Sane Words on Russia
Russia. By Bernard Pares. (Penguin Special. 6d.) THAT a completely new full-length book on Russia, from the dawn of history to the latter half of 1940, by the sanest and best- informed authority on the subject in Britain, chould be pur- chasable for sixpence, even under the disabilities imposed by war conditions, must be accounted a very remarkaNe publishing achievement. Drawing on the wealth of his great experience Sir Bernard Pares handles his material skilfully, summarising the earlier history of Russia clearly and adequately in his first six chapters and devoting the other fourteen to the revolutionary evolution of the country since 1914. Against the necessary back- ground the contentious developments of the last twenty-five years are treated firmly and objectively. Sir Bernard Pares has the gift of seeing, with vision undisturbed by either right-wing or left- wing prejudice, both what is good and what is bad in the Soviet system. He defends the old system of indirect election (com- mune, district, province, State) as suited in pre-Soviet days to largely illiterate population, and sees no particular reason to change it as yet. He clarifies the vexed question of the relation of the Soviet Government and the Third International by point- ing out that while neither controls the other, both take their orders from the Communist Party, which is the real master of Russia. The fact that the party has no president leaves supreme power in the hands of its secretary, Joseph Stalin. Sir Bernard finds no obscurities in Stalin's foreign policy, the dictator's male purpose being to keep Russia out of war while the complete socia:isation of the country is being achieved. He does not discuss the interesting question how far recent policy indicates a tendency to fall to the temptations of imperialism, nor go far towards analysing the distinction between Socialism and Coo
munism in the Russia of today. But no doubt limits of space mean limitations of theme.
Of the chapters on the Russia of Stalin two on the social ser- vices and the drive against religion—which has met with more resistance than is commonly realised—are of particular interest, the more so since they are based more than most of the book on personal investigation. In his discussion of the developments which have led to Russia's paradoxical association with the Powers already united by an anti-Comintern agreement, instead of with the western democracies with which both by tradition and interest her natural affiliation lay, Sir Bernard approaches nearest to the controversial, though only the blindest eulogists of the directors of British foreign policy in the past ten years will deny that some share of responsibility for the result lies with our own hesitations and ineptitudes. It is not quite true to say of the Manchurian coup of 1931 that "America's attempt to check Japan got no support from England," but it is undoubtedly true that if the overwhelming importance of securing and retain- ing Russia's co-operation in the fight against Hitlerism in the critical five years from 1934 to 1939 had been grasped as it should have been in Whitehall the lot of a dozen European coun- tries today might be happier than it is ; to endorse Sir Bernard's conclusions on that point does not involve assent to every detail of his argument. He might, moreover, have acknowledged the innate perversity of Russians in negotiations. He ends with an earnest plea for the substitution of understanding of Russia for ignorance of Russia. Nothing could do more to facilitate that than study of his valuable and opportune little book.
FRANCIS GOWER.
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