Is This Russia?

RUSSIA: MENACE OR PROMISE, by Verao Dean (Holt, $2.00)

WHY THEY BEHAVE LUCE RUSSIANS, by John Fischer (Harper, $2.75)

STALIN MUST HAVE PEACE, by F.dgar Snow (Random House, $2.50)

HERE are throe more books on Russia, all of them short and all very readable. In the long run, if the reader will absorb it, the most important is that of Vera Micheles Dean. It is the least argumentative, because, as most serious students of Russia will recognize, it is the nearest to an accepted statement of exactly how things are in the Soviet Union. I can see no bias of any kind, only a highly intelligent exposition of actual facts; and it covers, in turn, all the main questions on which the American public needs to be accurately informed. The best that I can do is to refer the reader to the book itself and to advise him to read and reread it.

This book is only a part of the service that Mrs. Dean, in her unremitting work for the Foreign Policy Association, is contributing to the cause of understanding and peace. One must pay a tribute to those accessions to American citizenship from Russia who, from the standpoint of those principles of democracy in which they and we believe, can write about their old country with such objectivity and fidelity.

In the middle of the book it seemed to me that some of Mrs. Doan’s suggestions as to ways out of our present world confusion, especially those on economic issues, were not very clearly thought out. But I cannot too strongly recommend to general attention the advice contained in her concluding pages. The way to meet the challenge of revolutionary ideas is not to run away from them or to try to crush them by force, but to set ourselves to remove the causes of revolution. I often wonder why those who claim to be champions of democracy have so little faith in its virtue and strength. We in England are no longer afraid of the Russian Revolution because our public is much belter informed about it and knows we can stand up to it, especially since the great trial of strength in the General Strike of 1926. I like those lines of ihe “Marseillaise” which run: —

Liberté, Liberté chérie.
Combats avec tes défenseurs.

There is quite a lot that democracy can and should be free to do in its own defense.

John Fischer’s book, though it is entertaining and contains some useful comments, is on a much lower level. It is entitled: “Why They Behave Like Russians”; but if Mr. Fischer knew more about Russia, he might have called it: “Why the Russians Don’t Behave Like Russians”; and he might have given as the answer: “Because they are made to, when they are talking to us.” Gareth Vaughan Jones, that brilliant young Welsh investigator of Russia who was killed by Chinese bandits the day before he would have been thirty, would put a polite question and receive the official answer; then both Welshman and Russian, both questioner and questioned, would smile, and after that a real conversation would begin; but then Gareth had perfect Russian and knew Russia well. Mr. Fischer has boosted his credentials, with the result that they read rather thin. It is true that two months in the Ukraine without the language and in an escorted party is three weeks more than William L. White, also without the language, had under a closer escort; but as usual, short knowledge leads to confident judgments.

I consider that Mr. Fischer had no right whatever to try to scare the American public with a menace that Russia’s program of heavy industry carries an implication of an attack on the United States. It was only this program, starting almost from scratch, that made it possible for Russia as our ally, with plentiful Allied help, to meet Hitler in the field, and it was American industry that, before all other things, gave us the victory. Russia has now to start again from the beginning; and, as has been pointed out conclusively by Edgar Snow, to reach the point where America now stands will take Russia at least fifteen years. But heavy industry has a far more immediate task in Russia of today. Nothing else can bring the country even approximately nearer to present living conditions in America and repair ihe immense ruin to which Mr. Fischer bears convincing testimony.

Mr. Fischer’s contribution is, of course, in no way to be compared to Mr. Snow’s. Mr. Snow is much more controversial than Mrs. Dean, but for that very reason his appeal to our attention is more immediate. Mr. Snow is answering others — a whole chorus of them, and many of no more authority than Mr. Fischer. He is frankly “replying for Russia” — that is, for the real Russia — more effectively than is ever done by Mr. Molotov. He is reasonable and restrained, and when he is forcible, it is because he is meeting argument with argument. ,

For instance, Mr. Snow at last puts in its proper perspective the speech, to which Mr. Fischer rather casually alludes, made by Stalin in February, l946, on the program of his government before an election. Stalin, as he said in the clearest way to Elliott Roosevelt, knows he cannot call on his people for another war, and that in any country a war is unthinkable without the support of the people. The universal desire of his people is for some early restoration of tolerable living conditions, for at present Russia is still something very like a rubbish heap. The road to better living conditions, as before the war, lies through heavy industry, and Stalin has braced his people to a long, weary task of peaceful construction. It is a poor thing if any mention of the word “steel ” in Russian plans is to raise a shudder in the American reader and cause talk of preventive wars with atomic bombs. That is the atmosphere that makes for war. Stalin, as Mr. Snow has shown, needs peace more imperatively than we.

Mr. Snow faithfully lays a heavy hand on the initial and most serious cause of misunderstanding between the two countries when he speaks (page 50) of the “incredibly blockheaded treatment of American correspondents" in Russia. As Harrison Salisbury has put it in his illuminating Russia on the Way, this is a central infection that poisons outside relations at the source. This is what gives the newspaper chains outside Russia every chance of distorting the news. “A little study, and Russia is no riddle,” writes Mr. Snow, challenging the flimsiest of Mr. Churchill’s epigrams. Mr. Snow suggests (page 70) that Russia may have to become a compulsory study in America, and it is in that direction that this country is already rapidly moving, for since Pearl Harbor the number of colleges offering this study has risen from 19 to 112. Mr. Snow’s book contains a whole number of simple verities which, with study, will become evident. They are “ the other side of the question,” and they are just those which have not been understood here. By putting them before us, both he and his publishers have done a great and courageous service.