of War, as Prime Minister and virtual dictator, down to his ignominious fall and flight, presents an unwitting confession of the author's littleness, maudlin sentimentality, and swell-headedness. He typifies the Russian Intelligentsia, noble of purpose, lofty of ideals, but innocent of backbone and practicality. Kerensky's Catastrophe shows the inevitability of the triumph of the Bolsheviki, men who backed their words with action and who had no scruples about sending sentiments and theories to the winds when necessary. The Russian monarchists are prolific in their effusions, but their eloquence does not match their vehemence. Typical of their "literature" is the swollen penny-dreadful, General Krasnov's From Double Eagle to Red Flag. The English preface to this novel compares it to the London Albert Memorial; a pertinent comparison, if it refers to bulkiness and waste of material. To the same category of fiction belong the pretentious "treatises” of V. Poliakoff, the notorious "Argus," whose Soviet versus Civilization outTories the most hopeless Die-Hard. His Mother Dear and The Tragic Bride offer an inane panegyric to the Dowager Empress Marie and to the late Empress Alexandra of Russia, respectively. The sympathetic description of the two ladies, in a tone of pathos worthy of a better cause, purports to convince the reader of the charming qualities of these women, who, indeed, would have been quite harmless as wives of shopkeepers, but whose accidental rise to the throne of a great and complex state has had fatal consequences. Different, and not unmixed, is the impression one. receives from Baron N. Wrangel's memoirs, From Serfdom to Bolshevism; 1847-1920. Here is an aristocrat and a monarchist, cultivated and intelligent, whose western European education (he is a Doctor of Philosophy of the Berlin University) increased his aversion to the dreadful régime at home. With an urbane charm and with a sense for form, the Baron describes old Russia as he has known it, as a member of the privileged class, as an official, and as a promoter of industry. The epic tone of the narrative and its elegant style fail to modify the general impression of a country crushed by a régime of crass injustice, criminal stupidity, and fantastic cupidity. The following passage may illustrate Kluchevsky's reference to the Russian attempt at combining "enlightenment with slavery": .... the Count had six or seven fairly roomy small houses on his estate, each built in a different style. According to his steward, each had contained a harem of women recruited from the wives and daughters of his serfs. They were all dressed to match their surroundings-in Chinese costume in the Chinese house. . . . and so forth. The Count lived first in one house, then in another. These houses were surrounded by a beautiful garden containing flower beds, canals with gondolas floating on them, artificial pools and statues. However, the statues were no longer there and only their pedestals were to be seen. The steward explained their absence by telling us that they were working in the fields. In the dead proprietor's time the statues were living men and women, stripped naked and painted white. They had to stay motionless in their poses for hours at a time, when the Count was sailing in his gondola or walking in the garden. . . . . The Count's death was quite as fantastic as his mode of life. One day when he was strolling past a group representing Hercules and Venus, the two statues jumped down from their pedestal; Venus threw sand in his eyes, and Hercules broke his neck with his club. They were tried and condemned to the knout. Venus died under it, and Hercules was sent to Siberia. .... This charming story might be used as an allegory of the Russian revolution. Unfortunately the Baron's urbanity and humor forsake him when he comes to discuss the more recent events in Russia, which resulted in the complete reversal of class relations. He becomes fretful and peevish, garrulous and gossipy, and shows signs of senile gullibility (he is an octogenarian). One easily appreciates his case, and foregoes the expectation of calm objectivity in his treatment of such a delicate subject. But one would expect a scholarly and a more unbiased attitude from a foreign observer, and a university professor at that. Professor Karlgren's Bolshevist Russia is a hasty, journalistic concoction of damning would-be evidence against the Soviet régime. While certain of his statements may be correct, their mutual contradictions and the obviously biased tone of the book relegate it to the heap of propaganda, already quite formidable. Such a sweeping judgment cannot be pronounced about Lancelot Lawton's book, The Russian Revolution. In this case the author's bias and his conscience are often at loggerheads, and the reader may take his choice. Mr. Lawton starts out with a firm conviction that Russia is going to the dogs, and through the five hundred and odd pages of his book he valiantly strives to substantiate his conviction. But he is extremely honest, and when the facts go against his preconceived notions he does not use the pontifical phrase: "so much the worse for the facts!" As a result his book abounds in excellent information showing both the lights and the shadows in Soviet Russia, and confirming one's cautious belief that Russia today is neither diabolically black nor angelically white. Mr. Lawton unfortunately lacks discrimination in his con scientious gathering of "information," and many of his interviews with fellow-passengers and shopkeepers betray a lack of humor. It is precisely this quality, a fine sense of humor, that distinguishes the most brilliant anti-Bolshevik book of our day, V. V. Shulgin's Three Capitals (Tri Stolitsy). An avowed reactionary, a Monarchist, a Jew-hater, an active White interventionist, Shulgin has recently come back from Russia, where he traveled in disguise at the risk of being caught and executed. The vicissitudes of the last ten years have trained this irreconcilable ci-devant in the art of taking things philosophically and not so gravely as most Russians do. He is even capable of poking fun at himself, at, for example, such tragi-comic situations as when, disguised as an old, long-bearded Jew, he steals up in the twilight to his former manor in the city of Kiev to find the place occupied by a workers' club. Shulgin the patriot is delightedly surprised to discover that Russian caviar and vodka have not deteriorated under the Bolsheviki, and he waxes rhapsodic when he stretches himself on the spacious sleeping berth, and "blesses the Russian railroads." Observing the new life in the country and in the "three capitals," Kiev, Moscow, and Leningrad, Shulgin, despite all his condemnations, has this to say: "I had expected to find the Russian nation dying, but I see its indubitable resurrection." He has caught the essence of the changed psychology of the masses in the following significant passage: I boarded a street car. The same as it has always been. The cars are in good order, and the wicker seats are as comfortable as ever. "Get your tickets, Citizens!" The conductor is young, from the new element apparently. His tone is somewhat more authoritative—as though it were in western Europe. In the west everybody behaves as if he were the future president of the republic. Well, this fellow, too, is overflowing with importance. He is probably a member of the Party. It does not matter that he performs the modest services of a conductor or motorman: he is, nevertheless, an aristocrat, one of the élite. Tonight, at the meeting of the Party, he will decide the fate of the earth, if not of the whole planetary system. An absolutely unbiased attitude towards Soviet Russia can hardly be expected from contemporaries. Perhaps the closest approach to objectivity has been attained by Professors Frank Golder and Lincoln Hutchinson, in their joint work, On the Trail of the Russian Famine. As special investigators in the famine districts for the American Relief Administration, they covered a great deal of ground, interviewed a variety of Russians, and gathered valuable data on different phases of Russian life. The book is intended to be light in tone and contents, its lugubrious subject-matter notwithstanding. Possessed of a happy sense of humor, the authors have been able to lend to their observations and personal vicissitudes a philosophical detachment and an air of genial tolerance. There may be a divergence of opinion as to the value of many casual conversations with average Russians painstakingly recorded by the authors. One may question the bulkiness of certain travelogues in the book and of the life histories submitted by ci-devant citizens and citizenesses. But the total impression is that of a rarely conscientious record of provincial Russia during the years 1921-1923, by men well equipped for the task and immune from the omniscience of those numerous writers on Russia who rush to conclusions and judgments after a fortnight spent in Moscow. Professor Hutchinson's chapter on "Russian Agriculture and the Famine" is a masterly exposition of the subject, sober, pithy, and scholarly. In the field of literature, Rossica has had a prolific year. Mention must be made, first of all, of the critical work of Prince D. S. Mirsky, who has given us within a short period three important volumes: Contemporary Russian Literature, 1881-1925, A History of Russian Literature (to 1881), and Pushkin. Mr. Mirsky is a young writer and his critical methods and views are stamped with the vigorous freshness, and, on occasion, with the impertinence of youth. As a critic he is obviously subjective, hence his judgments often appear controversial and challenging. While esthetic partizanship cannot be regarded as a merit in a historian of literature, Mr. Mirsky's other qualifications may atone for one or two objectionable traits. Above all, his erudition is prodigious, and his catholic familiarity with classic and modern literatures of the world lends a rare breadth to his outlook and criteria. His book on Pushkin is the first comprehensive biography and critique of Russia's greatest poet, in any language, Russian included! The pages on Tolstoy after his "conversion" (in the History) present a keen and fresh estimate of the literary quality of Tolstoy's sermonizing. In the concluding chapters the author discusses Soviet writers of prose and poetry, and though his remarks appear desultory and at times far-fetched and whimsical, they furnish the English reader with a glimpse of what is going on in literary Russia today. From the pen of another Slavic critic, Janko Lavrin, comes a critical biography of Gogol. Mr. Lavrin has used the psychologic method with brilliant success in his books on Ibsen, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy. We have become a bit tired of literary Freudeanism, with its omniscience and artificiality, its neat and clever classifications and interpretations. In his Gogol, Mr. Lavrin barely escapes being a tediously consistent psychoanalyst who attains consistence at the expense of truthfulness. His knowledge of Russian literature and his intellectual honesty save him from such pitfalls, although he does contradict himself at times, as when on page 14 he names Gogol as the prototype of Tolstoy, while on page 246 he justly places Tolstoy among the disciples of Pushkin, Gogol's opposite. As Mr. Lavrin puts it, Gogol is an artist utterly unlike Pushkin-that bright, affirmative genius of Russian literature. Contrary to him, Gogol sees above all the negative side of life. While Pushkin creates through expansion in the world he loves, Gogol can create only through reaction against the reality which makes him hate and suffer. Pushkin is the eternal youth, brimming with vitality, laughter, and life. There is affirmation of life in his very sadness. In Gogol, however, we feel something enigmatic and disturbing even when he laughs. His genius differs from that of Pushkin in the same way that the beauty of the moon differs from the beauty of the sun. Pushkin is always divinely obvious, Gogol nearly always mysterious-even under the veil of extreme obviousness. . . To put it briefly, Pushkin's genius is Apollonian, and that of Gogol is Dionysian. .... A great deal of new material has appeared in recent years about Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, of which only a very small portion is accessible in English. A. Yarmolinsky's biography of Turgenev has been duly reviewed in the Chronicle for July, 1927. Aylmer Maude's collection of Family Views of Tolstoy is rather disappointing. The book contains second-rate material which is, moreover, not at all new, the editor's assertion notwithstanding. Of exceeding value, on the other hand, is Mr. S. S. Koteliansky's compilation, Dostoevsky Portrayed By His Wife. The book is based chiefly on the recently published diaries of Dostoyevsky's second wife, which throw new light on the personality of the great novelist, and also on that of his remarkable wife. Twenty-five years his junior, Anna Grigoryevna served during the last fourteen years of his life as his "stenographer, copyist, secretary, financial adviser, publisher, bookseller, and general manager." This was Dostoyevsky's most productive period; it included the Gambler, the Idiot, the Raw Youth, the Possessed, the Brothers Karamazov, and his essays under the title of the Journal of an Author. Aside |