THE RIGHT BOOKS

Two excellent books merit reading, as well as reviewing, together: Stalin and the Kirov Murder (Oxford, $16.95), by Robert Conquest, and Death in the Forest: The Story of the Katyn Forest Massacre (Hippocrene Books, 171 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016; $8.95), by Janusz K. Zawodny, first published in 1962, now in a new edition. Each begins with the factual account of a crime, goes on to examine the relevant evidence, and concludes with an assessment of the historical significance of the events. The effect, finally, is comparable to that produced by one of those rare crime novels in which, though the solution is apparent throughout, the reality of the action is so consummate as to generate total absorption and a kind of false suspense.

The assassination of Sergei Mironovich Kirov, Secretary of the Central and Leningrad Committees of the AllUnion Communist Party, on December 1, 1934, by Leonid Vasilevich Nikolayev, not only set in motion the responses and counter-responses culminating directly in the great Soviet Terror later in the decade; in Conquest’s words, it “was made the central justification for the whole theory of Stalinism and the necessity for endless terror.” It also provided “the key moment which determined the development of the Soviet system, and so the future of the world.”

CW

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Chilton Williamson Jr.

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Two excellent books merit reading, as well as reviewing, together: Stalin and the Kirov Murder (Oxford, $16.95), by Robert Conquest, and Death in the Forest: The Story of the Katyn Forest Massacre (Hippocrene Books, 171 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016; $8.95), by Janusz K. Zawodny, first published in 1962, now in a new edition. Each begins with the factual account of a crime, goes on to examine the relevant evidence, and concludes with an assessment of the historical significance of the events. The effect, finally, is comparable to that produced by one of those rare crime novels in which, though the solution is apparent throughout, the reality of the action is so consummate as to generate total absorption and a kind of false suspense.

The assassination of Sergei Mironovich Kirov, Secretary of the Central and Leningrad Committees of the AllUnion Communist Party, on December 1, 1934, by Leonid Vasilevich Nikolayev, not only set in motion the responses and counter-responses culminating directly in the great Soviet Terror later in the decade; in Conquest’s words, it “was made the central justification for the whole theory of Stalinism and the necessity for endless terror.” It also provided “the key moment which determined the development of the Soviet system, and so the future of the world.”