After 40 Years of Soviet Rule

...In an unpretentious British way, it makes sense out of a good many seemingly contradictory facets of the Russian personality, and does so with a cultivated style...

...However, in reflecting on why those relationships were so intense, it seemed to me necessary to look not only to prerevolutionary traditions, but also to the years of Stalin's terror when many tended to retreat into the closed circles of a very few trusted friends...

...It was in personal relationships among Russians themselves that I sensed an extraordinary intensity, as well as the richness, high degree of development and naturalness of which Miller writes...

...If the Soviet regime, in all its efforts to remake Russian man, has added anything to the national character, Miller thinks it is a "driving-power" that one senses now in the big cities and a "belief and trust in the future which has superseded so much of the old hopelessness and lethargy...

...Miller's analysis suggests it is largely traditional, part of what he calls the "undiscriminating energy and the undiscriminating concentration with which Russians go about things," their "old passionate methods" of working and of relaxing as well...

...Reviewed by COLETTE BLACKMOORE Former Moscow correspondent, United Press International This is one of the best descriptions of the Russian people to appear in a long time...

...At present, they are content that the limits of permissible public criticism have been "much relaxed...

...Affection and admiration for the people come through with special warmth in his fine descriptive passages on everyday life...

...All these advantages help make Russians as People a book full of insight and understanding...

...His contacts with the Soviets began in 1934 on the first of five "longish" visits to the USSR, including a two-year stay during the War...

...His associations with emigre Russians go back even farther, and his familiarity with the literature of and about the country ranges far into the pre-revolutionary period...

...The longer one stays in the Soviet Union, the more the traditional Russian qualities make themselves felt, perhaps because Westerners tend at first to think of the Soviet system as more of a clean break with the past than it really was...

...I felt suddenly removed into a world where personal relationships and values seemed not much changed by 40 years of Communist power...

...Many Western visitors to the Soviet Union, including this reviewer, have felt an unusual intensity in Soviet life and have wondered how much of it is traditionally Russian and how much, if any, is the result of the Communist system...

...In my own limited glimpses into Russian private life, particularly among intellectuals, I was always struck by how little there was of a "Soviet" atmosphere...

...On the political side, Miller judges that the Russian people are far from appreciating or wanting Western-style government...

...He detects a shift in recent years from extremes of behavior to a slightly steadier pace of life necessitated by industrial development, but thinks that "the Soviet methods of concentrating on 'campaigns' and 'targets,' of putting first things first and the rest nowhere, seem to derive quite as much from ancient Russian habit as from totalitarian organization...

...In his preface, Alexander Dallin speaks of Miller's "combination of prolonged exposure to Russia, a thorough knowledge of language and culture, and an ability to listen, observe, and communicate...

...Miller's central theme is that most Russian behavior can be related to two fundamental characteristics which seem to him just as dominant in the people today as they were in 1917 and 1934: "the strong, largely unconscious sense of community, and the naturalness and truth-to-feeling of individual behavior...

...Wright Miller is steeped in Russian culture...

...No doubt, he writes, they will continue to test the outer limits of their new liberties and take advantage of the individual opportunities offered under decentralization, but it is unlikely that they will push for a rapid expansion of liberty or demand a voice in determining policy...

...Both have their roots in the Mir (the old communal society), the Orthodox religion and the traditional Russian way of bringing up children with little discipline, much patience and an unusual blend of affection and detachment...