Collective Ways of Being
JORDEN, WILLIAM J.
Collective Ways of Being The Future is Ours, Comrade. By Joseph Novak. Doubleday. 286 pp. $3.95. Reviewed by William J. Jorden Former Chief, Moscow Bureau, New York "Times" THE TESTIMONY OF...
...Strangely, only 4 per cent of the peasants agreed...
...One of the eye-opening conclusions was that 98 per cent of the Party members queried thought that war with capitalism was inevitable...
...Don't you see that the street takes the place of a home, creates social excitement, and provides the moments of intimacy...
...He went to the Soviet Union, presumably in 1957, as "a minor bureaucrat from one of the satellite countries, enjoying the confidence of a number of highly situated USSR officials who were responsible for my visit...
...The chapter on "The Chosen People" is recommended to those inclined to accept Khrushchev's bland assurance that anti-Semitism does not exist in the Soviet state...
...Reviewed by William J. Jorden Former Chief, Moscow Bureau, New York "Times" THE TESTIMONY OF two-week tourists notwithstanding, it is not easy for any foreigner to make and maintain close contacts and friendship with a citizen of the Soviet Union...
...It's a collective way of being...
...Russia...
...Many were not...
...Throughout, he kept copious notes on his conversations and his experiences...
...He notes, for example, that a man who has known no other mode of living than sharing cramped quarters with others is not likely to feel a hunger for privacy...
...But, as he points out with devastating effect merely by quoting the words of his Soviet acquaintances, most of them are pressing ahead toward what they consider realizable goals, and those inclined to bitterness and opposition see no way to move except along the mainstream of the life they find around them...
...Russia is not bears and Dostoyevsky, not even communist conformity...
...It would be quite a different thing if Ivan Ivanovich could simply go down to the station or travel bureau and buy a ticket for Paris or London or New York for himself and his family...
...There are illuminating sections in this book on the Soviet man in the factories, in a hospital, in the Army, in school...
...We may properly wonder about the objective of Moscow's elaborate and continuing peace propaganda when so many of their own people apparently do not believe it...
...As one of the author's Russian friends said: "You must tell yourself once and for all that Russia is another world, another people...
...In each case, the web of control that surrounds him is evident —created by the management and superior authority, by the Party, the police and even "friends...
...It is the result of one man's observations, but they appear to have been far more extensive than those permitted most outsiders...
...The result is this book— one of the best pictures available to us of the "new Soviet man" and his "world outlook...
...Incidentally, all groups—again, with the exception of the peasants— had no doubt the Soviet Union would win such a war...
...Close surveillance—not only by the omnipresent secret police but by neighbors and fellow workers, by the Komsomol and the Party, by students, teachers and members of the collective—militates against revolt or even expressions of doubt on serious matters...
...In either case, they are inclined to tell an outsider what they think he wants to hear or, in understandable caution, to parrot yesterday's or last week's editorial in Pravda or Izvestia...
...This book is far from definitive, but it does not pretend to be...
...This is the largest single element in the population and, for those who look for an outpost of rugged individualism in the gray uniformity of Soviet life, perhaps the most hopeful concentration of skepticism of the Center and of the desire to be left alone...
...He may, indeed, feel there is something positively immoral about having spacious private quarters, about being a lone wolf...
...those who are not are likely to be fearful and uneasy...
...He spoke Russian, was able to do some traveling and, most important, established relatively normal contacts with Russians, sharing their cramped quarters, their food, their lives...
...Don't you see, that's why they are so attached to their street...
...This is not a contribution to art but to information, and in that it abounds...
...Finally, for the Soviet view of the war they feel sure is coming, read "War and Peace...
...It is not that the author found the Russians to be contented or satisfied...
...Don't you see, that's why you see groups of people on the street, in the parks, in the cafes, sitting until midnight walking, laughing, eating and drinking together...
...It will shake anyone who confidently assumes the indefinite continuance of the world as we know it, or anyone who thinks that one day soon the ill-treated, down-trodden and unhappy masses struggling under the Soviet yoke will rise up and sweep the Kremlin tyranny from its seat of power...
...The author warns against the error of transferring outlook or standards from one's own society to another as different as that of the Soviet Union...
...Anyone who has assumed that all contacts are good and that the flow of tourists between East and West is a good thing will profit from reading the chapter "A Trip Abroad...
...It is not a pretty picture or an encouraging one...
...One of the great merits of this book is that the author was able to penetrate behind this carefully imposed screen of reticence and control...
...One of the most intriguing entries in this volume is a report on a public opinion poll, taken by a group of journalists on assignment from the propaganda directors of the Party...
...But that is not the way it works, as the author clearly demonstrates...
...If you don't understand that, then you don't understand anything...
...Many of the supposed "friends" are deliberately assigned their task...
...It should be read by anyone responsible for or interested in preventing the title from coming true...
...So did 94 per cent of the students, 52 per cent of the intellectuals and 66 per cent of the laborers...
...This book strikes at a number of the more prevalent easy assumptions about the Soviet state and its citizens...
...The author feels, too, that more than 40 years of steady indoctrination in the approved line has effectively channeled the thinking and the responses of most members of Soviet society...
...If there is any notable gap in the author's gallery of comrades, it is the collective farmer, the Soviet peasant...
...He talked at length with many of them and thereby acquired an insight into their thinking and attitudes...
Vol. 44 • October 1960 • No. 41
