Breaking Away from Moscow

...Such reminders are much needed in this age of overt and covert Gaullism, when self-centered nationalism is again being admired and praised...

...Or should such cooperation be of concern only to the Soviet Union...

...The French professor, unlike de Gaulle, seems to believe that a unity which transcends Western nationalism, in addition to serving the West's interests, would serve to tactfully influence developments in the eastern half of Europe...

...They collapsed because the Soviets, having correctly calculated that they could risk intervention, ruthlessly suppressed them...

...They live in Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union, by virtue of the boundaries that divide the Danube region...

...This brings us to the problem of national minorities, usually overlooked but fortunately well covered here, particularly by George Schop-flin...

...These men cover many divergent topics????politics, (both internal and external), culture, economics, military matters, Party relations among the Communists, and more conventional relations between East and West...

...We in the West go on inventing all sorts of theories about these painful incidents????the Hungarian Revolution in particular????because our conscience is not clear...

...In general I agree with them, but I found myself taking exception on a number of specific points...

...All of them, though, seem to subscribe to the concept that "transition" today in East Europe means, above all, "de-satellization...

...It draws attention to the new nationalism, which is not very different from the old one...

...Even before Stalin's death, the initial thrust in the direction of de-satellization came from Tito in Yugoslavia...

...Western indignation in that bygone era was often biased and ignorant of the facts...

...And the editor, Professor Kurt London of George Washington University, has provided an instructive introduction that makes the studies "hang together...

...Gone is the sense of indignation that once called European liberals into battle against historic Hungary, condemning it for an over-zealous policy of "Magyarization...

...All the major popular revolts????east Berlin, Poznan, Warsaw, and Budapest????affected the entire satellite orbit, including those "untouched by revolt," the Rumanians, Czechoslovaks and Bulgarians...

...The participants favor the West's policy of "bridge-building" and "peaceful engagement...

...We still shy away from facing the facts squarely, not being ready to admit that it was the West's unpreparedness, its lack of diplomatic imagination and intelligent interest in liberation (as distinguished from primitive anti-Communist cold-war propaganda) that enabled Soviet Russia to keep half of Europe in bondage during the critical years of the post-Stalin era...

...Almost two years after they were prepared, the papers have lost none of their relevance...

...Collective works often end up in confusion????while books on current affairs have, more often than not, short lives...

...Although natives, they are treated as foreign intruders in their ancient homelands...

...But is silence over the fate of national minorities in the Communist orbit the only remaining alternative...

...its excesses were harmful, especially during the peacemaking that followed World War I. Yet one recalls it with nostalgia today, for at least the indignation was fired by liberal convictions...

...By contrast, one does not bemoan the passing of that other era of indignation????the revisionist propaganda, reckless and reactionary, of the interwar years...

...V. Burks, Stephen Fischer-Galati, Andrew Gyorgy, Wolfgang H. Kraus, Kurt London, John Michael Montias, Thomas W. Wolfe...

...Moreover, as R. V. Burks comments, "What is important is the belatedness of the experts in reading the evidence when it was already there...

...At the time of the symposium they also believed that, as a consequence of the Sino-Soviet conflict, the Soviet orbit nations "can probably make no further significant gains...

...Close to three million of them, nearly one-fourth of all Hungarians of historic Hungary, are classified as minorities...

...Decolonized ethnic groups in the non-Western world, many of them smaller than the Hungarian minorities of the Danube region, can nowadays successfully claim full national independence under the Charter of the United Nations...

...This is an important point...

...For example, I disagree with Andrew Gyorgy's contention that the East Berlin and Hungarian revolts collapsed mainly from an absence of "inspired and individualized political leadership...

...I wish he had elaborated further on the causes of this phenomenon, instead of merely ask ing, "How expert are the experts...

...It was harmful from the very beginning, and it ended in the greatest disaster of modern times...

...They are in the company of three scholars from Germany (Klaus Mehnert, Boris Meissner, Karl C. Thalheim) and one each from Britain (George A. Schopflin), Canada (Adam Bromke), France (Pierre Hassner), and Switzerland (Ernst Kux...

...But what really gives this anthology its feeling of unity is the high scholarly level of every contribution...

...The principal factors cited as contributing to the termination of "satellite dependency" are the internal evolution of the Soviet Union since Stalin's death, the Sino-Soviet conflict, and the resurgent nationalism of the satellite nations...

...Today the problem primarily concerns the Hungarians...

...One wonders, too, why the West is not trying to induce the Eastern European states to cooperate among themselves...

...They also believe that stabilization of the detente in American-Soviet relations would be particularly desirable...

...The communique issued by the Noordwijk symposium concluded that "the states of East Europe will probably remain incapable of developing cohesive cooperation among themselves, other than that which the Soviet Union is able to impose upon them...

...According to this view, the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 only interrupted and, in the long run, even intensified the trend toward de-satellization...

...This seems to be the consensus of the Noordwijk symposium participants...

...Western failure in this area is well illustrated by the fact that none of the major events in the European orbit of Soviet power????from the Prague coup to the latest Rumanian surprise????were foreseen by the experts...

...Will world opinion quietly condone the repulsive and humiliating practice of forcible assimilation in the center of Europe...

...Writing specifically on the theme "Eastern Europe and the West," Professor Hassner nevertheless cautions that "perhaps our most powerful weapon is what we in the West do with ourselves and to each other...

...Reviewed by STEPHEN BORSODY Professor of History, Chatham College This anthology of 141 papers is a welcome sequel in print to the Fifth International Conference on World Politics held at Noordwijk, The Netherlands, in September 1965...

...And several of the papers speak of continued national rivalries among the East Central Europeans...

...The Hungarian minorities????specifically in Rumania and Czechoslovakia, as Schdpflin's study indicates????are marked for forcible assimilation by their present majority masters...

...It is interesting to note that the majority of the Noordwijk conference sees the Soviet Union's long-run aim as the incorporation of East Central Europe into the Soviet Union within a "single federal structure...

...Eastern Europe in Transition, however, is remarkably free of such shortcomings...

...Half of the 141 contributors are Americans (R...