Books, Arts & Manners: Biting the Hunter’s Hand

Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations, by Walter Laqueur (Scribner’s, 382 pp., $24.95)

ONCE AGAIN Walter Laqueur has performed a remarkable feat of historiography. Some three hundred thirty pages of text may seem hardly adequate to summarize the vast literature about Stalin, to evaluate the new information about the tyrant that has become available thanks to glasnost, and to fathom the meaning of the astounding historical phenomenon which was Stalinism. Yet, the author has succeeded with balance and succinctness. And the subject is not merely of historical importance. Stalin-or more precisely what Soviet society has been allowed in recent years to learn about him and his era-estroika has turned into the present collapse of Communism is a major reason why per In the wake of Khrushchev’s revelations, the poet Aleksandr Tvardovsky wrote: “What can you put differently? What can you add? Such things did happen on this our earth.” Well, you can add that Khrushchev’s indictment of his erstwhile boss was still incomplete, and glossed over many of Stalin’s crimes and follies. Even so, Khrushchev’s colleagues decided (quite correctly from their point of view) that the Soviet system could not stand the continued flow of such revelations, and this was one of the main reasons they got rid of the garrulous Nikita.

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Adam B. Ulam

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

World War II

Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations, by Walter Laqueur (Scribner’s, 382 pp., $24.95)

ONCE AGAIN Walter Laqueur has performed a remarkable feat of historiography. Some three hundred thirty pages of text may seem hardly adequate to summarize the vast literature about Stalin, to evaluate the new information about the tyrant that has become available thanks to glasnost, and to fathom the meaning of the astounding historical phenomenon which was Stalinism. Yet, the author has succeeded with balance and succinctness. And the subject is not merely of historical importance. Stalin-or more precisely what Soviet society has been allowed in recent years to learn about him and his era-estroika has turned into the present collapse of Communism is a major reason why per In the wake of Khrushchev’s revelations, the poet Aleksandr Tvardovsky wrote: “What can you put differently? What can you add? Such things did happen on this our earth.” Well, you can add that Khrushchev’s indictment of his erstwhile boss was still incomplete, and glossed over many of Stalin’s crimes and follies. Even so, Khrushchev’s colleagues decided (quite correctly from their point of view) that the Soviet system could not stand the continued flow of such revelations, and this was one of the main reasons they got rid of the garrulous Nikita.