(c) 1959, Times NewspapersDoc ref: TLS-1959-1218             Date: December 18, 1959

·THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT FRIDAY DECEMBER 18 1959 739

RUSSIA'S NEW LOOK EDWARD CUNKSRAW: Khrushchd. Russia. 17Spp. Penguin Books. 2o.6d.

During ~he past fifteen years Mr. Crnnkshaw has WJ"~I'ten some hal[ dozen books on the Soviet Union, and is one of our most familiar and popular authorities on it. The vir_ tues c! his writing nO Jonger need any bush. His impressions are vivid, his narrative easy and Ouent, and his explanations plausible. and never too far-fetched or profound. He is also rofreshingly undogmatic; and, while he comments freely, his emotions seldom fun away with him -a rare merit among writers in this particular field. These qualit·ies make him a first rate journalist.

But they carry with them a certain limitation. His impressions are always instantaneous, and belong to the present: tbis is what makes them so clear and vivid. But tlbey imply ~iUle consciousness of ~e past, and little interest in the processes which have made things what they are. Mr. Crnnkshaw is not reaUy an analyst, and does not get far benoath the sur­face which he mirrors so brilliantly.

cr!~5h::t~al!~';.sow~n !rect~~: It is surprising in the present volume 10 find so little about atomic science. or rockets and satell,ites, or material progress generally. since consciousness of a rapid increase both of material prosperity a nd of military power is probably the most important distingu;sbing feature between thc Soviet Vnjon of 1955 and of 1959. The best thing in the book is probably the account, written from the personal angle, of Mr. Khrushchev's dlaracter and rise to power. He is depicted here as a simple, direct and very deter­mined man, a poli tician to his finger­tips, a play·actor perhaps up to a certain point (as every successful modern politidan must be), but cer­tainly not a playboy, a man wi lh an unswerving eye firmly fix.ed on an objective. I t is a plausible and not unattractive picture, thoutm one has to admit that it is based on intuition ra ther than evidence. To discover I'he real · ma n behind the public face is becoming difficult even in western democratic countries.

But what of Mr. Khrushohev's objectivc? Here Mr, Crankshaw is ingcn'ious and once more plausible, Malenkov aftcr the war was impressed by the growing -influence and significance of the new manageria l class, of the men who ran

FRANCEseA M, WILSON: They Came os Strungers. 266pp, Hamish Hamilton. 25s,

This absorbing: and humane account of refugees to Britain is by an author herself intimately familiar with the latest terrible episodes of the slory, If so much good had not come out of the movements of population set going by persecution, it is Cain who would represent the Platonic ideal of brotherhood. But there are kind hearts as well as hard ones-kind hearts that sometimes go with muddled heads. The English have seldom shown themselves more hos· pitable than in the decade 1845-55 when the ineptitude of their Govern­mel'lt drove two million starving Irish to North America. Edward III thought it good policy to welcome the radical Flemish weavers to this country, and though some of his sub­jects in the fourteenth century wanted to break the immigrants' necks for the same kind of reasons that the Swing rioters smashed machinery in the nineteenth, he was justified by results as well as by the Book. More refugees from the Low Countries were among the first Protes ta nts to look fo r asylum here, and about the middle of tbe six­teenth century people of many nationalities were arriving. including famous scholars.

The massive Huguenot influxes following especially the Massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572 and Ihe Revoca tion of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 added many thousands of valuable citizens to this country and America (as well as to the States of northern and central Europe). It is true that in exchange tbe Kin&S of France were getting their Irish brigades. But to make out a balance­sheet would S\lggest odious com· parisons; since we lost the brave Irish it was something, indeed it was a great deal, to receive the brave French, The names of the families they established here speak for the contribution they have made and a re making to our culture and prosperity. Bosanquct, Bourdillon, Bouverie (Pusey was one)-tbe long list includes Courtauld, Ma.ruoeau,

industry, who fonned the basis of Soviet power and the backbone of the new Soviet society. When he abandoned his post as secretary of the Party. and went over to govern­ment, he was clearly embarked on the course of boosting t:bis element as a centre and focus of power. He became the prince of technocrats. Mr. Khrushchev, on the other hand, relying on the strength and -prestige of th e old tradition, clune from the first to bhe Party as bis chosen instru· men t, reasserting its authority against Bena and th" secret police. against Malenkov and the new indus­trialists and technicians, aga,jnst Zhu'kov and the army, And. in vir. tue of his choice, and of his deter­mination in pursuiD1:: it. be won out over all bis rivals.

The Party is therefore. as in the old days, back in position as the reposit ory and symbol of authority. But what of the reality? Who con­stitutes the Pa'rty? Mr. Khrushchev, in Mr, Cranksha.w's picture. was far too clever and active-minded a poli­tician not to see the dangers of red tape and encrusted bureaucracy in the old party personnel which had sur­vived tbe purges, and has set to work to renew it from the bottom by bringing in the younger generation which is occupied in the constructive business of the Soviet economy,

Thus, in the long run, the differ­ence between Khrushchev and Malenkov was partly one of form and method. Both recognized the vital role to be played by these new elements. But, whereas Malenkov proposed to rely on them as a force independent of the Party, and thus to by-pass the decrepit party machine, Khrushchev has built them inlo the party structure, and is using them to renovate it. This is in accordance with a procedure, which has been in force for the best part of thirty years, of making the Party a crystalliza tion of the constructivc forces in tbe society. Considered as high-level speculation this is acceptable enough. But one would have liked a little more basic information, and a little more explanation of what it means in telms of daily life. Mr. Crankshaw is a lso a little too frankly contemptuous of ideology, To attempt to portray the Soviet Union without taking account of Marxism is rather like writing a.bout Victorian En~land and

REFUGEE YEARS Olivier (the family of Which Sir Laurence is now head), and among people with English names maternally descended from Huguenots we find David Garrick, Sydney Smith and Sir Winston Churchill. though in the remoter past Churchill itself was French.

In the eigbteentb century, before the French Revolution brought us its forty thousand 6migres, our most eminent fugiti ve guests were Voltaire and Rousseau. Miss Wilson's discur­sive passages about them are amusing and instructive ; sbe always wants to tell us what the refugees thought of this country, not only what use they may be supposed to have been (0 us. Voltaire's enthusiasm is well known; Rousseau behaved in a very neurotic way and alienated some of his old friends, but he made a new friend and kept him-the father of Malthus.

As for the ~migr6s who came and went, the most interesting of them were the Juniper Hall coterie, familiar to us from the circumstance that Fanny Burney, who married one of them, the Chevalier d'Arblay, wrote about them in her diary. The Bourbon Restoration was followed by Bourbon collapses; every European upheaval meant more refugees, kings in exile. liberals, communists, anar­chists. Alexander Herzen printed a Russian socialist paper in London but cut little ice with the German K arl Marx, who later pursued his anti·capi talist studies in the British Museum Reading Room created by the distinguished Modenese ex­Carbonaro, Antonio Panizzi.

As the century wore on, the numbers of the Jewisb community­readmitted to England by Cromwell after more tban three hundred years of exile and emancipated in 1856-were increased by refugees from the Russian pogroms: the Hitler terror added anotber hundred thousand. The Jewish rate of contribution to the me of the country had first been markedly stepped up by the ancestral efficiency of Levi Barent Cohen and the philanthropic activities of his son­in-law Moses Montefiore, who drank his bottle of port a day and lived to bc a bundred. It is with

ignoring Protestant Christiamty, That precepts are not always followed. and doctrines not always consciously believed, does not mean that they are without important influence.

Mr. Cr.all'ksitaw writes intel!igently and at some length on the question of ~tera-ture, and reprints in an appendix the letter wrirten. or said to have -been written, to Mr. Bocis Pasterna·1c by the editors of Novy Mlr when they originaHy declined to pub~ish Dr. Z hivago in that journal. It is an illuminating document, explaining more effectively than more ~rudely propagandist utter­a.nces tile approaclJ to literature. Mr. Crankshaw sleers a cautious course bet\lleen the manifest a'bsardity 00 believing that the .. thaw" had no meaning or importance and the iHusion of suppog,ing that the Soviet r6gime can ever adopt a pu.rely laissez-loire aUit·ude to literature. He rightly points out that the campaign a.gainst Mr, Pastema'k began only Wlitlh the 'Publioation of Dr, Zltivago abroad and the arward of the Nobel Prize ; this \WS read, not unnaturally. as a political move, and caHed for a political reply. But tbe campaign soon died down. Mr. Cnnk9baw repeats, without endorsing, the specu­lation that it was Mr, .Kh.:rushcbev himself who quashed it.

Mr. Crankshaw's first books on the Soviet scene appeared immediately after the kl.st war, and -reflected the strong jmpact of wartime experi­t::nces, He ,returned to the Soviet Union in 1955, and wrote another memo rable book full of living images collected during his stay. His visit at the beginning of 1959. which pro­douced the present book, seems to have been briefer and less fruitful. Khrushchev's Russia, in COI1lpG1ri90n with 'his earl'ier wri tings, offers fewer S1harply remembered pictures, which are Mr. Crankshaw's strong point, and more reflection and analysiS, which are not.

At times the urbane refusal to dog­mat·ire seems to proceed no longer from an. abundance of variegated and conflicting impressions but from a sense that there ·is after all not·hing new to say. Mr. Cranksba'W hopes -his publisher 'le11s us-that this will be his last book about Russia, We hope Uhat it wHl oot, but that, before writing another, he will have a. fuller opportunity to replenish his impres­sions at the source.

grief that Miss -Wilson records Britain's a.bandonment of her posi· tion as .. the world's last bulwark against oppression" when, under the Aliens Order of 1920, the Govern­ment closed the door against the Russian ~mjgrl!s and others. But an inevitable revulsion followed the evcnts of the 1930s in Germany. And now, aD the occasion of World Refugee Year, voluntary organiza­tions here are giving energetic support to the Government and the United Nations in an attempt to resettle or relieve Europe's 160,000 displaced persons and the two miUion refugees in the Middle and Far East. .. Voluntary" is a good word. Much of the bospitality to strangers that we read of in Miss Wilson's admir­able book. was voluntary.

A FAMOUS VICTORY KENNETH FENWICK.: H.M.S. Victory.

369-pp. Cassell. 30s. Partly owing to the extreme vicissi­tudes of the Second World War. and to the number of officers and men who at one time or another served in famous ships, there has come about a fasbion for ship-biographies. It is a good one. Mr. Fenwick's is an example of tbe genre at its best.

After a very brief sketeb of the predecessors of H.M.S. Victory in the Royal Navy, including a sbip which served against tbe Spanisb Armada, the author concentrates on the 1st· rate of 1765 (laid down in 1759, the "Year of Victories ',), which is the: ship the visitor sees at Portsmouth. H er battle-honours include the set-piece battles of SL Vincent and Trafalgar: but it is for his record of her more humdrum operational service, and for the portraits at. the eminent men who sUIX:essively flew their flags in her, that Mr. Fenwick's account is so valuable, The 'whole story of the ship, from her building by Sir Thomas Slade right up to her service in the last war as fiagship of the Commander-in-Chief, Ports­mouth, is well worth mowing, and Mr. Fenwick bas produced a pleasing and soho1lU'ly addition to maritima histoIj'.

THE SERVICE OF FREEDOM MOSES MOSKOWITZ: Hunum Rights and World Ord4r. 239pp. Stev_

and Sons. 30s.

The promotion of human rights can fa irly be rated as a primary activity of the United Nations Organization. The language of the Charter is suffi­cient evidence, at any rate, of this intention. As the autbor of th is very readable account of what has been done points out, here was no revolu­tionary departure; "by the time World War n erupted, there existed both a tradition of international responsibility in the field of human rights an d the rudiments of inter­national definition of several of these rights and freedoms," T he difference is th a t to-<lay the service of freedom, whether humanitarian in purpose or partly political (c/. the Minorities Treaties of the League .of Nations), has an institutional basis. Conse­quently, something more might have been expected by now than the fonnulating of a Universal Declara­tion of Human Rights (at the Third Session of the General Assembly) and the elaboration of Draft Covenants.

Mr. Moskowitz's aim is to show, ten years after that Declaration. that the results in practice have been .. insufficient and even disappoint­ing," Why? Mainly, he says, because the Member States. generally, con­sider the promotion of hUman rights to be irrelevant to the normal func­tioning of an international organiza­tion- while some States, conceding the Jegal and moral obligation, retreat behind the defences of the" domestic

jurisdiction to postulate of Article 2 (7) of the Charter.

The author's suggestions for improvement indu'de the right of individual petition (which is to somo extent recognized under tile Trustee­ship System) and the appointment of a special United Nations High Commissioner (Attorney-Genual). His general conclusion is that th6 humanitarian lens must be discarded in favour of the view that iDtec~ national concern for human rights is essentially" a political force capable of inducing certain important changes in the structure of international rela .. tions ... , tt (Hence the title of his book ,) In other words, in ·this spber~ as generaliy in the economic and political order, we are up against Levia than, the almighty sovereign State. AU are ready to recognize that" the world has become an iDter~ locking entity and that it can (10

longer continue to exist in peace in its separate parts" but" this is being studiously ignored in practical politics ... . " As a proposition it is irrefutable.

Mr, Moskowitz has been a close observer of Uni,ted Nations behaviour in tbis field as representative of the Consultative Council of Jewish Organizations, o ne of the principal non-governmental organizations hav­ing consultative status-with the Economic and Social Council but also wilih Unesco and the I.L.O,

-THE GIFT THAT'S DEFINITELY DIFFERENT

..J('fVCIL:ULV •• Ii. SloaHAN McKENNA and E, G, MARSHAll olve Irrlc~ and bl.utlfullr charad.rlsed readlngl of the Molly Bloom and Leopold Bloom loliloqul.... TC tCN13 DYLAN THOMA. . If I Were Tickled Br The Rub Of love. Should Lantern. Shin.. And D.ath Shall Have No Dominion. A Refusal To Mourn The Deatll, 8r FIre, Of A Child In london. A Winter'. Tall, Th.re Wn A Saviour. Poem On Hie Birthday. lam.nt, TC '018 A Visit To America, together wlth readlnoe of poetry by contemporary poel.: The Bards (Walte, d.la Mare). Master And BOI'n Song and A s I Walked Out One Evening CW, H. Auden), Chard Willow: Mr. T. S. Eliot', Sundar Evening Broaclca.t Po.tscrlpl (H.nry Reid). Naming Of Parls (Henry Reid). Th. Owl (Edward Thomas). Broken AppoIntment, To Usble Brown, and In DAth DlvldKl (Thomu Hardy), TC tOOt HOIiL COWARD" SHAW Poem. Interlude from ih. A pple Cart. Noel Coward and Margar.t Leighton read Coward' .. lophl.tlcatt'd ver ... and perform the hilarioul Shaw Interlude betwean King Magnus and his millre... TC t084-ptALQRAVlIii:'S GOLDIiN TREAflURV CLAIRE BLOOU, ERIC PORTMAN. and JOHN NEVILLE read a generous setecllon from thle famed anthology 01 En"II.h Irtlc

poetry, Including: The Paliionate Shepherd • It Was A Lovlr And HII La.... Go A nd Catch A Failing Star, Song For 51. Cecilia's Day. To A lthta From Prllon. On A Favourite Cat. Highland Mary. She Walk. In Bailouty. La Bell. Dame San. Merel. To A Skylark. london. 110:2. Kuble Khan. Taarl, Idle Tell" DOVel Beach. And manr otherl.

TCOeaa/o

NONaENa. VIlR •• 0 .. CARROLL AND LIiAIil BEATRICE LILLIE, CYRil RITCHARD an .. STANLEY HOLLOW A Y reclt. JabbeMockr. The Walrul And The Carpenter, Father Wtlllam, Will You Walk A LIHla Faller. Th. Pobble Who Hal No To ... The ,",umbli ... The Owl And The Pussycat. And other nonHnH, TC 107.

T . S. aLlOT The love Song Of J, Alfr*Cf Prui'rodt, Por1ralt of a lady. Prelude., Mr, Eliot', Sundar " ornlng Service. A.h Wedneaday, A Song for Simeon. Marine. Triumph" March from Corlolan. a l ight Invl.lble from The Rock. Chorul from Murder In Th. cathedral, Chorul from The Family ReunIon.

Te,04II

THE POETRY OP COLERIDOK SIR RALPH RICHARDSON rNd. In Ita entirety The AncIent Merlner, {ogeth,r with DajecUon. An Ode, The Plaa.ur. Doml Of KublaKhan, ThIILlme·Tr .. BowarMr Prllon. Fro.t at .. idnighL TC toea

Ad: your loc.,' Philip. du/er to ordar Ihe rlcord, of your cho/c.

A PRODUCT OF PHILIPS RECORDS LIMITED

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