Revolution in Eastern Europe. By Doreen Warriner. (Turnstile Press. i
2s. 6d.) THIS is the reverse side of Mr. Hugh Seton-Watson's recent ,book on Eastern Europe in approach, treatment and point of view, for Miss Warriner has a lively pen, she attacks her subject from the economic side, and her attitude to the Eastern Europe of today is optimistic. She is sometimes doctrinaire and sometimes careless, but her book should prove stimulating to friend and foe alike. Her chapter on nationalism—the curse of Eastern Europe between the wars, as she says—is particularly illuminating in a number of ways. Altogether this book conveys the atmosphere among enthusiastic young Communists who believe in their gospel. This atmosphere is difficult to seize here in Western Europe, but it is important that Westerners should understand the motive-force which drives Eastern Europe along its present course. " Eastern Europe today," Miss Warriner concludes, " is not an achieved social order, with accepted social values and the `way of life' of a static society. It is a backward, illiterate, mainly peasant society, in process of trans- formation by the Communist drive. It is the sense of movement that is the real achievement, in the place of the old hopelessness and helplessness. . . . The new social services are poorly equipped ; the administration of the plans is often inefficient. Even on the top level, the planned economy is not a stream-lined system, so much as an exciting muddle in which the direction makes sense." This honk is alive, whether it is nourished by illusion or fact.
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