From Pearl Harbor to Potsdam
SCHLESINGERJR., ARTHUR
ence of the provocative novel; the martyrology of Russian literature has grown by one chapter to sadden, yet also to inspire, those men in Russia who openly or secretly thirst after literature less...
...Certain textual discrepancies remain, Dr...
...From Pearl Harbor to Potsdam Stalin's Correspondence with Churchill, Roosevelt and Truman, 1941-45...
...The messages from Roosevelt and Churchill appear, they say, "in their original wording" except for a few documents available to the editors only in Russian translation...
...Noble points out, but these are understandable enough and affect phraseology rather than meaning...
...One sees, too, the breakdown Reviewed by Arthur Schlesinger Jr...
...On April 1, Roosevelt cabled : "I cannot conceal from you the concern with which I view the development of events of mutual interest The Neu...
...It seems to me that by treating Pasternak with a show of magnanimity, the authorities might have stood to gain more than they would have been risking to lose...
...And this volume finally makes available the full texts of the two extraordinary messages Roosevelt sent to Stalin a few davs before his death in 1945...
...Leader...
...The personalities of the three towering figures come vividly through the cables: Churchill, romantic, proud, magnanimous...
...but a great many of the messages have never been printed verbatim before, and the work provides for the first time a play-by-play account of the rise and fall of the Grand Alliance...
...Obviously, the Soviet editors could hope to gain little by putting out a dishonest version of the correspondence...
...author, "The Age of Jackson," "The Crisis of the Old Order" of the hopes of postwar collaboration under the hammerjblows of the Russian determination to miss no opportunity to advance Communism...
...the documents are available in American and British archives, and exposure would be inevitable...
...One sees the initial concentration on military questions, then the emergence (much earlier in the Stalin-Churchill than in the Stalin-Roosevelt correspondence) of political themes, until finally politics rises to crescendo and drowns everything else out...
...As these messages amply prove, it was all a good deal more complicated than that...
...THIS fascinating work was published a year ago in Moscow...
...7.50...
...On the basis of this check," Dr...
...Future developments will show whether the course they have chosen does not bring on them domestic difficulties as well as opprobrium abroad...
...Noble says, "our tentative conclusion is that the editors have done a complete and honest job...
...A myth has grown up in which the wily Stalin is depicted beguiling the trusting Roosevelt into "giving away'" essential Western positions, while the far-seeing Churchill plucks vainly at the President's sleeves and tries to com municate his knowledge of the wickedness of Soviet intentions...
...Thus, the Russians have printed Roosevelt's messages to Stalin, not in their original wording, but as decoded and paraphrased by the American Embassy in Moscow...
...Roosevelt, affable, optimistic, resolute...
...Stalin's messages, of course, have been translated for this edition...
...So far as one can tell, the editorial work is scrupulous and on a high technical level...
...these have been retranslated into English...
...Stalin, blunt, gruff, suspicious, but not incapable of the generous gesture...
...the martyrology of Russian literature has grown by one chapter to sadden, yet also to inspire, those men in Russia who openly or secretly thirst after literature less "saturated" by official cheerfulness and less guided by the Party's "infallible compass...
...The blow to Soviet prestige abroad is great...
...On a .number of points—• on the acceptance of the Soviet conquest of the Baltic States, on the Polish frontiers, on the transfer of Western support to Tito in Yugoslavia, on the acknowledgement of primary Russian interests in Eastera Europe—it was Churchill who took the lead in trying to meet Stalin's wishes and it wras Roosevelt who hung back...
...They would have been buying foreign good will at the price of some domestic confusion, but the Party officials are usually quite capable of dealing with uncertainty at home...
...Similarly, they have retranslated Stalin's messages, apparently unaware of the fact that the United States Government accepted as official the translations provided by the Soviet Embassy in Washington...
...Professor of history, Harvard...
...It contains, its unidentified editors state in the foreword, "the full texts of all the documents available in the Soviet Union" of Stalin's correspondence with the British and American leaders from 1941 to 1945...
...As for the text itself, it contains no great revelations...
...Dutton...
...G. Bernard Noble, chief of the Historical Division of the Department of State, permits me to say that his stalf has examined the volumes, giving special attention to the correspondence exchanged before and during the Cairo, Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam Conferences...
...Dr...
...It is, of course, a remarkable and stirring story...
...720 pp...
...The first question in many minds will be that of the authenticity of the publication...
...Most usefully, perhaps, this publication furnishes a refutation of the simplistic theories of the wartime relations between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies...
...But these variations do not affect the substance of the publication...
Vol. 41 • December 1956 • No. 45
