◆ SpookStack

¢ MARCH 8, 1948 cessity for group action has taken vari- ous forms under the Czars and under the Soviets. But, and this is a major premise in Maynard's study, the sub- stance does not vary greatly. In the nineteenth century the form was the Mir, or village commune. Today it is the collective farm. . Crankshaw utilizes the theory of the conditioning of the plain to explain practically everything about Russian character—absence of hypoctisy, flexi- bility of mind, boundless tolerance, breadth of spirit, and the speculative attitude toward life and death. From this analysis it is but a short step to a rationalization for the peasant’s inevi- table “neechevo” ot Molotov’s obdu- rate “syet.” In brief, vividly written sections Craikshaw sketches in background in- formation about Russian political, social and economic attiudes before 1917. Then he explains, lucidly, the effect of Marxism and Leninism on — these attitudes. His eapsule account of ‘the last 30 years under the Soviets will win no hosannahs from the doc- trinaire Left or from Pravda. On the other hand, his summation will be attacked as “pro-Russian” by the “Let’s-Just-Be-Beastly-to-the-Russians” chorus. For Crankshaw does not blink the very teal contributions of the Soviets, ~ . His conclusion offers small comfort to the Earles and Bullitts. Ctenkshaw warns that “unless we reach a modus vivendi with the Russians our civiliza- tion will not survive the next critical half-century.” There are, he says, two ways to reach such a modus vivendi— by conquest or understanding, Because he favors survival and rejects con- quest as Hitlerian and anti-democratic, Crankshaw believes we must make gteater and greatet efforts at under- standing. It does not even have. to be “mutual” understanding. Russians as people. Where Crank- shaw has synthesized large chapters of the Russian story, Maynard has spelled it out, carefully documenting each syl- lable. His material on pte-1917 Rus- sia is particularly valuable. Perhaps the greatest immediate service both these authors perform is the breaking down ef the dogma that the Soviet govern- ment is an iron corset squeezing the Russians into a new and fiendish | look. The Russians are still human beings and’ so ate their rulers in the Kremlin. They react not only to un- * friendly winters on their internal plain but to the cold blasts from the ex- ternal. talk of atomic war. They have changed their course to meet realities before and they will do it again. In the interim we ate reminded that we might occupy ourselves worrying about our own flux—or the lack of it. “The danger for the English-speaking world,” another brilliant Englishman wrote recently (Edward Hallett Carr in The Soviet Impact on the Western World), “lies perhaps most of all in its relative lack of flexibility and its tendency to rest on the laurels of past achievements, No human institution of order of society ever stands still.” (Oh well, we are to have a new balcony on the White House.) Maynard was convinced the Rus- sians were not threatened by this same danger. “When they find that a rule does not fit life, they give preference 23 DRAWINGS BY FRASCONT _ to life...” he wrote in his concluding chapter, “Personality Out of Collec- tivism.” “Their gift for breaking rules will save them from being pedantic. For the same reason Planning will not hurt them: for they will change the Plan whenever it has gone amiss.”’ Sir John also emphasized the Rus- "sian lack of political democracy while recognizing their concentration of ef- fort to achieve economic democracy. He did not even believe the Stalin Constitution (1936) was democratic (“The Russians cannot change rulers without the use of force or the viola- tion of law’) nor did he think that conditions in Russia made democtacy possible. “What is aimed at,” he wrote, “is 4 discipline which shall re- make man in a new image, and the co- operation of the patient in the process of remaking. The Russian people is at school.” Sir John predicted that the restrictions on freedom of thought “can only be brought to an end when the remaking is complete.” In essence this is what Stalin pur- portedly said to Churchill] when the latter asked when Russians would be allowed to travel freely abroad. Stalin’s