HANOVER BROWSING
IN THIS ARTICLE I propose to let my mind roam freely over the books on Russia I have read at one time or another. For years now I have been interested in the ambitious economic and cultural experiment the Russian communists are trying to carry out in that vast territory. Whatever our attitude toward that experiment may be, we cannot but be impressed by the audacious magnitude of the task the Bolsheviki have set out to perform. This is no less than the transformation of an old agrarian culture and semi-capitalistic economic structure into a new technological, scientific and socialized planned economy. The immediate aim is to industrialize Russia at an unprecedented rate of speed and disciplined pressure. Beyond that, according to Premier Molotov, the next objective is "to eliminate completely the causes giving rise to class distinctions and to trans- form the whole working population into conscious active builders of a classless society."
Of necessity an attempt o£ this nature is bound to evoke different reactions in different people. And, indeed, this is what we find—an enormous divergence of judg- ments ranging all the way from violent denunciations to equally extreme eulogies. I am reminded of the story told by Clare Sheridan about the first draft of her book on Russian Portraits. In her highly impressionistic manner she sketched her impressions of the leading revolutionists she had met in Moscow. She submitted this first draft to her uncle, Winston Churchill, for editorial' inspection. But when he came to her famous description of Trotsky— which read "Trotsky, a perfect angel"—he crossed it out, and in its place inserted his own unflattering view—which was, "Trot- sky, a blooming fool." And so it is with regard to most other things in Russia be- sides Trotsky. Opinions vary all the way from "perfect angel" to "blooming fool."
Yet in the last few years in book after book I detect a tendency to view the situation more objectively. This accounts for the noticeable improvement in quality in recent books on Russia. The judgments of writers are more discriminating. It is easier now to have a better perspective on things than was possible twelve years ago. The most recent book on this subject I have read is Red Economics. This is a first- rate discussion in most respects. What is happening is that the violent critics are getting less extreme and the uncritical enthusiasts are getting less exuberant. This is all to the good. Nevertheless the divergence in points of view is still in evidence and probably will continue. I have collected an interesting assortment of these conflicting judgments. Here are a few as a sample. Romain Rolland in his Impressions of the Soviet Union has this to say: "It is not only gigantic factories and powerful machines that are being created here but—and this I regard as the highest and finest achievement of all—millions of new people are being created, a whole generation of fearless, strong, healthy, disinterested people, inspired by a burning faith in the new world." A similarly optimistic note is struck by Louis Fischer in Men and Machines in Russia. "This revolution is tremendous. It is bigger than the men who lead it, the dirt which accompanies it, the pigmies who criticize it, and the many who have suffered from it. In these young people Russia is being reborn."
On the other hand we have many severely adverse judgments. W. A. Fairburn, in his critical but somewhat unbalanced book on Russia: The Utopia in Chains, views the experiment as a "hideous dream," or "a devastating social plague." Likewise I. D. Levine in his damaging but one- sided Red Smoke makes the statement that "Stalin's regime has drained the country of her visible wealth and exposed her pop- ulation to a misery unparalleled in modern time and brought the Russian standard of living below that of China and India."
To OFFSET these extravagantly favorable and unfavorable opinions we have more guarded statements like those made by Keynes and Chamberlain and Calvin Hoover. Keynes' modest expression is that "money-making and money-accumulating cannot enter into the life calculations of a rational man in Russia. A society of which this is even partially true is a tremendous innovation."
And in his admirable book on SovietRussia Chamberlain's considered opinion is that "Socialism in Russia, so far as may be judged now, has a tremendous theater, and an indefinite period in which to demonstrate its possibilities. I do not foresee the slightest likelihood of any drastic modification of the existing economic order or anything in the nature of a return to private capitalism."
Moderate also is Calvin Hoover's conclusion in his able discussion in The Economic Life of Soviet Russia. "The future of the Societ regime," he says, "depends upon whether or not the Communist Party has miscalculated the breaking-point of the Russian people." It may be that this danger is greater now than it was when he wrote his book. Dispatches from Moscow, as revealed by Duranty's articles in the New York Times, seem to point to a food crisis this winter. How serious this short- age of food and consumers goods may become one cannot predict. It is probably acute enough to give the leaders a certain amount of anxiety. It appears as if the important test years for the socialized planned economy will be the next three years or so. They may very well be the decisive years. It appears also to an impartial observer at this distance as if it were desirable for the montempo of change in Russia to slow down somewhat, and that more of the resources and energies of the Russian people should go to the production of essential consumers goods in order to elevate the present undoubtedly very low standards of living. This conclusion keeps slipping into my mind after reading some of the best of the books recently published. But whether this will be done or not is problematical. Stalin has expressed more than once the need of greater speed. "Either we die or we over- take and outstrip the advanced capitalist countries. We are 50 to 100 years behind the capitalist countries. We must cover this distance in ten years. Either we do this or we will be crushed."
The real reason for this urgent "either- or" deliverance is not too clear to the reviewer. I realize that some of this talk about "overtaking and outstripping" capitalist countries is for home consumption and domestic morale. Lenin also used to express himself occasionally in this outstripping sort of language. However, if Stalin hopes to attain his objective in this respect, he does not seem to have too rosy a chance as things look now. The relative cultural and technological backwardness of Russia; the limited number of trained technicians of all sorts, and also of capable organizers and industrial managers, together with the very inadequate supply of the small foreman type—a very valuable type in an industrial civilization—as well as the weakness of traditions favorable to disciplined habits of mechanical work in the general working and peasant population, all of these facts point to enormous difficulties that must be overcome before the overtaking and the outstripping can become a reality. I am inclined to agree with the critics or the sceptics in this connection. Levine goes so far as to state that "Judged in the light of her power resources and her potential means of communication, it would be impossible for Bolshevist Russia to catch up with and out-distance America in our day or at any future date."
A less positive statement is found in Ellery Walter's Russia's Decisive Year, where he concludes that the notion that "there is a threat to America in Russian industrial competition is ridiculous. There is certainly no formidable 'Red Trade Menace' except in raw products and it is doubtful if there is any political threat. Russia has a long way to go before she puts her own house in order enough to be an example to the rest of the world." I can recommend heartily this descriptive book. It is one of the best individual pictures we have of the actual living conditions among workers and peasants in many parts of Russia.
Enough has been written to show the divergence of judgments on the Russian experiment. I have asked myself a number of times the reasons for this diversity of opinion, and also the further question of what should be the guiding considerations in one's observations and evaluations of Russia. It is obvious that a person's cultural as well as economic vested interests are bound to condition his attitudes to- wards what the communists are trying to do. We all have our repertory of preconceptions and stereotypes, our pet list of preferences and antipathies, our dynamically conscious and unconscious set of prejudices and phobias. And it is well for us to remember that these color our inter- pretations in one way or another. They are revealed in books which are for, as well as in those which are against, the communist program. Unless a writer is able to set these aside, or at least control them to some extent, he cannot possibly do justice to that which he is trying to record and interpret. This personal equation factor is well known to every student of human nature and culture. But in addition to these psychological and cultural considerations there are others equally important. As a rule I believe that not much is gained by comparing what one finds in Russia with what is to be found in other and more complex civilizations. To contrast Russia and the United States in this way is of limited value. Our historical backgrounds, our population, our social structures and basic institutions, our habits of work, our schemes of living and modes of thinking, and our accepted norms of conduct and ideas and standards of values are so different that books or reports comparing Russia and America are not very helpful. That is why works of this nature are hardly ever first-rate.
THIS BRINGS me to what I think is a more important consideration, and that is that a fruitful book on contemporary Russia should contrast it with old Russia, or Russia of the not too remote past. Criticism is of greatest value when carried out within the same cultural universe of discourse. Comparisons are pertinent when delimited in this manner. For instance some of the best books on Russia are those in which this is done to some extent in any case. I consider Rural Russia underthe Old Regime by G. T. Robinson as a splendid piece of work. It is objective and unbiased and helpful. Another worth while study in this restricted sense is V. P. Timoshenko's recently published Agricultural Russia and the Wheat Problem. It is somewhat specialized and for that reason is of most interest to the student of Russian agriculture and the conditions affecting it. At the same time a few chapters in it are illuminating to anyone desirous of understanding Russia. Some of the loose statements made concerning the soils and resources of Russia would be still-born if the authors would study carefully a work of this nature. Even the author of Red Smoke would benefit by a perusal of this book.
In this connection also I can recommend historical works like G. Vernadsky's History of Russia, or Prof. Mayor's EconomicHistory of Russia. Vernadsky stresses the oriental features in Russian culture and within reasonable limits I think that is sound. To the intensive student of the intellectual history of Russia, President Masaryk's two-volume study of The Spiritof Russia cannot be recommended too highly. It contains a capital section on the complex of revolutionary ideas and philosophies and movements and leaders of pre-war Russia.
Another characteristic defect of some books on Russia is the failure to distinguish between past or present actualities and future expectations and hopes. This works both ways. Communist writers them- selves confuse these two separate things. They allow their wishes and hopes to enter in too much into their interpretations of contemporary realities. On the other hand, critics forget too often that the time element is of prime importance in appraising the Soviet regime. "Rome was not built in a day," nor has anyone the right to expect the Bolsheviki to build their Rome in a day or even a day and a half. Foundations are not to be confused with completed edifices, and first steps must not be identified with ultimate destinations. Some critics see only the dirt and the chaos accompanying the first stages in the projected task of building a planned social order, while uncritical enthusiasts shut their eyes to the present ugly realities and the bewildered fumblings. Even Bernard Shaw and Sydney Webb are guilty of this to a certain degree, while it is only fair to say that sceptics like Fairburn and Paul Scheffer and Levine and Berkman and Baikaloff see only the present cruelty and tyranny.
Closely related to this limitation is the inability to appreciate the difference between theory and practice or objectives and means. E. T. Colton's vigorous book on The XYZ of Communism deserves close study from this and allied points of view. It is clear that Lenin was inclined to be doctrinaire in theory, but equally clear is it that he was realistic and flexible in practice. And the same combination of doctrinaire theory and realistic practice is discernible in Stalin. Revolutionary leader- ship is dependent on such a union of in- flexibility of principles and suppleness of policy. The best biographies of Lenin and Stalin disclose this union of diverse qualities. The best in English on Lenin are those of Mirsky and V. Marcu. On Stalin I like Levine's and Essad Bey's, and the brief but good one by Stephen Graham.
OF THE GENERAL books on Russia I like D. C. Chamberlain's Soviet Russia as well as any. Interesting also are M. Hindus' books on Humanity Uprooted and his sensitive and sympathetic pictures of peasant life and attitudes in Broken Earth and Red Bread. The best treatment of the status of the urban worker I have found is in J. Freeman's The Worker in SovietRussia. It is marred in parts by the uncritical exuberance of the author. Some of its statements are palpably extravagant. The present food difficulties should convict Mr. Freeman of his verbal misdemeanors. The same may be said of Louis Fischer's Men and Machines in Soviet Russia. However there are some excellent chapters in both of these books. Impressionistic works like those of Anna Louise Strong and others of the same general type have little value to the serious student.
Recent studies of the economic aspects of the revolution are much more satisfactory. They are more discriminating and give the reader a clearer picture of some of the difficulties and defects of this far-reaching experiment. The ones which appeal to me the most are the following: 1. Calvin Hoover: The Economic Life ofSoviet Russia.2. L. Lawton: The Economic History ofSoviet Russia. 2 vol. 3. Emile Burns: Russia's Productive System. 4. The Memoranda or Research Pamphlets issued by the Research Bureau of Birmingham University, England. 5. Red Economics: Walter Duranty and others. (Houghton Mifflin Co.)
The last two are the best. All the Birmingham Research Pamphlets are first- rate. Their main weakness is to ignore too much the cultural settings of the economic problems studied. Red Economics is satis- factory on the whole. Some of the chapters are really good, especially Duranty's Introduction, and the chapters on Communication, State Finance, Money, Credit, and Banking, and Foreign Technical Assistance. It is unfortunate that the book does not include a searching chapter on the natural resources of Russia. As a matter of fact I have found no adequate treatment of this important subject in any of the books. This deserves a careful study based on all the important scientific and tech- nological surveys up-to-date. The discussion of this in Levine's Red Smoke is journalistic and not too well-informed. It ignores recent surveys. Yet the damaging criticisms of the book are based on the technological availability for the purposes of a planned economy of the extent and distribution of the natural resources of Russia. Levine's most pointed criticism is that "the natural resources of Russia, in conjunction with unalterable geographic factors, are such as to condemn her to an existence of relative poverty in the role of a second-rate agricultural State." In view of the real point of criticisms of this nature someone ought to bring together the latest reliable and technical information bearing on this question. It is to be found now only in scattered sources. A contribution of this sort would be a welcome addition to English books on Russia.
On the planned features of the Russian experiment I can commend Chamberlain's little book on that subject. Very readable also is Ilin's Russian Primer. A larger book is Grinko's The Five Year Plan. Grinko is one of the planners themselves. His study is a little too optimistic, but in between the lines it reveals a lot.
To ROUND OUT this story of Russia perhaps I had better refer to the educational agencies used by the communists to attain their objectives. These include not only the transformation of the economic system but also the mentality and the ideology of the people. This is an essential part of the plan. The ablest discussion from this point of view is T. Woody's NewMinds: New Men?. The literature and drama of revolutionary Russia may best be studied in the books of Carter and Lawton and Sayler and Mrs. Flanagan, and perchance, more effectively in scattered articles in various magazines. Space does not allow me to discuss these, or even to mention the few interesting novels and poems which have come out of Russia in recent years. To the interested reader may I recommend The Slavonic Review issued by the School of Slavonic Studies of the University of London. G. S. Patrick's suggestive book on Popular Poetry in Soviet Russia merits recommendation. And with some reservations so does Trotsky's Literature and Rev-olution. The student of revolutions will find some of the general works of Trotsky of value, and of course his History of theRevolution is important to the historian.
In conclusion, I consider all the books mentioned in this article as worth studying by the man who wants to understand Russia. To the reader with limited time and interest I venture to list the following as probably the most helpful.
1. Red Economics: Edited by G. Dobbert. Houghton Mifflin Co.
2. Soviet Russia: D. C. Chamberlain.
3. New Minds: New Men?: Thomas Woody.
4. The XYZ of Communism: E. T. Colton. Macmillan Co.
5. Popular Poetry in Soviet Russia: G. S. Patrick.
6. Eyes on Russia: M. B. White (for the pictures).
And whether one is for or against the Russian experiment I suppose one must accept the sage maxim of Bacon: "That which is past is gone and irrecoverable and wise men have enough to do with things present and to come."
