Bookshelf Briefs:
DALLIN, ALEXANDER
Bookshelf Briefs Peace With Russia? By Averell Harriman. Simon and Schuster. 174 pp. $3.00. AGAINST THE rich background of earlier residence in the Soviet Union, Governor Averell Harriman...
...This is indeed one of the major virtues of the book...
...AGAINST THE rich background of earlier residence in the Soviet Union, Governor Averell Harriman reviews his extensive tour of the USSR in the summer of 1959...
...This volume is intended to fill the unfortunate gap of a systematic text on Soviet foreign affairs...
...Perhaps the most valuable part of Kulski's study is devoted to Soviet policy toward the underdeveloped world...
...I would certainly question the notion that the non-Russian parts of the Soviet Union are "colonial possessions," and that the non-Soviet parts of the bloc are "colonial protectorates of the USSR...
...His own commentary, uniformly informed, is particularly expert in these vital latter sections...
...He knows whereof he speaks and obviously does not like it...
...Yet, "at the present time I find no evidence that the cause of world revolution lies any more lightly than before upon the leaders in the Kremlin...
...457 pp...
...Notre Dame...
...This hook does not claim to provide a new interpretation...
...Otherwise, each reader will find his own points of agreement and argument...
...On the war years, we are offered a dozen policy statements or speeches by Stalin and Molotov...
...Most of the volume is organized in chronological fashion, but at the end the author wisely adds separate chapters on such issues as disarmament and the underdeveloped areas...
...Recent years have brought a substantial improvement in consumer goods, and "the most encouraging change since the days of Marshal Stalin" has been the lessening of terror as a means of government...
...Thus, on the ideological foundations of Soviet policy, we have a selection from Lenin's Imperialism, two excerpts from Stalin and one from Khrushchev...
...By Wladyslaw W. Kulski...
...This massive tome, full of information and excerpts from Soviet sources, takes its place alongside Wladyslaw Kulski's earlier The Soviet Regime...
...And as Oscar Halecki remarks in his sober introduction, the volume fails to give a balanced view of Polish-Lithuanian relations as well...
...Such use of traditional categories would seem to imply a set of relationships quite different from the complex and unique reality of toDay, One should also question his conclusion that "only" under the impact of national feelings do Communists come to dissolve their loyalty to Moscow...
...Given his continued commitment to world-wide change, we must "encourage the legitimate aspirations of the Soviet people for peace, freedom and a reasonable living standard...
...Harriman effectively debunks what he calls the "powder-keg myth"— the wishful thinking about an early collapse of the Soviet regime...
...And, Harriman concludes, we must rise to the challenge at home in the wide range of problems from economics to education, without fearing that many of these tasks "require public planning and investment...
...In Tarulis' view, Stalin, Alexander Kerensky and Alexander Kolchak are all Great Russian imperialists who could never acquiesce to Baltic independence...
...While his account includes no details of the now-famous interview with Khrushchev, it does provide a balanced image of Soviet life which coincides with the best-informed accounts of other recent American observers...
...Unlike the ex-theologian, Stalin," Harriman states, "Khrushchev the peasant devoutly believes in the Marxist gospel...
...He knows that much needs to be said and repeated to the American reader, and he does this with patience and expertise...
...Concentrating on the earliest years and even more on the events of 1939-40, he finds it to be "a story of broken pledges and broken treaty obligations, diplomatic duplicity, connivance between Communism and Nazism, application of force in international relations and the most naked and brutal imperialism," It is hardly surprising that, under the circumstances, the account is not the most dispassionate and that the author tends to accentuate those episodes on which the evidence supporting his thesis is relatively more plentiful...
...By Albert N. Tarulis...
...In the concluding part, some Western commentators are included among the readings—Barrington Moore, Philip Mosley, John Reshetar and Bertram Wolfe...
...662 pp...
...His approach and technique—here directed to foreign affairs—are substantially the same in both books...
...Random House...
...The particular device chosen by Alvin Rubinstein, of the University of Pennsylvania, is to offer the reader selections from Soviet documents, along with his own competent introductions and notes which tie the material together...
...In this book, Albert Tarulis, now with the Library of Congress, reviews Soviet conduct toward Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia from the 1917 Revolution to the absorption of the Baltic States into the USSR in 1940...
...The Foreign Policy of the USSR...
...The product of mature thinking and wide experience, this volume regrettably fails to tell us much that is novel by way of synthesis...
...It is a convenient way of getting an expert introduction into the field of Soviet foreign policy, and provided as it is with ample bibliographical notes and suggestions, it is commendable for college use...
...Unfortunately, we are told little about the 1921-33 period — the less dramatic and also less well-known years of an earlier "peaceful coexistence...
...By Alvin Z. Rubinstein...
...For better or for worse, there is no evidence of subversive movements of any magnitude among either Russians or non-Russians...
...Here are much-needed chapters of interest to all students of the subject, which the author has managed to present in striking, simple form...
...Peaceful Co-Existence: An Analysis of Soviet Foreign Policy...
...Soviet Policy Toward the Baltic States...
...Henry Regnery...
...The fruit of ardent and arduous effort, this volume should invite further thought and research on problems which amply deserve them...
...ALEXANDER DALLIN...
...We must promote exchanges and contacts of all sorts...
...12.50...
...At the price of sacrificing some variation and detail, Kulski manages to substantiate, through expert selection of telling Soviet statements, arguments which in less knowledgeable hands might have appeared unproven...
...6.50...
...5.50...
...Not all the available sources have been used and there is no bibliography...
...276 pp...
...Harriman finds hope in Soviet youth, with its indifference to dogma and its concern with a better life, which someday may assert itself...
...There is also no conclusion, which is regrettable since the book does not systematically inquire into Soviet motives, alternatives of policy open to Moscow, the place of the Baltic States in broader Soviet strategy, the role of the Comintern and the context of alliance policy between the wars...
Vol. 43 • June 1960 • No. 23
