The Soviet Enigma

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 721, 8 May 1953, Page 12

The Soviet Enigma

VISA TO MOSCOW, by Michel Gordey; Victor Gollancz. English price, 21/-, THE TIME OF THE ASSASSINS, by Godfrey Blunden; Jonathan Cape. English price, 15/-.

(Reviewed by

David

Hall

FRENCH journalist who A speaks Russian fluently, Michel Gordey in 1950 managed to spend two months travelling in Russia. He found it quite possible to walk about on his own in. Moscow: no one would talk to

a foreigner anyway. But in the hands of [ntourist ("anti-tour-ist") most of his requests to see particular activities and institutions were politely and systematically frustrated. This was partly due to the "widespread fear of takine an

unauthorised step which paralyses every other consideration" in the "massive but timid bureaucracy" of the Soviet Union, partly to a pathological love of secrecy for its own sake. How much Gordey saw and heard in spite of obstruction and official prearrangement of visits will amaze the reader. This book rings true and does its best to be fair to both sides in the "irresolvablée debate." Gordey finds the Soviet people firmly behind their Government. Although their living standards are low, they are rising; average standards of appreciation of the arts seem high. Whatever its ineptitude in its foreign propaganda-and Gordey ‘thinks it has the worst public relations service in the world-on the home front Soviet propaganda is entirely successful, ‘building up a picture of hostile decadent capitalist powers surrounding an innocent and peace-loving Russia. Even the educated Russian with actual knowledge of the-West is happy to swallow the official line, just as he naively accepts certain obscure Russians as the "onlie begetters" of almost every invention in the modern world. Godfrey Blunden’s strong and gripping story deals with conditions in Kharkov during its occupation by German troops in 1942, a sordid account of atrocity and counter-atrocity, weighted ‘in favour of the Russians gallantly struggling to expel the invader, with an ironically macabre ending. It is a good novel, and its theme helps to explain the genuine dread of a new war which Gordey found everywhere in Russia.