Anatomy of the horse
Sir: Mr Harrison Salisbury is certainly right in one respect (Letters, 17 January): for some- one who, like myself, 'spent his childhood and early manhood in the Soviet Union. in the family of an important communist functionary, who was raised in the Soviet schools' (and who sub- sequently went through a variety of other ex- periences in the ussa), it is indeed 'invigorating to write freely without regard for agitprop. party line or even the vigilant eye of the secret police agent.' This is probably the reason why I am invariably astonished and perplexed when western journalists, who can presumably write freely without regard for Agitprop. party line or KGB, continue for years to whitewash and gloss over the crimes of the Soviet regime, and to publish such completely misleading descrip- tions of the USSR as that drawn up by Mr Salisbury and his collaborators in Anatomy of the Soviet Union.
Mr Salisbury's complaint seems to be that I quote only sentences instead of whole pages from his books—a 'defect' which he proceeds to make good in his page-long letter. And what does he prove by reproducing these huge chunks of his own writings? As any reader can see, only that (a) I have never misquoted him, and (b) I have never quoted him out of context. Indeed, Mr Salisbury is obliging enough to supply additional material which further strengthens my case (not that it really needed strengthening).
The funniest part of Mr Salisbury's letter is when he attempts to prove that he really has no illusions about Stalin's Russia. He quotes his review of Mr Robert Conquest's The Great Terror, published a couple of months ago: 'The Stalin system was terror, police, prison camps, the building of a state on the bones of millions of lives.' I fully agree. But if Mr Salisbury really believes this, then how can he go on defending, and even quoting, the dia- metrically opposed view of Stalinism published by him seven years ago? How can he repeat that slave labour is not 'the point' in a dis- cussion of Stalinism, and simultaneously de- clare that 'terror, police, prison camps' was the essence of the Stalin system? Either he is right today or he was right then. He cannot have it both ways.
What surprises me most about Mr Salis- bury's letter is the virtual absence of any reference to the book I was reviewing: his Anatomy of the Soviet Union, to which I de- voted two thirds of my article. I had called it 'a veritable mine of misinformation.' A serious charge—yet Mr Salisbury makes no attempt to counter it. I said that his stories about Solzhenitsyn's manuscripts having been returned, about the impending abolition of censorship etc were totally untrue—yet he passes this by in silence. I had quoted Mr Salisbury's wildly incorrect analyses of the present political situation in Russia—yet he has nothing to say on the subject. Finally, I had pointed out that his so-called 'Anatomy' of the USSR contained no chapters on the country's government, politics, social ;true- ture, legal system, secret police, agriculture, nationalities problem and other crucial areas, concentrating instead on secondary fields where the regime's record could be shown as credit- able—rather like a book on the human anatomy which had left out all references to the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys and brain, but contained detailed descriptions of the nost, the appendix and the finger-nails. This cardinal point of my review is also passed over in complete silence.
In his review of Robert Conquest's book Mr Salisbury declares: 'There has been no essential change in the Soviet Union since Stalin's death.' What a pity that in all the 450 pages of Anatomy of the Soviet Union Mr Salisbury found no space for saying anything even remotely resembling this view. One will search the index in vain for such headings as KGB, MVD or NKVD, and the sole mention of 'police' refers to the 1930s; the sole reference to Sinyavsky and Daniel is the false statement that they are shortly to be released. What a pity indeed that the whole book is dedicated to a thesis directly contrary to what Mr Salis- bury says he believes today.
Tibor Szamuely The University of Reading, Whiteknights Park, Reading
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