The fate of Marxism in Russia

Brief Reviews Lavrenty Beria (1899-1953) was the long-time head of the Soviet secret police and, more than anybody else, personified the terrorist universe of Stalinism. In Tengiz Abuladze’s celebrated film Repentance, he was immortalized as a monstrous blend of sadism and histrionics. Now, in Knight’s superbly documented biography, Beria appears as an astute political animal, fully aware of Stalin’s whimsical, maniacally suspicious nature; and as perhaps the least ideological, least fanatic of those who made up the tyrant’s inner circle. Based on intensive archival research, this book clarifies many previously unknown details of Beria’s biography, including elements of his family life. Not only students of Soviet affairs, but all who are interested in contemporary history will thus appreciate Knight’s original contribution to understanding the factious struggles within the Stalinist and post-Stalin& elites. The most significant conclusion of this fascinating book is that Beria was the first de-Stalinizer; that he used his power in the first months after Stalin’s death to pursue a path of legal, political, and economic reforms; and that his liquidation by the other members of Stalin’s inner circle was an attempt to prevent Beria’s efforts at underminin g, and even destroying, the Stalinist system. What Knight proposes, therefore, is a revisionist approach to the man who has generally been perceived as a macabre sycophant, a bloodthirsty torturer, and a sexual debauchee. Apparently, he may have been all three, but he was also the first to realize, in the post-Stalin Politburo, that the system was intrinsically rotten and incurably sick. V.T. The Fate of Marxism in Russia. By Alexander Yakovlev. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993. 250 pp. $29.95. These eight essays by Gorbachev’s closest aide--“the intellectual father of Perestroika”-carry self-deception almost beyond belief. Yakovlev blames all of Russia’s ailments on Karl Marx, lamenting that Marx’s ideas just proved too difficult to implement. The truth is, of course, that Marx never advocated such Soviet measures as forced collectivization, mass murder, and tyranny. Yakovlev strains to avoid any searching discussion of the dilemmas faced by Gorbachev, the options of the leadership, or his own role in the crisis that swept the system away. Boris Yeltsin is never even mentioned. Rather, Yakovlev’s essays read like hand-me-down philosophical expositions on the shortcomings of the obvious: the divisive nature of class struggle, excessive materialism, and “reactionaries” who controlled the Communist Party. Propaganda, we are told, proved counterproductive; the economy was inordinately regulated; and social progress bred inequality. In short, there is no blood, no life, and no meaningful commentary on the final years of the Soviet Union to be found in this book. Alvin 2. Rubinstein TheHolocaustintheSovietUnion: StudiesandSourcesontheDestru&on of the Jews in the Nazi-Occupied Territorks of the USSR 1941-1945. Edited by Lucjan Dobroszycki and Jeffrey S. Gurock. Armor&, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1993. 260 pp. $24.95, paper. This volume, which includes a foreword by Richard Pipes, contains fifteen essays from papers presented at the “Conference on the Holocaust in 338 I Orbis