American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin by George P. KennanReview by: Robert F. ByrnesThe Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring, 1963), p. 91Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/304816 .

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RBviews 91

Roots of Revolution is not, I think, the definitive scholarly treatment of Russian revolutionary Populism, for it is not rich in analysis and ex- planation of the manifold materials with which it works. Yet it is an ab- sorbing history, hugely informative, rich in insight, and encyclopedic in scope. It is a "must" for the shelf of anyone with a deep interest in the Russian nineteenth century.

Robert C. Tucker Princeton University

George P. Kennan. Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin. (A MentorBook, MQ 459.) New York: The New American Library, 1962. 384 pp., $. 95.

This is a reprint of a 1961 volume by the present American Ambassa- dor to Yugoslavia, who was earlier American Ambassador to the Soviet Union, and, even earlier, as the head of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department, the man most responsible for the concept of con- tainment. Russia and the West is not a survey oran analysis of relations between the Soviet Union and the states of Western Europe and the United States, as its title seems to indicate, but concentrates instead on two important periods, the Russian Revolution and Civil War and the Second World War, including its immediate origins. One-half of the book is de- voted to the period from 1917 to 1921, and is really a condensation of Mr. Kennan's two volumes on Russia's "leaving" the First World War and on the relations which then developed between the revolutionary state and the former allies of Russia. The volume contains nothing on American- Soviet relations from 1921 until 1939; relations between the Soviet Union and France from 1921 until 1935 are completely neglected; economic problems are not noted. In other words, this is a most uneven book.

However, Russia and the West is nevertheless a valuable volume. It is full of flashes of insight, into both Soviet and Western attitudes and policies, and it reveals the painful dilemmas Wilson, Roosevelt, and other Western leaders faced in dealing with this new state and system. Kennan, who is himself now a romantic idealist in international politics and now a professional diplomat who emphasizes realism and believes that' foreign policy and diplomacy are too important to be affected by the views of or- dinary people as reflected in domestic politics, makes trenchant, but often curious criticisms of Western failure to understand the nature of the Soviet revolution and of Western insistence on fighting for unconditional victory in both World Wars. His principal message to the world is that military measures cannot resolve the problems which the Soviet Union and its adherents pose, but that we must also work for peaceful change and eliminate the political and social issues on which Communism thrives.

Robert F. Byrnes Indiana University

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