Straight From the Horse’s Mouth

Marshal sokolovsky’s work on strategy is likely to have a larger circulation in the U.S. than it had in the USSR. Its Russian-language edition, published last fall in Moscow, ran to only 20,000 copies —a relatively small edition for a major work in the Soviet Union. It has now been published in two English-language versions in this country. As enterprising American publishers interested in profits and the spread of knowledge, Prentice-Hall and Praeger have performed a real service by rushing translations of Sokolovsky into print. (Praeger won the race to publish first. Prentice-Hall was second past the post by about thirty days in a contest that had all the overtones of the One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich sprint.) As a result, an important Soviet military work is now freely available to the bureaucrat, the academician and the public in this country.

While it is a military work, what Sokolovsky has to say is of definite and fundamental significance in the area of politics. His message is that the sole mission of the Soviet armed forces is to fight and win World War III. Both editions make this clear by allowing Marshal Sokolovsky to speak for himself. His style is the dull, colorless prose of normal Soviet writing—and a prose further deadened by unimaginative translation. In this respect, the Prentice-Hall edition is far superior to Praeger’s, but even so, it’s hard going. Nevertheless, the reader should attempt to stay with it all the way and then— if he still isn’t satisfied that he has Sokolovsky’s message—turn to the introductions written by Garthoff of State for Praeger and by Wolfe of Rand for Prentice-Hall.

WJ

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Walter Darnell Jacobs

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Marshal sokolovsky’s work on strategy is likely to have a larger circulation in the U.S. than it had in the USSR. Its Russian-language edition, published last fall in Moscow, ran to only 20,000 copies —a relatively small edition for a major work in the Soviet Union. It has now been published in two English-language versions in this country. As enterprising American publishers interested in profits and the spread of knowledge, Prentice-Hall and Praeger have performed a real service by rushing translations of Sokolovsky into print. (Praeger won the race to publish first. Prentice-Hall was second past the post by about thirty days in a contest that had all the overtones of the One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich sprint.) As a result, an important Soviet military work is now freely available to the bureaucrat, the academician and the public in this country.

While it is a military work, what Sokolovsky has to say is of definite and fundamental significance in the area of politics. His message is that the sole mission of the Soviet armed forces is to fight and win World War III. Both editions make this clear by allowing Marshal Sokolovsky to speak for himself. His style is the dull, colorless prose of normal Soviet writing—and a prose further deadened by unimaginative translation. In this respect, the Prentice-Hall edition is far superior to Praeger’s, but even so, it’s hard going. Nevertheless, the reader should attempt to stay with it all the way and then— if he still isn’t satisfied that he has Sokolovsky’s message—turn to the introductions written by Garthoff of State for Praeger and by Wolfe of Rand for Prentice-Hall.