Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR TITO I would like to correct some basic historical inaccuracies in Paul Willen's articles ["Which Way Tito?," NL, October 10, 17]. Explaining the differences between Yugoslavia and...
...Again, take a book which came out too recently for the Bibliography, but must certainly be included in any revision: Philip Taft's The Structure and Government of American Labor Unions...
...Looked at as a beginning, the Bibliography is a really good one...
...Sessions mentions Farrell's "Note on Literary Criticism...
...And the very fact of possession of total power, with all its privileges for the new Communist ruling class, explains ¦plainly the meaning of Tito's "pathological fear of blocs...
...The Daily Worker is certainly something to index, but imagine the fantastic amount of work involved...
...It is a bit disturbing that such an intelligent commentator as John Sessions should suspect anti-anti-Communist gremlins behind Professor Sutherland's back...
...not one replied...
...Given an understanding of the problems to be faced, perhaps we can have the real guide which all of us desire...
...I understand the Fund for the Republic is considering a supplement to it...
...For instance, I am sure that there are a dozen or more comments by J. C. Rich, whose pungent writing ranks him with Oscar Ameringer, Eddie Levinson and Charles Erwin as top labor journalist in my book...
...For a few weeks in the summer of 1954, 1 worked with the bibliographers hired by the Fund for the Republic, and built up their file of labor materials...
...Willen's correct statement about the "permanently critical economic situation in Yugoslavia" is only an indication of the profound economic incompetence of the Communist leaders—who are highly competent, however, when it comes to preventing any kind of true political democracy in the country they rule...
...As a complete job, which it does not pretend to be, it is of course lacking in some respects...
...Some sources may not have been included through oversight...
...Boston George D. Blackwood CORRECTION At the end of the first paragraph in the third column of "Where the News Ends," in the issue of October 31, two sentences in my article were typographically scrambled into one, with some damage to sense and meaning...
...In the labor field, the Hand Index to Labor Articles and Reynolds and Killingsworth are both useful, but have definite drawbacks...
...Willen's description of an "absolutely motionless crowd of 100,000 people" in Zagreb during the Khrushchev-Bulganin visit, and his accurate observation that "Yugoslavia's culture has become integrated with our own," show the real feeling of the overwhelming majority of people in Yugoslavia...
...However, I think that in attempting to review Marjorie Morningstar Professor Fiedler has let his hostility toward Jewish religious practice get the better of his literary judgment...
...For instance, James T. Farrell and Philip Taft have both attacked the Bibliography...
...William Henry Chamberlin...
...Although I spent only a short time on the project, it was obvious to me that the people who were doing the great bulk of the work were honest, conscientious individuals who were sincerely anti-Communist...
...The problem really is that it is just a beginning...
...Yet, searching through his writings in the Hatworker over a period of several years, 1 could find only one relevant article...
...During the brief period of my association with the project, I wrote to four labor historians to ask for suggestions as to where to find valuable material...
...It's hard enough just to be a Jew, as my baby sister used to say when we wouldn't buy her an ice-cream cone on the Sabbath...
...The first limitation the bibliographers placed was that the items listed should refer primarily to Communism in the United States...
...Now a bibliographer running into that title—and bibliographers do and must work partially by title—might well skip past without noting...
...Again, I included several other labor journals of real value in my perusal, such as Industrial Solidarity, the Illinois Miner, Labor Age, and Workers Age...
...Finally, Mr...
...Willen believe that General de Gaulle would have been the French liberator if the Red Army had entered France in 1944...
...to mention four, and I do not know whether they were deliberately excluded or overlooked: Partisan Review, Labor and Nation, the National Republic and Counterattack...
...Then the bibliographers set about to consult writings by Communists...
...could not be expected to realize this...
...Some of the best writing on Communism appeared in labor journals, but many are difficult to use...
...Willen asserts that Tito's state was organized "against Stalin's orders" and that the "Yugoslav Communists had taken power alone...
...Already this fall, I have referred two of my students at Boston University to materials in the Bibliography, and they find it helpful...
...But when he reproaches Mr...
...Cambridge, Mass...
...They are against Communism, regardless of whether it comes from Russia or is imposed by the present opportunistic clique in Belgrade...
...I feel that several magazines should have been combed for articles and were not...
...Although the Bibliography is 474 pages long, of course it does not, and could not, list everything printed about American Communism...
...But the facts are that the Yugoslav Communists started their resistance movement only after Stalin—in his famous speech of July 1941—invited them to do so, and that the radio broadcasts emanating from Tiflis in the name of "Free Yugoslavia" were a powerful channel for Tito's propaganda inside the country, Willen also fails to mention another basic cause for the Communist rise to power: the tremendous material and political aid given to Tito's forces by the Western Allies after the conference in Teheran and the entry of the Soviet Army into Yugoslavia in the fall of 1944...
...So the "groveling public recantation" of Albert Maltz is omitted...
...Does Mr...
...The Bibliography is really a selection of articles, and a troubling aspect of any bibliography is what to exclude...
...Long before this was announced, I had made notes on items which were missed or inadequately covered, and will certainly submit them if a revision or supplement gets under way...
...But Communist material is concentrated and accessible in most good research libraries...
...This accounts for the omission of Angelica Balabanoff, and most of the works of such men as David Dallin, Bertram Wolfe and Arthur Koestler, as well as of the AFL leaders fighting Communism abroad...
...Taft is the respected dean of American labor historians, and at least two articles written by him should have been included in the Bibliography and were not...
...It should be noted, too, that Mr...
...For one thing, I contributed around 200 items from The New Leader, some of them of lasting importance...
...These facts explain above all Tito's victory in the civil war in Yugoslavia with General Draja Mihailovich...
...If such a supplement is undertaken, it will be a real opportunity for Americans interested in a just and complete analysis of the Communist problem...
...Serious-minded people should now be prepared to make suggestions for revision in a friendly spirit, rather than hurling anathemas and thus giving room for reactionary elements to ridicule the whole idea...
...Los Angeles Shimon Wincelberg FUND BIBLIOGRAPHY In the October 31 New Leader, John A. Sessions criticizes the Bibliography on the Communist Problem, in the United States...
...that is all one should ask of such a pioneer effort in this difficult and controversial area...
...It was here that the bibliographers ran into their biggest headaches...
...An even bigger problem is presented by magazines...
...Yet from its title alone a bibliographer (who was trying to cover the whole field of Communism and not confining research to a narrower subject such as labor, literature, etc...
...New York City Milorad M. Drachkovitch WOUK Leslie A. Fiedler's dissection and pigeonholing of Herman Wouk's novels in The New Leader of October 3 seems to be the long-overdue counterattack from the Keefer-Quill-Airman camp for the high-handed way Barney Greenwald lit into the highbrow novel in The Caine Mutiny...
...His latest book contains a concise, perceptive analysis of Communist attempts to control the labor movement...
...It doesn't seem to have left any traumatic marks on the rest of us Jews...
...The passage should have read as follows: "Yet the treaty could have been signed years ago if it had not been for persistent Soviet negative obstruction...
...Wouk for having written "of religion without pain," surely he is making some rather queer demands of orthodox Judaism, which, at least to someone who tries to live by it, hasn't the slightest need of being filtered through the folksy optimism of Dr...
...In the same way the Soviet Government tries to claim credit in Germany and Austria for releasing, ten years after the end of the war, prisoners who should have been discharged after the end of hostilities and civilian captives who should never have been arrested at all...
...On the other band, anti-Communist material is scattered, badly indexed and often hidden by deceptive titles...
...Norman Vincent Peale or his Reform Jewish imitators...
...To sneer at Wouk because he does not give us the data on Marjorie's post-menstrual immersions, or because he has written about love "without referring to the sexual organs," may be a conscientious attempt to break some fresh ground, but it is bound to make one wonder what kind of creative writing they teach the boys and girls up at Montana State...
...Maybe I'm blind...
...Explaining the differences between Yugoslavia and other countries during the last war, Mr...
...Since 1 helped compile a small part of the Bibliography, I suspect that I am one of the "amateurs" or "anti-anti-Communists" whom he believes culpable...
...If Professor Fiedler chooses to regard circumcision as "bloody and barbarous," that, 1 suppose, is his own business...
Vol. 38 • November 1955 • No. 46
