Omens of Collapse

The leading recent exponent of the do-nothing school of Sovietology was Professor Marshall Shulman, whose advice to President Carter was that since the Soviet system was going to collapse anyway from its built-in contradictions and deficiencies, there was no point in doing anything to hasten the inevitable end.

His successor (under President Reagan), Professor Richard Pipes, was altogether more robust and realistic, but he has unfortunately returned to Harvard. The new advisor on Soviet affairs in the National Security Council is Jack Matlock, who has outstanding linguistic and career credentials, latterly as ambassador to Yugoslavia, with service in Moscow and mastery of Russian and other East European languages. The only question mark has nothing to do with ability or qualifications but merely with the fact that Mr. Matlock is a career diplomat from the State Department. That, it must be admitted, is a potential handicap to be overcome.

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Brian Crozier

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The leading recent exponent of the do-nothing school of Sovietology was Professor Marshall Shulman, whose advice to President Carter was that since the Soviet system was going to collapse anyway from its built-in contradictions and deficiencies, there was no point in doing anything to hasten the inevitable end.

His successor (under President Reagan), Professor Richard Pipes, was altogether more robust and realistic, but he has unfortunately returned to Harvard. The new advisor on Soviet affairs in the National Security Council is Jack Matlock, who has outstanding linguistic and career credentials, latterly as ambassador to Yugoslavia, with service in Moscow and mastery of Russian and other East European languages. The only question mark has nothing to do with ability or qualifications but merely with the fact that Mr. Matlock is a career diplomat from the State Department. That, it must be admitted, is a potential handicap to be overcome.