Six Keys to ‘Paradise’

That single key should be obvious to anyone who has worked in a certain type of large-scale organization. The explanation is simply this: where everyone is forced to look to the man on top for his orders, nothing works when the orders are bad. And, since no man can be an authority in all branches of human knowledge or endeavor, some of the orders are bound to be bad even in the best of circumstances.

They were hardly the best of circumstances when Stalin was alive, as Mr. Wolfe makes plain in his opening section called “First Key: The Struggle for Power.” This is a gruesome description of the ways and means Stalin used to take over after Lenin died. It is all familiar enough to anyone conversant with literature about the Soviet system, but the details of the fostering of the Stalin cult do not lose their horrible fascination in Mr Wolfe’s retelling.

JC

About the Author

John Chamberlain

John Chamberlain (1903–1995) was an American writer.

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That single key should be obvious to anyone who has worked in a certain type of large-scale organization. The explanation is simply this: where everyone is forced to look to the man on top for his orders, nothing works when the orders are bad. And, since no man can be an authority in all branches of human knowledge or endeavor, some of the orders are bound to be bad even in the best of circumstances.

They were hardly the best of circumstances when Stalin was alive, as Mr. Wolfe makes plain in his opening section called “First Key: The Struggle for Power.” This is a gruesome description of the ways and means Stalin used to take over after Lenin died. It is all familiar enough to anyone conversant with literature about the Soviet system, but the details of the fostering of the Stalin cult do not lose their horrible fascination in Mr Wolfe’s retelling.