Books in Brief: At the Red Summit

At the Red Summit: Interpreter behind the Iron Curtain, by Erwin Weit, trans. Mary Schofield (Macmillan, 226 pp., $6.95). According to Erwin Weit, who served for years as his personal interpreter, Wladyslaw Gomulka’s efforts to “humanize” Communism in Poland turned out to be the biggest Polish Joke of all time. Weit, a perceptive observer whose memoir first appeared in a West German edition in 1970 shortly after his exit from Poland, gives us a detailed, depressing chronicle of the crumbling of Gomulka’s good intentions and a brace of portraits of high- and middle-level Party functionaries in the various puppet states of Eastern Europe. His view of Walter Ulbricht, perhaps the most cunning of the satellite leaders, and Gomulka’s adept sparring partner, is particularly useful, and Mr. Weit’s sensitivity and occasional humorous insights make for a readable as well as an informative work. An undercurrent—half encouraging, half depressing—that runs throughout the book is the tenacious clinging of the average Pole to traditional cultural and spiritual values. It is encouraging in that it illustrates the durability of such values in the face of Communism, depressing in that the Poles and other satellite peoples seem more abandoned to their captors today than ever. This, in turn, has led to a tendency to grab at straws. Thus, for example, when Anastas Mikoyan paid a brief visit to the Church of Our Lady in the market place of Cracow, “he immediately won over many of the citizens. . . .” Cold comfort, but perhaps the best to be expected in the wake of detente.

AB

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Aram Bakshian Jr.

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At the Red Summit: Interpreter behind the Iron Curtain, by Erwin Weit, trans. Mary Schofield (Macmillan, 226 pp., $6.95). According to Erwin Weit, who served for years as his personal interpreter, Wladyslaw Gomulka’s efforts to “humanize” Communism in Poland turned out to be the biggest Polish Joke of all time. Weit, a perceptive observer whose memoir first appeared in a West German edition in 1970 shortly after his exit from Poland, gives us a detailed, depressing chronicle of the crumbling of Gomulka’s good intentions and a brace of portraits of high- and middle-level Party functionaries in the various puppet states of Eastern Europe. His view of Walter Ulbricht, perhaps the most cunning of the satellite leaders, and Gomulka’s adept sparring partner, is particularly useful, and Mr. Weit’s sensitivity and occasional humorous insights make for a readable as well as an informative work. An undercurrent—half encouraging, half depressing—that runs throughout the book is the tenacious clinging of the average Pole to traditional cultural and spiritual values. It is encouraging in that it illustrates the durability of such values in the face of Communism, depressing in that the Poles and other satellite peoples seem more abandoned to their captors today than ever. This, in turn, has led to a tendency to grab at straws. Thus, for example, when Anastas Mikoyan paid a brief visit to the Church of Our Lady in the market place of Cracow, “he immediately won over many of the citizens. . . .” Cold comfort, but perhaps the best to be expected in the wake of detente.