Two books have recently appeared to which large bodies of readers will doubtless turn for answers to the question of what changes in the Red Empire since Stalin’s death mean to us. Both are by men who have been writing on Soviet affairs, with various receptions in various camps. Russia in Transition, by Isaac Deutscher (Coward-McCann, $4.50) and Russia Revisited, by Louis Fischer (Doubleday, $4.00) were written, and were presumably too near publication for revision, when Nikita Khrushchev expelled Molotov, Malenkov and Kaganovich from the supreme Party Presidium. It is doubtful, however, whether this development, if it had come earlier, would have made any great difference in the major theses of the two authors.
They agree that while there have been some changes in the conditions under which the Russian people live—none greater than those resulting from the easing of the police terror—there has been no change in the system of government, no radical change in the system of control over agriculture and industry, and no great change projected in the economic policy. Both see greater and more spectacular changes coming than the Khrushchev coup, which neither foresaw. Neither ventures to say explicitly what these changes will mean to us. That is left to our inclinations.
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