Books in Brief: Profiles in Russian Resistance

Profiles in Russian Resistance, by Irina Kirk (Quadrangle, 297 pp., $10.95).

NR readers are already familiar with one of these profiles; Mrs. Kirk’s interview with Anatoly Radygin appeared in NR’s April 25 issue. The 15 other interviews are just as rewarding. The questions are good, and the answers are, by and large, superb. Dmitri Simes was expelled from Moscow University for organizing a protest against Soviet involvement in the war in Vietnam. He explained to Mrs. Kirk, a dove, why he supported U.S. involvement: “I worked at that time in the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, and I was in touch with certain circles and knew that North Vietnam was for a long time actively infiltrating the South. I knew that starting from the end of the 1950s North Vietnam began to create a revolt. This I knew not from the American sources, but from my own work experience. One can call it any name; one can call it brotherly help for the people of South Vietnam, but I am in the habit of calling it aggression. Perhaps because I have a Soviet upbringing and Soviet formulations. But if one country first creates a political organization in another country, and then begins a revolt, and then uses that revolt in order to send troops into the other country, this is called aggression.” Talking with Galina Telnikova, a geographer who now lives in England, Mrs. Kirk, who is hawkish on women’s rights, tries to evoke some sympathy for the plight of women in the West. Miss Telnikova, however, doesn’t seem very sympathetic. The Soviet woman, she says, “is busy twenty hours a day between her job, queues, and housework—that’s the liberation of women.” Compared to Soviet women, Miss Telnikova thinks, Western women have “very funny problems.” But Mrs. Kirk spends very little time grinding her axe. Most of the time she lets these 16 remarkable Russians tell their stories.

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Profiles in Russian Resistance, by Irina Kirk (Quadrangle, 297 pp., $10.95).

NR readers are already familiar with one of these profiles; Mrs. Kirk’s interview with Anatoly Radygin appeared in NR’s April 25 issue. The 15 other interviews are just as rewarding. The questions are good, and the answers are, by and large, superb. Dmitri Simes was expelled from Moscow University for organizing a protest against Soviet involvement in the war in Vietnam. He explained to Mrs. Kirk, a dove, why he supported U.S. involvement: “I worked at that time in the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, and I was in touch with certain circles and knew that North Vietnam was for a long time actively infiltrating the South. I knew that starting from the end of the 1950s North Vietnam began to create a revolt. This I knew not from the American sources, but from my own work experience. One can call it any name; one can call it brotherly help for the people of South Vietnam, but I am in the habit of calling it aggression. Perhaps because I have a Soviet upbringing and Soviet formulations. But if one country first creates a political organization in another country, and then begins a revolt, and then uses that revolt in order to send troops into the other country, this is called aggression.” Talking with Galina Telnikova, a geographer who now lives in England, Mrs. Kirk, who is hawkish on women’s rights, tries to evoke some sympathy for the plight of women in the West. Miss Telnikova, however, doesn’t seem very sympathetic. The Soviet woman, she says, “is busy twenty hours a day between her job, queues, and housework—that’s the liberation of women.” Compared to Soviet women, Miss Telnikova thinks, Western women have “very funny problems.” But Mrs. Kirk spends very little time grinding her axe. Most of the time she lets these 16 remarkable Russians tell their stories.