Opening Pandora's Box

...Wolfe stresses the continuity from Stalin's time of the widely advertised "new" tactics of Soviet foreign policy...

...Finally, Wolfe has shown with great penetration the hollowness of the new leaders' attempt to counter-pose Stalin to Lenin and to claim for themselves the mantle of "true Leninism...

...While the members of the Presidium may diverge in their estimates of the best domestic and foreign policies to follow, they are all products of the Stalin system of rule and dedicated to the pursuit of the same goals of power at home and abroad...

...The basic goals and methods of the Stalinist era were set by Lenin...

...Wolfe bases his text on the supposedly "toned down" version which was published in the West in early June 1956, supplementing it with points which appeared earlier in the Belgrade Borba and later in 11 Quotidiano...

...Bertram Wolfe has given a masterly analysis of the content and meaning of Khrushchev's "secret" speech of February 1956...

...Why did the major downgrading of Stalin come only three years after he had disappeared from the scene...

...Drawing upon his long and detailed study of the Bolshevik party, he has thrown much new light upon the changes which Stalin's death or murder let loose in the life of the ruling Soviet party...

...Essential to the reader's understanding are Wolfe's vivid summaries of the political struggles, the planned purges, the ever-shifting terror which Stalin exploited to achieve a monopoly of power over the Party machine and through it over the Soviet system at home and the Communist parties abroad...

...Wolfe makes shrewd conjectures to explain the vacillating attitude toward Stalin's memory, the passing over of some of his anniversaries, the suddenly revived appeals to his authority in support of Party discipline and the primacy of heavy industry...

...Peaceful coexistence," the "non-inevitability of war," "peaceful paths to socialism" are refurbished slogans of Lenin's and Stalin's political armory, as he demonstrates convincingly, rather than representing a turn by the Kremlin to a genuine and lasting accommodation with the free world...

...Both his introduction and his running commentaries on the Khrushchev speech are indispensable to the student of present-day Soviet politics...

...He points out the ingenious manner in which Khrushchev's speech casts a shadow on his present Presidium colReviewed by Philip E. Mosely Professor of international relations, Columbia University leagues—Voroshilov, Molotov, Malenkov, Mikoyan—and appeals to the pride and resentment of the Soviet Army leaders...

...However, Wolfe refrains from joining in the popular parlor game of trying to identify "Stalinists" and "anti-Stalinists" within the top leadership...

...Since an understanding of the background, experience and psychology of the present Soviet leaders is a necessity for every student of world affairs, Bertram Wolfe's penetrating analysis of Khrushchev's speech and policies is bound to be read and discussed widely...