Evening star., 1935-11-10
geois turned out a well-balanced lob

| 6NNA' Wa AiSa Out JUU.
Tsck-tsck. 1t must be propaganda.
The proletariat revolution, as Mr..
Duranty records it. has been of three
periods. The first was that of mill
tary communism, which achieved DO.
litical solidarity for the Bolsheviks,
and reduced Russia to a desert. At
the end of that experiment, he says,
no crops were grown and nc commerce
existed. Starvation, disease and deso-
lation were everywhere.
These conditions brought about the
second period, that of Lenin's new eco
nomic policy. Under that regime pri-
vate trading was permitted and pros
perity Immediately began to come
back. as capitalist phraseology puts it..
In the towns, merchants opened stores
and in the country the more intelli-
gent peasants began to farm, hiring
labor and paying wages. Both phe-
nomena being uncommunistic. it was
not the intention of the Bolsheviks to
permit them to continue; they
planned to allow the private enter
prises to exist only long enough to set
agriculture and trade back on a pro-
ducing basis. and then to seize posses
sion. This they did-exiling as prof.
teers merchants who had succeeded
and peasants who were thriving The
profits in both cases we're confiscated.
And when this delicate maneuver
was at an end the thirG period-that
of the flve-year plan-waS instituted.
Communism, then, as Mr.. Duranty
saw it, has been destined to success
from the beginning. But it has moved
to success over the bodies of millions
of Russians. Disturbed somewhat by
this fact-the weakness probably of
the bourgeois conscience-he consid-
erS at the end of his hook the nice
question of whether even noble end
justifies just every possible means. He
even writes poem or two about it.
They are not very good.
The book contains accounts Of the
famous trials of the priests and the
English engineers, the visits of Isadora
Duncan, the famines, the relief work
of the Red Cross, conversations with
William Bolitho, Lenin's funeral, and
many other passing episodes. 1t is in
the main sympathetic toward the Rus
sian endeavor. although dispassionate
in reporting what that endeavor has
involved 1t is doubtful that any hon.
est Communist could object to it. And
non Communists can read it without
headache.
THE TWENTIES. VOLUME vi OF
OUR TIMES. BY Mark Sullivan.
New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons.
IT 1NDER this comprehensive title
Mr.. Sullivan adds another VOL
ume to his record of our century,
covering in it the first five years of
the third decade. For the most part
the book deals with the career of
President Harding, purporting to use
that as sort of thread on which to
hang the characteristic phenomena
of the period, but actually making 1t
the main theme of the book. One
feels as one reads that Harding's per-
sonality made a tremendous impress
sion on Mr.. Sullivan-or else that the
tragedy of his administration is so
good story that the authors instinct
naturally subordinated everything else
to 1t. Anyway, beyond the outline of
that tragedy and an account of the
oil scandals that grew out of it, there
is little in the work G. ept an outline
of books and songs. Possibly, in a
sense, Harding could be taken as typi-
p" of the era. and so the book may
serve its title after ALL
Mr.. Sullivan writes with a wealth Of
detail and preceptible flavor of per-
sonal knowledge. He makes an inter-
esting story and frequently is amusing
in his deft |voidaLce Of disagreeable
conclusions. Something there was
rot IN, he seems to tell us, but except
in the case of the men who were actu-
ally convicted in the courts he refuses
to express an opinion. This is no par.
ticular loss. however. as the facts are
Absorbing enough Fev, irrnproachah ahlA