15 FEBRUARY 1963, Page 8

Praeger and Parker A week or two ago the Dutton

and Praeger versions appeared simultaneously in New York (in Britain only the 'official' one is available). At the same time Praeger issued an attack on the official translator, Ralph Parker, as 'a fervent apologist for the Soviet regime.' The question might anyhow have been taken as relevant only from the moral and not from the literary point of view had not certain reviewers suggested that Parker tones down some important effects of the original to convey, for example, that some, and not all, of the returning soldiers of 1945 had disliked the collective farms; a not unimportant point. Moreover, the Parker version is_ blemished in a , footnote by a gross Soviet propaganda slander against the Ukrainian -nationalist leader Bendera (who cannot, however, sue anybody, having been murdered some years ago by a Soviet agent)