Books in Brief: Expansion and Coexistence

Expansion and Coexistence: The History of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917-67, by Adam B. Ulam (Praeger, $12.95). Because he does not think the principles of Marxism-Leninism are logically applicable to the world today, Ulam supposes that the leaders of the Soviet Union (whom he insists on calling “the Russians”) have abandoned them. He pictures Moscow as weary of expansion. Brezhnev, sensible and rational, is seen busily engaged in a search for world stability. Ulam imagines the Communists as just another bunch of politicians—something like Kennedy or Wilson—with similar thought processes and similar goals. These flaws are fatal to Ulam’s otherwise very careful study of a half-century of Soviet foreign policy. If the Communists shared the world view of Harvard professors, the world would be different and even rather like that which Ulam describes. But Brezhnev and his colleagues are products of a different system and profess a different world view. They are hardheaded products of a strenuous ideological training. They do not abandon that ideology because it is unrealistic. As Cuba, Czechoslovakia, and hundreds of other examples have shown, they don’t adjust the ideology to reality— they change reality. Ulam’s work is of some factual value. It’s his assumptions and interpretations that are invalid, and they make his book an expensive curiosity rather than the solid scholarly contribution it might have been.

WJ

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W. D. Jacobs

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Expansion and Coexistence: The History of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917-67, by Adam B. Ulam (Praeger, $12.95). Because he does not think the principles of Marxism-Leninism are logically applicable to the world today, Ulam supposes that the leaders of the Soviet Union (whom he insists on calling “the Russians”) have abandoned them. He pictures Moscow as weary of expansion. Brezhnev, sensible and rational, is seen busily engaged in a search for world stability. Ulam imagines the Communists as just another bunch of politicians—something like Kennedy or Wilson—with similar thought processes and similar goals. These flaws are fatal to Ulam’s otherwise very careful study of a half-century of Soviet foreign policy. If the Communists shared the world view of Harvard professors, the world would be different and even rather like that which Ulam describes. But Brezhnev and his colleagues are products of a different system and profess a different world view. They are hardheaded products of a strenuous ideological training. They do not abandon that ideology because it is unrealistic. As Cuba, Czechoslovakia, and hundreds of other examples have shown, they don’t adjust the ideology to reality— they change reality. Ulam’s work is of some factual value. It’s his assumptions and interpretations that are invalid, and they make his book an expensive curiosity rather than the solid scholarly contribution it might have been.