If we do not hear more of the unspeakable misery inflicted by this "greatest glory," which resulted, for instance, in the wholesale massacre of nomads who did not care to become factory workers, the reason is that the nationalities in question are mostly on a primitive level, which prevents them from being sufficiently vociferous to be heard beyond the Soviet border. In one instance, that of the Volga-German Republic, the destruction of national substance does not seem to have been quite successful. The republic was dissolved in Septem­ber 1941, when the German armies approached; its territory was divided among neighboring republics, its population was deported to Siberia. The necessity for this measure might give food for thought, but Schuman disposes of it incidentally as "a disregard for constitu­tional niceties" (314).

Moreover, he does not relate what would have been most pertinent in this context, that Stalin's policy concerning nationalities was evolved on the basis of his critical study of the Austrian problem of nationalities. The fact that the Austrian Social Democrats did not organize as one party but preferred to form their respective Czech, German, etc., Social Democratic Parties aroused Stalin's disapproval. The mistake was not to be repeated in Russia. I wonder whether the genesis of Stalin's policy was suppressed by Schuman because it would have been a bit difficult to explain why the growth of national culture in substance, which characterized the Austrian development, constituted inequality and serfdom, while the destruction of the substance by Communist intellectuals in the Soviet Union constitutes equality and freedom.

(5) The author gets into a fix on pages 321 ff. in explaining the una­nimity of Soviet elections, which smacks strongly of the unanimity achieved by the National Socialist government on similar occasions. The parallel is not denied, but the author resorts to minimizing its significance: "Electoral unanimity is an old Slavic custom, long antedating Sovietism and Marxism. It is reflected in the procedure of the ancient Russian Veche or assembly and in the liberum veto of the Polish Diet." The Russian vieche as an institution has nothing to do whatsoever with the Polish Diet and its liberum veto, and neither institution has anything to do with the unanimity secured by the pressure of a totalitarian party. In this groping for support at all cost, even factual correctness is surrendered.

These points should be sufficient for the purpose of illustration. They are not isolated instances; the entire book would require a sim­ilar sentence-by-sentence commentary. Moreover, only points were selected that lent themselves to a comparatively brief analysis. They are by far not the worst that occur in this chapter. They were, further­more, chosen from the chapter on constitutional questions because in the field of institutions and legal provisions there is comparatively little leeway for extravagant interpretation. The well-circumscribed facts and the rigidity of legal concepts make it easy to detect and reveal the disregard for reality. Subject matter that requires a more complex conceptual apparatus for its interpretation offers more am­ple opportunities for the type of apology Schuman undertakes; but the unraveling of his propositions concerning personal motives, po­litical intentions, historical causes and effects, religious experiences, political ideas, etc., would be a task beyond human powers. What goes on in some of the chapters would definitely be worth attention, but it defies analysis within the space of a review. I can only assure the reader that it is hair-raising.

The tensions between apology and science that pervade the book can be fully understood only by the professional scholar. Neverthe­less, even the layman who will read the book primarily with a prag­matic interest in current politics will get an inkling now and then of the problems involved, for the author very considerately caters to this interest by bringing his story up to date. As a matter of fact, I have never seen a book quite as up to date as this one. On page 545 we find, "The USSR, Britain, and the United States, along with all other victims of the Nazi assault on civilization, were necessarily preoccupied in 1945-46 with de-Nazifying Germany, punishing war-criminals, collecting reparations, and rendering the Reich militarily impotent."

The events of 1946 are reported in the past-tense in a book that was released on February 11, 1946, while the sentence presumably was written before January 1, 1946. In this case there is perhaps some hope that the post-diction may prove correct when we consider it on December 31.

In his elaborate interpretations of post­war Russian policies with regard to the area south of the border from Creece to Cathay,¹ however, the author may have run ahead of events in the wrong direction. In these days, when secret agreements pop up before breakfast, when the several secret services waltz separately around each other and all together around the atom bomb, when dark things are going on in Iran and Manchuria, and when in general his­tory happens much faster than even a brilliant intellectual can write, the layman may read about these matters any day in his morning paper and then resort to Soviet Politics in order to experience the unholy joy of catching the author with his comments down.

1. My typewriter had an acute attack of alliteritis.

We cannot close without giving consideration to an argument that pervades the whole book and forms the cornerstone of the apology: the misery inflicted by the Soviet regime on the Russian people and the terroristic suppression of all opposition that arouse the resent­ment of the West have to be understood as a reaction to the threat­ening attitude assumed by the outside world toward Communism since the October Revolution. The experience of intervention and the later fear of attacks on the part of Western powers motivated the building of the industrial apparatus and of the war machine at the tremendous cost of human happiness. The policy was amply justified by events, and we have all to be grateful to the Soviet leaders for the foresight that enabled them to stop the German attack.

Hardly anyone will disagree with Schuman's political judgment concerning the importance that the Russian military performance had for us; none of us cares to imagine what might have happened if the Russian front had cracked. So far, so good. But while the time span of a decade may limit the horizon of a political intellectual who wishes to plead a cause, the political scientist has to place the events into a somewhat larger context of historical time. And while the scientist will agree that in the short term the Soviet policy was justified, if ruthless, in face of the Nazi menace, he will also have to raise the question whether the Nazi menace would have arisen at all if Marxism and the victory of the October Revolution had not been introduced as determining factors into Western politics.

In the perspective of a century we have to say that the socially dis­ruptive and irresponsible gibberish of half-baked intellectuals about class wars and dictatorships of the proletariat has created the sym­bols and evoked the patterns for the solution of political problems that, once they are launched on their public course, are at everbody's disposition. They can be used not only by the intellectuals who created them, and not only in the interest of the class for which they were originally meant; they can also be used for mobilizing the war of the lower middle-class against the proletariat and for the establishment of fascist dictatorships.

Once the patterns of violence and atrocity are set, one never can know what effects they will have. The ways of causation in these matters are tortuous and often incred­ible. Those who scream today in horror at the Nazi gas chambers, for instance, might read with profit Mein Kampf in order to learn when and where Hitler's idea of judicious extermination of political enemies by means of poison gas germinated (Reynal and Hitchcock edition, p. 984).

The paths that lead from the Communist class-war to Fascism, however, are not so obscure. Anybody who cares to study the intellectual biography of Georges Sorel will recognize the transitions. And there is a direct relationship between the fasci of industrial workers, founded in the 1870s in the Romagna by Bakunin and his friends during the expansion of the First International, and the fasci of the Romagnole Mussolini whose parents grew up in this environment.

The book under review shows no traces that the author is aware of such connections; there is no awareness that the deeds of hatred have a habit of growing into further deeds of hatred with an increas­ing ferocity; and there is no awareness that the end of this chain of intensification may not have been reached. Not only is there no such awareness, but Schuman adopts an ethics of raison d'etat that connives unconditionally in atrocities and approves the pattern of hatred. Political necessity justifies the means as long as the end is Communism.

When, for instance, the idea of a Communist society and proletarian dictatorship runs into the reality of the independent Russian peasantry, who after all are the majority of the Russian peo­ple, political necessity does not require that the Communist intellec­tuals beat a retreat and leave the peasants alone when the intellectu­als cannot influence them by persuasion; political necessity requires that the peasants be butchered in the name of the holy class-war until the survivors see the light and let themselves to be organized in collective enterprises.

The continuation of the apologetic game into such situations, the disrespect for the victims of a historical catas­trophe, and sometimes even a tone of flippancy in the face of their suffering are truly regrettable features of the book. They will arouse the revulsion of many readers, who for their "sentimentalism" will promptly be classified as "crypto-Fascists" by the author, and they will arouse an apprehension of the Nemesis that will overcome the intellectuals of whom the author is representative.

In spite of all that had to be said, Schuman's book is the out­standing treatise on Soviet politics and by far the best that can be recommended to the reader for information on this subject. Let us be clear, however, that this recommendation is the worst condem­nation conceivable of the present state of political science.        

Selected Book Reviews

CW  Vol 13,

Review: Soviet Politics: At Home and Abroad
by Frederick L. Schuman (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946)

pp 138-146.

This quote is taken from a collection of brief Voegelin quotes which can be found HERE