Bookshelf Briefs
DALLIN, ALEXANDER
Bookshelf Briefs The Great Contest: Russia and the West. By Isaac Deutscher. Oxford. 86 pp. $2.75. Here are four lectures which Isaac Deutscher delivered during his visit to Canada last year,...
...Zdenek Fierlinger (or Quislinger, as his enemies called him), with all the machinations that exposed him as a simple Stalinist stooge...
...258 pp...
...and all the rest...
...The author suggests in all earnestness that the Soviet Union is not interested in "foreign conquest" because it does not any longer need the economic resources of other countries, whereas (in good Marxist analysis) Stalin's expansion was motivated by economic shortages at the end of World War II...
...By Josef Korbel...
...Hence, Khrushchev has "every reason to try and call a halt to the arms race...
...10.00...
...The new flowering, he assures us, will surpass the contributions of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Chekhov, as well as those of Lenin and Trotsky...
...The general thesis of the book, which is not markedly critical of Chinese policies, is that there is an overwhelming continuity of Tsarist objectives in the Soviet era...
...The Communist Subversion of Czechoslovakia, 1938-1948...
...Basically, Deutscher still sees Stalinism as rooted in "pre-industrial" Russia...
...It is of course an intensely tragic story, and the author makes no pretense of detachment...
...about the Soviet intelligentsia...
...A well-documented account, this volume uses Czech sources as well as unpublished memoirs and interviews...
...about the current ambiguity toward Stalinism...
...Seemingly oblivious to the effectiveness of totalitarian controls, he insists that Soviet society (who...
...Alexander Dallin...
...Princeton...
...Moreover, so compact a book must necessarily concentrate on selected aspects of the drama...
...Peter Tang, a specialist in Sino-Soviet affairs, is known for his volumes on contemporary China...
...Stalinism has now lost "its relative justification and its effectiveness"—a most dubious view both of its origins and its present state, let alone its past inevitability...
...it is...
...Deutscher ignores the current missile and nuclear threats, for all intents and purposes...
...This is the dramatic and disturbing story of Communist victory in Czechoslovakia, from the days of Munich across the war years to the total conquest in 1948...
...Here are four lectures which Isaac Deutscher delivered during his visit to Canada last year, slightly "updated" for publication...
...They carry forward the general themes of his earlier analysis of Soviet affairs—so brilliant, so frustrating and at times so infuriatingly wrong...
...Many details (for instance, Moscow's maneuvers at the time Benes was about to return home in 1945) will be new to most readers...
...Duke...
...and about popular attitudes in Russia (though some of his assertions sound rather immodestly dogmatic, particularly since he has had no occasion personally to prove popular feelings...
...Deutscher has some very perceptive things to say about the changes which the Soviet Union has experienced since 1953...
...The present volume, based on his doctoral dissertation, is an extensive and intensive study of Russian policy, before and after the Revolution, in the two crucial areas separating Russia from China proper—Mongolia and Manchuria...
...But then this hope carries him forward again to predict confidently that "Russia is once again pregnant with new...
...will acquire political freedom...
...With the modernization of the Soviet state and society substantially accomplished...
...Much of the story has inevitably been told before, and many of the same sources had previously been combed...
...Russian and Soviet Policy in Manchuria...
...But no matter: Deutscher has faith in the inexorable course of history, which must dialec-tically swing back from Stalinism to "increasing well-being and social contentment" and on to "growing freedom" for the peoples of Russia...
...It contains a wide though not exhaustive range of sources...
...The premise that a modern industrial state organically cannot stay totalitarian is of course contradicted, for instance, by the Nazi experience...
...And the "dialectical" picture emerging from the lectures is a pessimistic view of the increasingly degenerate West, and an optimistic one of the forward-surging Soviet bloc...
...Under the circumstances, he concludes that Communism is but "the current instrument of Russian policy"—a tool for the advancement of Russian national objectives...
...5.00...
...and many statements, necessarily brief in a lecture, have not been expanded and documented sufficiently to withstand serious questioning...
...Regrettably, the author also relies on several documents which are almost certainly spurious...
...Deutscher grants that the present "interregnum"—to him, a half-way house on the road from necessity to freedom—has seen socio-economic but not political reforms...
...This is the product of detailed research including Russian (though not Japanese) diplomatic archives...
...It need not be assumed that Deutscher will slide further down this slippery incline, for he is a skillful and seasoned acrobat, but surely even Deutscher has been a greater realist in the past...
...What clairvoyance...
...This reviewer must vigorously dissent...
...Korbel conveys a fine sense of the step-by-step advance of Communist influence and controls...
...to him, is an intermediate phase characterized by a "mixture of progress and backwardness...
...Unfortunately, he does not define his terms...
...494 pp...
...As backwardness is overcome, progress is bound to prevail...
...In his chapters on Mongolia, Tang leans heavily on Gerald Friters' earlier volume...
...There are some new details, for instance, on the Russian view of the Chinese Eastern Railway...
...No one could answer such questions better than Josef Korbel himself...
...Khrushchevism...
...The protagonists emerge lively and human— Eduard Benes, who much like FDR refused to believe, as a man of good will, until it was too late to do anything about Soviet moves...
...By Peter S. H. Tang...
...In his analysis of foreign affairs, Deutscher claims to see a new internationalism emanating from Moscow, but fails to define or describe it...
...The bare skeleton has of course been well known, but Josef Korbel manages to put plenty of flesh on it...
...Once, it is true, this touching faith is marred by the confession that "I am perhaps running too far ahead and indulging in what may still be only a fond intellectual hope...
...To him, it has a vital moral of general applicability—the Communists' use of democratic opportunities and procedures for their own ends...
...Yet perhaps what is needed now is a more detailed account, done with surgical detachment, and above all, an attempt to probe further by raising more difficult questions about alternative policies, conflicting evidence and variant implications...
...world-shaking thoughts and ideas...
...in his words, a story "of perfidy, of treachery, of broken promises and cynical disregard for truth...
...But, he assumes, the retreat of Stalinism is bound to continue...
...He asserts that Khrushchev is transforming the Soviet orbit into a "socialist commonwealth," and that his "paramount objective" is to enable the sphere to prosper in peace and equality...
...More generally, he seems to place the major blame for current crises on the West...
Vol. 43 • September 1960 • No. 34
