Ugly Is As Ugly Does

For those who think the Cold War is irrevocably lost, or that the Communists are diabolical geniuses who never make mistakes, Victor Lasky’s new book will provide a healthy injection of optimism. The message of The Ugly Russian is that, contrary to Eastern bravado and Western confession, the Communists are not ten feet tall. In their strenuous effort to seduce, subvert, and intimidate the non-Communist world, they have suffered reverses quite as spectacular, and as ludicrous, as those afflicting our own program of moral uplift and material philanthropy.

In the opening sections of his book, Lasky recounts Soviet failures in promoting “aid” and trade missions to numerous African and Asian countries. It is a story of fumbling, confusion, and strained relations which should go far to dispel the illusion that Communists are men of superhuman cunning. That discovery should help exorcise the defeatism so common to the councils of the West, sometimes as noticeably among conservatives as among Liberals.

MS

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M. Stanton Evans

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For those who think the Cold War is irrevocably lost, or that the Communists are diabolical geniuses who never make mistakes, Victor Lasky’s new book will provide a healthy injection of optimism. The message of The Ugly Russian is that, contrary to Eastern bravado and Western confession, the Communists are not ten feet tall. In their strenuous effort to seduce, subvert, and intimidate the non-Communist world, they have suffered reverses quite as spectacular, and as ludicrous, as those afflicting our own program of moral uplift and material philanthropy.

In the opening sections of his book, Lasky recounts Soviet failures in promoting “aid” and trade missions to numerous African and Asian countries. It is a story of fumbling, confusion, and strained relations which should go far to dispel the illusion that Communists are men of superhuman cunning. That discovery should help exorcise the defeatism so common to the councils of the West, sometimes as noticeably among conservatives as among Liberals.