Book Review: U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe: Stalin
| Date | 01 March 1967 |
| Published date | 01 March 1967 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206702200151 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
142
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
and
what
they
can get.
The
reviewer's
view
is
that
the
progress
of
this
so-called
liberalization
will
depend
much
upon
the
challenge of
the
democratic
world
and
Its
continuing
ability
to
satisfy
better the
material
and
spiritual
desires
of
its
own
people.
Carleton
Unsversity
J.
A.
BOUCEK
STALIN.
Edited
by
T.
H.
Rigby.
1966.
(Englewood
Cliffs:
Toronto:
Pren-
tice-Hall.
vii,
182pp.
$2.25)
Ever
since
the
success
of
the
Amherst
series
on
problems
in
American
history there has
been
a
tendency
on
the
part
of
publishers
aided
and
abetted
by
university professors
to publish
short
compen-
diums
on
large
historical
issues.
This reviewer
has
always
classified
these scrapbooks
of
history
with
collected
arias
of
famous operas,
random
samplings
of
good
wines,
and
brief highlights
of
exciting
football
games-all
of
which
lose
the
aestheticism,
the
continuity
and
the sustained
enjoyment
of
the
unabridged original.
At
best,
this
par-
ticular
genre
can
focus
the
reader's attention
on
a
given
figure
or
controversy
and
provide
snippets of
diverse viewpoints;
at
worst,
it
is
unrewarding
for
the
scholar
since
new
material
is
rarely presented
and
uninteresting
for
the
layman
since
the
subject always
remains
illusive.
Prentice-Hall
has
used
this
approach
in
its
"Great
Lives
Observed"
series
in
an
effort
to
provide
"the
intimacy
of
autobiography,
the
imme-
diacy
of
eyewitness
observation,
and
the
comparative
objectivity
of
modern
scholarship.
In
the
case
of
Stalin,
autobiography
was
hard
to
find
since
Josif
Vissarionovich
like
most
Soviet
political
figures eschewed
revelations of
a personal
nature.
The
editor,
Dr.
T.
H.
Rigby
of
the
Australian
National
Umversity,
has
chosen
instead
some
standard
Stalin
pronouncements
from
Problems
of
Lentnism
and
his
Works
as
well
as
a
few excerpts
from
his
lesser
known,
latter-day
speeches.
The
thirty-six "eyewitness
observations"
of
Stalin
range from
N.
N.
Suk-
hanov's
fleeting reference
to
the
"gray
blur"
of
the
Russian
Revolution
to
N.
S.
Khrushchev's
more
sharply
focused
remimscences
at
the
Twen-
tieth
Party
Congress.
"Modern
scholarship"
is
represented
in
essays
by
E. H.
Carr,
Robert
H.
McNeal,
Robert
C.
Tucker
and
George
F
Kennan.
These
previously
published
articles,
despite modest
abridg-
ment,
are
the
most
interesting
inclusions
precisely
because
they
are
of
sufficent
length
not to
lose
the
authors'
frame
of
reference
and
argumentation.
Dr.
Rigby
does
not
wish
"to
tell
the
reader what
to
think
about
Stalin.
The biographical snippets
have
indeed been
judiciously
cut
out
and
sewn
together
to
form
a
crazy
quilt
rather
than
a
preconceived
pattern.
The
scholarly
appraisals,
however,
conclude
with
a
restate-
ment
of
the
familiar
"devil
theory"
in
Tucker's
overdrawn
analogy
of
A
Twentieth
Century
Ivan
the Terrible"
and
Kennan's
more
moderate
piece
on
"Criminality
Enthroned.
Dr.
Rigby
judging from
hIs
admir-
able
introductory
remarks,
finds
many
of
their
negative
conclusions
unacceptable. He
also
recognizes
that
the current
Soviet
tempering
of
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