Friday, January 13, 2006
Bool Comment (not nearly deep enough to be called a review)
["Bool" ???What the hell is a bool??? Of course, it should be "book," but it's such a funny word, I'm going to leave it up there. *L*]
A couple of years ago I read Hedrick Smith’s The Russians (1976) and at present I am reading his 1991 work, The New Russians. They are both very insightful books, even though he says this in the introduction of the newer book:
"I did know some intellectuals who were desperate for a bit of fresh air, some room to breathe, for a modest "thaw" such as the one initiated by Khrushchev in the late 1950's. But it seemed to me that even a modest reform would be long in coming. Like others who had lived among the Russians, sent children to their schools, studied their history and their institutions, come to know their ways and their mentality, I left Russia sixteen years ago thinking that fundamental change was impossible. And I wrote that in my book The Russians.
"The Decline and Stagnation that sank into place for the next decade, into the mid-eighties, seemed to confirm this judgment. Soviet politics appeared as frozen as the Siberian tundra.
"As it turned out, of course, I was wrong."
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that there will be a third book on the subject by Smith. Granted, he is an outsider, but he did live in the country, with his family, for 7 (?) years and experienced at least as much as he was allowed to experience. And as a journalist, he had/has many sources not necessarily available to the usual outside observer. I would love to read his take on Gorbachev’s successors and his confession of having been wrong once again. The flaw in both books was his predicting what would happen in the future, but his reporting of what was happening at the time is fascinating.
A couple of years ago I read Hedrick Smith’s The Russians (1976) and at present I am reading his 1991 work, The New Russians. They are both very insightful books, even though he says this in the introduction of the newer book:
"I did know some intellectuals who were desperate for a bit of fresh air, some room to breathe, for a modest "thaw" such as the one initiated by Khrushchev in the late 1950's. But it seemed to me that even a modest reform would be long in coming. Like others who had lived among the Russians, sent children to their schools, studied their history and their institutions, come to know their ways and their mentality, I left Russia sixteen years ago thinking that fundamental change was impossible. And I wrote that in my book The Russians.
"The Decline and Stagnation that sank into place for the next decade, into the mid-eighties, seemed to confirm this judgment. Soviet politics appeared as frozen as the Siberian tundra.
"As it turned out, of course, I was wrong."
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that there will be a third book on the subject by Smith. Granted, he is an outsider, but he did live in the country, with his family, for 7 (?) years and experienced at least as much as he was allowed to experience. And as a journalist, he had/has many sources not necessarily available to the usual outside observer. I would love to read his take on Gorbachev’s successors and his confession of having been wrong once again. The flaw in both books was his predicting what would happen in the future, but his reporting of what was happening at the time is fascinating.
# posted by Regality @ 7:37 AM 
