclusion of the book...
...An American in Russia is a personal account of Salisbury's second visit to the Soviet Union...
...It is a comment aimed not particularly at Voice of America programs but at the United States as a whole...
...It is well written...
...The first of these was in 1944, when he represented the United Press...
...Any reader with the slightest interest in Soviet affairs will find it hard to put the book down...
...It is a fairly comprehensive account of political events in the USSR, interlaced with Salisbury's own interpretation of those events and his observations of the Soviet Union inside the capital and outside it...
...If now he and men like him could only learn that there were better things in life, then the stockpiles of A-bombs would not cast such long shadows...
...Of liberty...
Vol. 38 • March 1955 • No. 12
