The Kremlin and the People
THE KREMLIN AND THE PEOPLE $2.00 By REYNAL & HITCHCOCK
THIS little book is in the style to which Walter Duranty’s readers have long been accustomed — sophisticated, cynical, gossipy, and a trifle rambling, a combination of rather consciously hardboiled reporting with overtones of an Oxford education. The author concentrates his attention on the curious series of treason and sabotage trials that began after the murder of one of Stalin’s chief lieutenants, Sergei Kirov, in 1934, and dragged on until 1938, being accompanied and followed by one of the most gigantic of Russia’s numerous ‘purges.’ Mr. Duranty nowhere uses the formula, ‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs,’ which he sometimes invoked in his days as a Moscow correspondent, and gives a vivid picture of the grim melodrama of the trials. ‘One thing,’ he says, ‘is certain, that from 60 to 70 per cent of the leaders in every field of Soviet activity and endeavor were purged, and of these at least one third and perhaps one half were shot.’ Despite this formidable bloodletting, he is optimistic about the Soviet showing and prospects in the war against Germany and believes that Hitler made his first great mistake when he attacked Russia. Neither Mr. Duranty nor anyone else can give us much ‘inside’ information about this most mysterious of great wars; but the reader will find some fascinating detective problems in the stories of the trials, and for good measure the author gives us his personal interpretation of the flight of Rudolf Hess.
W. H. C.