Strange Communists I Have Known, by Bertram D. Wolfe (Stein and Day, $6.00). Big Jim Larkin was perhaps the strangest rebel ever to be infected with the Communist virus. An ardent Catholic, he used to startle audiences on New York’s lower East Side with such pronunciamentos as, “I stand by the Cross and the Bible and I stand by Marx and the Manifesto.” His story, as well as the stories of other “strange” Communists, is told with much sympathy and understanding by Bertram D. Wolfe in this strangely uneven collection of fugitive pieces. The book purports to tell the old story (by now) of how some of “those who streamed towards Moscow” faced up to the reality of life in the new Utopia as measured against their dreams, and how, finally, “they broke away.” Except for three or four personalities treated in Part One of the book, this is not true for any of the others. Neither Trotsky nor Rosa Luxemburg quite fits the picture of a disillusioned radical; nor Inessa Armand, the third party in Lenin’s ménage à trois, whose story Wolfe tells with much interest and little cant. She certainly did not ever “question” her faith in, or “rebel” against, the cause for which she died. The episode of Roman Malinovsky, the Czarist spy in the ranks of the Bolsheviks, is always worth recounting, but he is hardly the prototype of those who “measured dream against the deed” of Communist reality. It would be misleading, however, to leave the impression that the book is without merit because it fails to live up to its uninhibited title and its overstated premise. Aside from the piece on Larkin, the affectionate portrait of Angelica Balabanoff is worth perusing as a study in innocence that refuses to be corrupted—even after decades of close association with events and personalities that always turned her fondest dreams into horrible nightmares. And the story of how Samuel Putnam, the gifted translator and author, found redemption via the medium of a book review, as a reasonably wise and dignified human being after years as a non-person held in the grip of a dehumanized Party line, is well worth the price of admission to this strange gallery of assorted rebels. m. geltman
Peace and War in the Modern Age, edited by Frank R. Barnett, William C. Mott, and John C. Neff (Doubleday Anchor, $1.45). Twenty-five unsentimental students of twentieth-century realpolitik have contributed papers to a remarkable symposium on the Cold War. Included are doves and hawks, but not one giddy ostrich from the disarmament community. Some contributors, such as Rusk, Acheson and Eisenhower, deal in familiar Cold War generalities. But most treat specific, esoteric facets of national security. Together, these sophisticated papers comprise an advanced, second-generation analysis of the global struggle. Among the choicest selections are Gerhart Niemeyer’s observations on Communists in coalition governments; Franklin M. Osanka’s authoritative study of Red pre-insurgency techniques; Walter F. Hahn’s illuminating analysis of the impact of Russian secrecy on Soviet policy; and Robert Strausz-Hupé’s probe into Soviet weakness. Despite the eclectic subject matter, certain themes appear repeatedly through the book. There is substantial agreement that the Cold War is not mellowing; on the contrary that it is escalating into a new and dangerous phase. There is widespread belief that ad hoc responses to Soviet initiatives would no longer suffice. Survival now depends on long-range planning and the implementation of a forward strategy. And finally, there is general consensus that this country has barely tapped many of its non-military resources. In short, we are not waging total Cold War, but the Soviets are.
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