Book Reviews : Russians as People. Wright Millar. Phœnix House. 25s
| DOI | 10.1177/004711786100200311 |
| Date | 01 April 1961 |
| Published date | 01 April 1961 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
187
the
relative
merits
of
the
diplomats
of
the
United
States,
the
U.S.S.R.,
France
and
Great
Britain.
American
diplomacy
is
&dquo; forthright,
generous,
intelligent
and
powerful,
but
it is
handicapped
by
a
tradition
of
isola-
tionism,
by
repugnance
to
any
form
of
colonialism,
by
a
national
tendency
to
impatience
and
by
a
belief
that
all
problems
must
be
soluble
while
with
some
it
is
simply
a
question
of
true
co-existence
&dquo;.
Soviet
diplomacy
also
has
an
historical
tradition
of
isolation,
operating
on
a
broad
front
with
economic
policy
as
an
adjunct,
but
they
have
no
visible
constitutional
problems,
and
certainly
no
repugnance
to
colonialism
given
only
that
they
are
the
colonists.
He
makes
clear
the
extent
to
which
they
have
destroyed
traditional
diplomacy
by
resort
to
deliberate
lying
and
sub-
version
and
by
the
use
of
negotiation
as
a
means
of
political
warfare.
He
praises
the
intellectual
gifts
of
the
French
and
their
expertise
at
cultural
diplomacy
but
finds
them,
on
the
whole,
too
formalistic.
He
awards
the
palm
to
British
diplomacy
as
the
most
successful,
though
emphatically
not
to
British
foreign
policy.
In
the
two
final
essays
he
assesses
the
character
of
the
four
capitals
and
then
ranges
over
the
modern
diplomatic
scene
in
general,
with
special
reference
to
international
organisations
and
conferences.
He
makes
the
important
point
that
while
the
United
Nations
was
called
into
being
by
the
great
powers
it
has
now
been
turned
into
a
powerful
instrument
for
their
frustration.
His
comments
on
summitry
are
pungent
and
very
pertinent.
It
is
valuable
to
have
a
book
so
full
of
good
sense
from
someone
so
well
qualified
to
survey
this
particular
field.
Russians
as
People.
Wright
Millar.
Phœnix
House.
25s.
This
is
a
most
welcome
book
because
its
focus
is
on
the
nature
of
the
Russian
people,
as
such,
and
upon
their
environment
and
not
upon
the
particular
political
institutions
which
they
enjoy
at
the
moment,
how-
ever
closely
the
two
may,
in
fact,
be
linked.
The
author
achieves
his
aim
of
showing
them
as
&dquo;people
different
from
ourselves&dquo;
&dquo;
and,
moreover,
as
people
in
a
place
which
with
its
rigorous
winter
and
sudden
intoxicating
spring
has
gone
far
to
shape
the
national
character
as
it
now
is.
Mr.
Millar
has
an
intimate
knowledge of the
social
and
historical
background
of
the
country,
to
which
he
adds
a
sharp,
but
sympathetic
eye
and
ear
for
individuals
and
for
their
language.
He
paints
a
vivid
picture
of
their
manners
and
morals,
tastes
and
pursuits
and
shows
how
little
the
traditional
character
and
outlook
has
so
far
been
altered
by
political
upheaval
and
pressures.
They
are
used
to
bending
before
the
storm
preserving
their
inner
attitude
intact.
Whether
the
unrelenting
drive
for
technical
progress
and
urbanization
will
eventually
change
the
essentially
peasant
characteristics
that
have
endured
for
centuries,
or
destroy
the
deep-rooted
sense
of
community,
as
opposed
to
individual,
values.
remains
to
be
seen.
The
climate
of
Russia
is
not,
after
all,
as
the
author
remarks,
worse
than
that
of
Canada
or
parts
of
America
that
have
fostered
a
quite
different
development
under
the
spur
of
the
industrial
age.
But
the future
is
not
here
Mr.
Millar’s
province,
and
no
one
can
read
this
book
without
gaining
a
deeper
understanding
of
the
why
and
whence
of
most
things
Russian,
from
the
people’s
taste
in
painting
to
their
taste
in
governments.
&dquo; Know
thine
enemy
&dquo; is
the
first
injunction
in
diplomacy
as
it
is
in
defence-knowledge
in
time
may
well
reduce
the
chance
of
a
final
reliance
on
the
latter.
Foreign
Policy.
The
Next
Phase.
Thomas
K.
Finletter.
New
York.
Harper
Brothers
for
the
Council
on
Foreign
Relations.
London.
Oxford
University
Press.
32s
This
is
very
much
an
American
book
for
the
Americans.
For
the
European
reader
it
contains
very
little
that
is
new
and
the
approach
is
somewhat
naive
when
the
author
is
interpreting
events
in
parts
of
the
world
with
which
he
is
not
personally
familiar-Egypt
for
example
where
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