Man's Hope or Man's Fate?

THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR OF THE SOVIET UNION--Joseph Stalin--International Publishers ($1.75).

POLAND AND RUSSIA--James T. Shotwell & Max M. Laserson--King's Crown Press ($2).

EUROPE IN REVOLUTION--John Scott--Houghton Mifflin ($3).

THE BIG THREE--David J. Dallin--Yale University Press ($2.75).

Americans like to dismiss Russians and their policies as enigmatic. Few Americans have investigated Russia's purposes and plans by reading the basic writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Nikolai Lenin and Joseph Stalin. But for at least a generation those purposes are likely to constitute the world's No. 1 political argument.

To this argument the four books listed above are a current contribution. Each of them reveals something about Russia--the force which Henry Adams, one of the shrewdest of U.S. historians and political observers, once saw in the chilling terms of creeping "ice-cap" and "inertia." Part of mankind has long regarded this force as a prime political danger. Part of mankind has long regarded it as its great political hope. Each of these books, in its way, suggests the degree in which man's hope is congealing into man's fate.

Victorious Voice. The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union is a collection of Generalissimo Joseph Stalin's wartime speeches. It begins with a broadcast made shortly after the Germans invaded Russia. It is devoted chiefly to explaining why Russia had signed a non-aggression pact with Germany and why the Red Army was not ready to repel the Nazis ("Of no little importance in this respect is the fact that fascist Germany suddenly and treacherously violated the Non-Aggression Pact she had concluded in 1939 with the U.S.S.R. . . . Naturally, our peace-loving country, not wishing to take the initiative of breaking the pact, could not resort to perfidy"). The last speech proclaims victory ("From now on over Europe will fly the banner dear to us . . .").

The little (167-page) book also includes four of those historic personal letters to favored foreign correspondents in which from time to time Stalin publicizes his policies. Noteworthy : the letter ( 1943 ) to then New York Timesman Ralph Parker concerning the Polish question ("Does the Government of the U.S.S.R. desire to see a strong and independent Poland? . . . Unquestionably, it does.").

Stalin's prose, at least in translation, commonly gives the impression of having been distilled in a concrete mixer. But it is easy to understand how his dogged reiteration that victory was sure shored up Russian morale during the darkest days.

Impartial & Authoritative. Poland is the key to Russian domination of eastern Germany and Czechoslovakia in much the same way that those countries are the key to Russian domination of Europe. Poland and Russia manages to examine this problem (from 1919 to 1945) without calling names. It is one of those books that everybody should read and few laymen will. It is as scrupulously impartial as high scholarship can make it. Its authority is guaranteed by the names of its authors: Professor James T. Shotwell (The History of History) is professor emeritus of history at Columbia University and a director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Professor Laserson is visiting professor of philosophy at Columbia.

Some readers may lay down this book with a feeling that they have been cheated by a study in which neither party to an inflamed political dispute is indicted as a thoroughgoing villain. Others will find in the book's 114 pages most of the materials necessary to an understanding of the Polish problem. Though the authors are concerned with the dispassionate investigation of history, they make one telling political point: the key to political control of Poland today is agrarian reform. This key is wholly in the hands of Poland's Moscow-dominated government.

Frightening & Powerful. Europe in Revolution would have been a better book if somewhere in its 274 pages Author John Scott had decided whether he was writing a correspondent's book or a study of social forces. As a correspondent's book, it sometimes recapitulates, sometimes diffuses material that Author Scott has already reported for TIME (he was formerly TIME'S correspondent in Stockholm, is now TIME'S correspondent in Berlin). But as a study in social forces, the book insists on an important fact which most Americans like to overlook or dismiss--the fact that Europe is going through a social revolution, which cannot fail to affect the whole world.

This revolution is organically tied up with the Russian Revolution. Few readers may agree with Author Scott that the Bolsheviks "preached a doctrine in some ways reminiscent of the gospel of Jesus, a doctrine in the spirit of the Declaration of the Rights of Man." But few will disagree that the Russian Revolution "inaugurated the era of collectivism, the most frightening, powerful and misunderstood phenomenon of the 20th Century." Author Scott believes that socialism is inevitable (" . . . if the Soviet Union, by some miracle, were to fall tomorrow into the Arctic Sea, the collectivist revolution . . . would not stop"), and that capitalism, as now practiced in the U.S., must soon go the way of the dinosaurs.

Two world wars have implied the inability of capitalism to keep peace on earth, have forfeited the good will of Europe's desperate men & women. The plundering Nazis, whose continental loot is all but impossible to reassign to its former owners, have prepared the socialization of Europe's economic wealth. "Millions of Europeans consider its nationalization or socialization a most natural and obvious measure. This is what is being done, as I am writing, with mines, factories, banks and insurance companies in France. It is a step in the direction of socialism." Like most of his school, Author Scott believes that Europe's Communist parties work on their own without benefit of Moscow guidance, that Russia is rapidly becoming more conservative. He also believes that another world war would destroy civilization, that only harmonious U.S.-Russian relations can prevent such a war, that Russian aggressive policies are somehow caused by the fact that in the U.S. people are always grossly hurting Russian feelings. In a chapter called Getting Along with Russia, Scott offers some do's and don'ts whereby Americans may spare the easily abraded Russian skin. Americans who are reasonably sure that Russian policy is seldom motivated by hurt feelings and reasonably fed up with Soviet truculence may wish that Author Scott would write a similar book of etiquette for Russians.

Impermanent Peace. To the idea that Russia has undergone any organic change of mind or heart, David J. Dallin (Soviet Russia's Foreign Policy, The Real Soviet Russia) says: nonsense. He recognizes a change in Soviet policy. But: "The new policy, far from being treacherous to Leninism, is actually the application of the principles of Leninism to an entirely new situation. . . . The old Soviet plan may be said to have embraced concepts of an extensive revolution, or rather of a series of revolutions: extensive because it was expected that all over the globe irregular, chaotic explosions would occur. . . . What Stalin has done with the old concept has not been to abolish the revolutionary program: rather he has transformed the idea of an extensive revolution into one of an intensive revolution. Of course, the old system of capitalist economy and capitalist policy, he said, is everywhere ripe for destruction, but the forces of the governing classes are so strong that extensive eruptions have only small chance of succeeding. Only through combination with the first great stronghold of Communism -- Russia -- can upheavals and movements be successful. But Russia can give assistance chiefly to its neighbor peoples." Historian Dallin does not share Author Scott's faith that the Big Three can achieve permanent peace for the world. In five bleak chapters he tells why. He warns that the U.S., because of the shrinking of space and time by technology, has inherited Britain's hereditary role as antagonist of Europe's No. 1 power, whoever that may be. He also reports in detail the Soviet plans for a big navy. His grim conclusion: "The coming period in world history will be, at best, a period of armed truce."

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