Book Review: Soviet Russia: A Review
| Date | 01 March 1947 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070204700200108 |
| Published date | 01 March 1947 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Book
Reviews
Soviet
Russia:
A
Review*
The
costliest
fraud
of
this
century
is
the
illusion
about
totalitarianism
fostered
in
the
western
democracies
by
totalitarian
propaganda.
It
is
the
basic
thesis
of
this
fraud
that
there
is
some
essential
difference in
kind
between the
totalitarianism
of
the
Soviet
Union
(communism) and
that
of
the
late
r6gimes
in
Germany
(Nazism)
or
Italy
(Fascism)
or
Spain.
Hitler
used
this
thesis
to
induce
an
attitude
of
appeasement
among
foreign
conservatives towards
his
early
aggressions.
Stalin
has been
using
it,
with
even
greater
success
until
recently,
to
induce
a
corresponding
attitude
among those
in
western
countries
who
consider
themselves
liberals
or "progressives"
or
"intellectuals."
The
effectiveness
of
Soviet
foreign
propaganda
has been
due
largely
to
its
success
in
associating
the
name
of
Russia
abroad with
certain
western
ideals
such
as
group
enterprise,
diminishing
social
inequalities,
social
services,
and
the
demands
of
labour for higher standards
of
living
and
greater
participation
in
the
direction
of
economic, social,
and
political
life.
This
association
is
artificial;
the
relation
of
Soviet
reality
to
the
ideals
of
western
"progressives"
and
to
the
concept which
they
have
been
given
of
Soviet
communism
is
the inverse
relation
of
"the
big
lie."
Totalitarian
leaders
learned
early
that
the
"big
lie"
technique
can
be effective;
the
rest
of
us
are
learning
the
hard
way
that
it
can be
profoundly
dangerous.
Western
illusions
about
the
Soviet Union
were
of
course
not
the
unaided
products
of
propaganda. Unlike
Hitler,
Lenin and
his
associates
undoubtedly
started
with genuinely progressive
social
ideals. They
combined
these
however
with
the
peculiarly
totalitarian
techniques
of
party
organization,
political
tactics,
propaganda,
social
control,
and
notably
an
outsize
secret
political
police,
which
have
become
classic
in
all
fascist
states.
Indeed
to
Lenin
with
Trotsky
and
Dzerjhinsky
and
Stalin must
go
the
credit-if
that
is
the
word-for
"inventing"
modem
fascism,
which
is
after
all
essentially
a
matter
of
techniques for obtaining,
consolidating,
and
thereafter
expanding
power.
In
retrospect,
it
is
not
surprising
that
where
these
totalitarian
techniques
conflicted
in
the
Soviet Union
with
the
socialist
ideals
of
the
founders,
the
techniques
won.
After
all,
as
Marxists
put
it
(in
other
cases),
techniques
of
social
organization
have
an
inner
logic of
their
own
and
are
apt
to
develop
according
to
their
own laws.
As
for
those
Russians
*RUSSIA
AND
THE
WESTERN
WORLD.
By
Max
Laserson.
1945.
(New York, Toronto:
Macmillan.
275pp.
$4.75)
I
CHOSE
FREEDOM.
By
Victor
Kravchenko.
1946.
(New
York:
Scribners.
Toronto:
S.
J.
Reginald
Saunders.
496pp.
$4.50)
72
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