Dear Editor
Dear Editor Sovietology One must appreciate the imaginative exercise of Zbigniew Brzezinski in handicapping the Soviet sweepstakes ("Who Will Succeed Brezhnev?", NL, March 19). His rules are...
...Sophia Michael Paleologue Zbigniew Brzezinski replies: In the postindustrial technetronic society, such phrenological and graphological factors may be taken into account, but the Soviet Union is not yet in that stage of development...
...Clearly he has been assembled, by the MVD no doubt, from a collage of faces-the best of each, it seems to proclaim...
...He has tried to hide the fact by wearing a full head of hair and disguising his wens...
...Woodcock The always excellent George Woodcock was in top form in his review-essay on Arnold Toynbee ("A Study of Eternity...
...As a (social) scientist he should be ready to test all methods, and I would suggest three other criteria he might take into account: 1. Phrenology: In dealing with the character of men...
...Wilhelm Liebknecht...
...Zhadnov was square-jawed...
...But look at Kulakov...
...in this passage, seems to commit a materialist's error, mistaking power for significance, or at the very least equating the two...
...Lenin, as we know, rejected Joseph Stalin and probably would have preferred Leon Trotsky...
...Like Oswald Spengler...
...His rules are impeccable (no sin there), but too positivis-tic...
...and Andrei Zhadnov, Georgi Malenkov and Frol Kozlov on the other...
...phrenology is as good a guide as most theories of psycho-dynamics...
...Woodcock writes: "Almost no attention is paid to such extraordinary phenomena as the British Empire (surely as important in its day as the Roman, which receives intensive treatment...
...Or perhaps Henry Kissinger might be given a few lessons and let his nimble fingers dance a bit on his next trip to Moscow...
...Paleologue overlooks one important tactical consideration...
...Indeed, if these are our measures of value, one might convincingly argue that the British Empire was more '"extraordinary" than anything produced by the classical civilizations...
...But if our ultimate standard for consideration is some other, perhaps more ill-defined yet no less relevant notion like a people's impact on the human spirit, then the British place in history shrinks into insignificance beside the Roman (not to mention the Greek and the Jewish...
...Here I must side with Toynbee against Woodcock who...
...Mohr, 1926...
...2. Graphology: The power of the pen is mightier than the sword and...
...it derives from the school of hard knocks...
...The historical weight of the Anglo-Saxons on world history, though asserted in the time of Brooks Adams and Rudyard Kipling, rightly finds few supporters today: The British Empire was founded upon the white man's burden and is now properly passing into oblivion...
...He wears glasses, too...
...At one time, this method of analysis might have been inadmissible, for it was said, by Bruce Lockhart among others, that most Bolsheviks were illiterate and all they could do was make a zh for their signature...
...One should find out who teaches the Pelmenya school of writing in Russia...
...He has a jaw like Stalin, eyebrows like Brezhnev and a head of hair like Kozlov...
...There is, after all, Brzezinski's law, named after our eponymous hero who, asked why he failed to predict the fall of Khrushchev, replied, "If Khrushchev couldn't predict his own ouster, how do you expect me to...
...however, have one nit to pick...
...Toynbee receives short shrift from academic historians because he happens to be a scholar who not only reads but thinks, a quality that unfailingly discombobulates our monkish professors...
...It is in the nature of politics that one cannot predict...
...Undeniably, in terms of the number of human lives affected, the amount of territory involved, the quantity of energy expended and physical changes wrought, the British Empire, like the Persian, Babylonian and Assyrian empires, is of major importance...
...As for Kapitonov, obviously this is Khrushchev redivivus...
...He has a pointed chin, and to emphasize his legitimacy he will grow a beard...
...1901...
...Both Lenin and Trotsky wore beards and had pointed chins...
...If the choice is to go forward toward the managerial conglomerate style, then Kon-stantin Katushev will be the man...
...See Daniel Bell, "The Technetronic Society as a Higher Stage of the Postindus-trial Society," Private Interest, March 1V41...
...p. 64...
...Pfander's fingers danced merrily around his skull...
...See A. Szondi...
...But...
...Given the Kremlin's sensitivity to my views, and to The New Leader in general, my selection of Kulakov, Kapitonov, Mazurov, and Katushev may have been designed to swing the succession to Demichev and Solomentsev...
...Malenkov and Kozlov were moonfaced...
...nothing daunted, nothing gained...
...If one looks at the succession of Russian leaders, there is a striking parallelism in their physiognomy, as if the leadership had, unconsciously perhaps, designated its successors by the laws of facial attraction and repulsion...
...showing that he reads...
...Notice in the photos: He is the only one smiling...
...I was particularly heartened by his comments on Toynbee's reputation on the nation's campuses...
...Denver Thomas Quinn...
...In all this, it must heed Szondi's parting words to his disciples-joining Bolshevik discipline with physiognomic insight?Faces, front...
...From the Romans we derive many of our most cherished institutions and concepts, the most obvious being the universalist ideal adopted by the Catholic Church and eventually secularized by the Enlightenment philosophes...
...all the others only talk...
...Leonid Brezhnev no longer eats with his fingers, using them instead to write with a pen...
...Was it not Karl Radek who said that feudalism was the age of wood, capitalism the age of iron, and socialism the age of paper...
...Moreover, Mr...
...Today, however...
...Take the winners and the losers: Stalin...
...Yet this is too one-dimensional, not dialectical, a mechanical Marxism lacking the creative force necessary to survive in this communications age...
...If the politburo resists change and opts for oligarchic petrifaction, it will pick Aleksandr Shelepin, who will drag the USSR back into the 19th century...
...See Wilhelm Wunderkind, Graphologie gegen Erkenntnis, Bewusstsein und Wissenschaft in dent Posi-tivismusstreit in der Deutschen Soziologie, Tubingen, J.C.B...
...now that arms have been laid down and bureaucratic criteria for succession established, penmanship is a significant consideration...
...I do...
...Hell freezes over...
...Khrushchev and Brezhnev on the one hand...
...Nonetheless, Szondi's law will prevail and Kapitonov will not be redux...
...so is Kirill Mazurov-strike him out...
...The great historians, as Woodcock correctly argues, understood that Clio was neither a statistician manacled to a computer, nor a cryobiologist packaging bundles of data and locking them in cold storage until, presumably...
...Thus we should instruct the CIA to obtain some handwriting samples and submit these to our graphologists...
...but history the second time is a farce, and Bulganin pinched girls' bottoms, an activity Lenin would never have indulged in because he was busy listening to Beethoven's Appassionato in his spare time...
...The alternatives are clear...
...These are important factors to take into account in applying our rules derived from the history of Soviet physiognomy...
...Marx, as we know, believed in phrenology...
...after all...
...I admit that Professor Brzezinski might have a difficult time conducting such an examination, but since the intelligence stakes are so high, possibly we should instruct our Ambassador to Moscow to take a few soundings at the next cocktail party...
...3. Physiognomy: Does not the phrase, "the face that launched a thousand ships," suggest the power of this approach...
...Who, then...
...Brzezinski sets forth two candidates, Fedor Kulakov and Ivan Kapitonov, as the leading contenders...
...Since then, note well, no Soviet leader has worn a beard or had a pointed chin...
...In fact, there was a Party phrenologist named Pfander, and Wilhelm Liebknecht tells us in his memoirs that when he first came into Marx's circle...
...so was Khrushchev, but he was bald, and that distinguished him from Stalin who was pock-marked...
...Kerr...
...Gesicht und Geschichte,"' Hungarische Zeit-schrift fur Ausdruck und Bedeutung, Budapest, 1908...
...Science must march on, and Sovietology will be a true science, not merely an art, only when it becomes interdisciplinary and marries the cognitive with the expressive modes...
...Nikita Khrushchev sought to capitalize on the original charisma by having Nikolai Bulganin at his side most of the time, beard and pointed chin upthrust...
...Karl Marx: Biographical Memoirs, Chicago, C.H...
Vol. 56 • April 1973 • No. 7
