Russia Books

Yves Hamant has done the West a service by introducing readers to a personality that otherwise might have been lost in the Russian transition that has taken place over the last 15 years. Father Alexander Men was a voice "crying in the wilderness" of the Soviet domination of Russian culture. His ministry, which lasted for forty years, covered the worst possible times for the Russian believer. Father Men was the intellect that made it possible for the Russian person, believer or not, to begin the healing process.

Yves Hamant presents an excellent overview of Fr. Men's life from his earliest exposure to Christianity through his intellectual and spiritual journey through his ordination and ministry in a society that made it dangerous for him to practice what he believed. I would highly recommend this book for anyone that is interested in the Russian renaisance of culture and spirituality. I would also recommend it as a good primer for the serious student of the crisis in Christianity in the West today.

Review by Ron Vossler. The Grand Forks Herald, Grand Forks, North Dakota, October 12, 1997

Edna Boardman's first book - she is currently Minot High School librarian and formerly a teacher and wife of a clergyman - is a welcome addition to the literature of North Dakota and the northern prairie.

This is a hybrid book, composed of memoir, biographical sketch, and historical data. Three major sections - Religion; Family and Farm Life; and History - are further divided into nineteen separate chapters, most of which were previously published in Heritage Review, the quarterly journal of the Germans from Russia Heritage Society in Bismarck, N.D.

Some chapters deal with the author's life, growing up in Mennonite in a German from Russia family in rural north central North Dakota in the 1940's and in1950's; other chapters are devoted to people influential in the author's life, such as her grandparents, and several educators.

As the subtitle indicates, this book also contains other of the author's writings about Germans from Russia. There is, for example, a rather informal chapter on the history of the Germans from Russia. Another chapter traces the history of the Mennonite Brethren, a persecuted Anabaptist group, who originated in sixteenth century Switzerland, and who eventually gathered converts from among the Germans from Russia.

Readers will come away from this book with a better idea of how old world religiosity - in this case, German pietism, which influenced the writers Goethe and William Blake with its decidedly Gnostic temper - shaped the daily lives and thoughts of Germans from Russia immigrants and their descendants in America.

One chapter section details Mennonite beliefs, including, among others, adult baptism, keeping the Sabbath, and the priesthood of all believers; the same section lists "Theologies We Opposed," such as modernism, evolution, and infant baptism.

Another chapter section, titled "I Second Guess the Evangelists," indicates how the author found her own way through a sometimes rigid belief system, which this immigrant group must have adapted out of necessity, to keep their German identity. (During the nineteenth century, Germans from Russia established and lived in 3,000 villages, which were, as Adam Giesenger, a Winnipeg based Germans-from-Russia expert, put it: "Islands in the vast Russian ocean.")

Boardman also makes clear how strictly many of those beliefs were interpreted. At one point she tells us how her mother - "in a voice that permitted no disagreement" - admonished her for using a scissors on Sunday. She also tells the reader how as a young person she dealt with the various "worldly" pleasures forbidden to Mennonites, such as card playing, dancing, or theater - a situation not unfamiliar to anyone of protestant German from Russia background, caught between the old and new.

Another chapter, titled "A Fountain Filled With Blood," takes a close look at an old time revival service. She includes the words of various alter call hymns, like "Almost Persuaded" or "Just As I Am," familiar to anyone of fundamentalist background or faith.

Throughout this book, Boardman also writes vividly of various prairie scenes common to people from the protestant Germans form Russia background: baptism "in the sun-warmed water of a nearby sandy bottom lake"; the rich imagery and symbolism of evangelists who sometimes gave dire "warnings of the end of time and doom"; and "Ecstatic Experience" as it relates to the "old" way of singing, which, as some experts, like Peter Hilkes of the Ost Europa Institute of Munich, claim the German colonists in Russia learned from their Ukrainian neighbors.

Boardman describes how this singing, which can still be heard from Germans from Russia vocal groups in North Dakota, sometimes moved a listener "into what seemed an altered state of consciousness." (The past summer in Ukraine, this reviewer, listened to an elderly German woman, recently returned from decades of exile in Siberia and Kazakhstan, as she sang a farewell song, whose tones had that same "eerie keening" which Boardman describes in her book.)

The bulk of one chapter, which seems to be drawn from interviews with members of the 'Landsieute' Chapter of the German from Russia in Minot, gives insight into how difficult it was for older members of this ethnic group in North Dakota, at least, to adapt. Most affected by changes were the older people and the women, the most isolated. As the northern plains became increasingly Americanized. These people had to give up the language of their heart, German, for religious sermons and training in English.

Some prairie congregations, as Boardman points out, found interim solutions to the problem. Young people had to learn both languages in their church confirmation classes. Then, on confirmation day - a rite of passage into adulthood - young people appeared in front of their congregations to profess the tenets of their faith. There, in what seems the ultimate multicultural experience, they were asked to give answers to questions, first in English, then in German.

Boardman's writing style, though conversational, is crafted. Besides that, she is not afraid to be direct, as the following insightful passage illustrates. It concerns a father she barely knew: and, as she indicates, his life and his character were more the norm than many would care to admit:

"Karl Schieve's story is that of a very ordinary German from Russia, the kind most biographers ignore...Nobody loved or even liked him very much. He did not know how to relate to his family, I think, because he had never known any kind of affectionate family life as a child. His late years were consumed with hypochondria...We believe he had an exceptionally fine mind, but one without direction or education. He brought from Russia harsh attitudes that did not wash very well in America. He never learned to fit into the culture of his adopted country."

This is one of Boardman's strengths, which accounts for the thoughtful tone of her book: that she is able to understand the historical forces which have shaped her ancestors, her parents, and, thus, herself; for if any ethnic group has been shaped by its history in discernible ways, it is the Germans from Russia, whose descendants now comprise near forty percent of North Dakota's population.

However, at one point, despite the care with which she wrote this volume, the author does lapse into tangled syntax. Call it typographical; or perhaps just the tug of the Germanic intonations of her own background - the throw the horse over the fence some hay joke - as illustrated by the following sentence: "They were not long in America from a village near Odessa in southern Russia."

Much can be learned from Boardman's book, not the least of which is how the advent of electricity, the auto, WWII, along with the spread of common culture and public education brought so many changes in 1940's to her Mennonite family and friends: forces that drew the younger generation into the mainstream of American life.

This book also vividly illustrates the manner in which the Germans from Russia - with their unique cultural history, their double and triple immigrations, there century of isolation on the Russian steppes, which, in effect, suspended in time, in at least some ways, parts of their culture and their language - struggled with the lengthy process of assimilation in America.

In a broader sense, this book is a worth while read, not only for anyone with roots in North Dakota, but for anyone who wants to know what it was like for a people to make the long journey from an eighteenth century way of life, into modernity; to know what it was like, trying to retain what is mostly intimately their own, and also to move beyond themselves, to take part in the shared culture of America.

All through the history of the Soviet Union, no one in the United States understood that nation better than W. Averell Harriman. His first contact was as a businessman engaged in manganese concessions in the mid 1920's and he was able to see the country shortly after the revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power.
Most of Harriman's contact after that was as an agent of the American government; he negotiated directly with Stalin, Molotov and Khrushchev. His insights into the mindsets of the Soviet leaders are worthy of note; unfortunately American president Nixon did not take his advice. Harriman also expressed his views on the war in Vietnam, considering it a continuing mistake and damaging to how the United States was viewed in the world.
However, the most significant points that Harriman makes in this book is about how the United States is viewed in the world. Good will is a very powerful asset, one that is often worth more than physical or financial goods. Harriman understood the world; he was a realist and recognized the limited value of aggressive military action. The world will always have a need for people of his diplomatic acumen; one can only hope that nature continues to produce them.

As an addition to the historical record of the period from the illness and death of Lenin in the Soviet Union and the ensuing struggle for power in the Russian Communist party to the consolidation of Stalinist rule and its extension to the American party in 1929 American Communism and the Soviet Union and its companion volume detailing the period from 1917 to 1923-The Roots of American Communism (which has been reviewed separately) - is the definitive scholarly study on the early history of the American Communist Party. The author, an ex-communist, but at the time of writing an anti-communist who however unlike other former communists nevertheless does a thorough job or presenting the personalities and issues in a reasonably straightforward and unbiased manner. Given that these volumes were researched and published during the heart of the Cold War hysteria against the Soviet Union in the 1950's this is not faint praise.

Also useful for this period in conjunction with these two volumes and to round them out, from the pro-Communist partisan perspective of one of the main leaders, is James P. Cannon's The First Ten Years of American Communism and the Prometheus Research Library's James P. Cannon and the Early Communist Movement. Absent from Mr. Draper's analysis is any real feel for why the early leaders and rank and file of the party put themselves on the line against American imperialism, faced harassment, imprisonment or worst to create an American Bolshevik party. While there is no dearth of memoirs of other participants in the early American communist movement, Cannon's analysis most honestly fills that gap.

That said, why must militants read these works today? After the demise of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe anything positively related to Communist studies is deeply discounted. Nevertheless, for better or worse, the American Communist Party (and its offshoots) needs to be studied as an ultimately flawed example of a party that failed in its mission to create a radical version of society in America after it became essentially a tool of Soviet diplomacy. Now is the time for militants to study the mistakes and draw the lessons of that history.

For those not familiar with Mr. Draper's first volume a helpful introductory chapter gives a summary of the events from 1917-1923. After the successful fight to bring the party above ground, 1923 opened with the struggle within the party, reflected by a sentiment in the American labor movement, in favor of an independent labor party, or rather a farmer-labor party. That effort proved stillborn. This is also the period when the party toyed with the idea of supporting the Lafollette movement, a bourgeois third party operation. Party support for that effort was abandoned at the last minute. Draper seems to think that the failure of the party to correctly intersect those two movements was a central reason that the party's influence was limited in the 1920's. Fair enough. However, from a communist perspective what was the reality? The Farmer-Labor party was, as the name clearly denotes, a two class party which was based on contradictory programs. Ultimately, one or the other program would create fundamental antagonisms. This contradiction has been played out numerous times in the international revolutionary movement and, except in Russia where the Bolsheviks adopted the Social Revolutionary land program, has proven disastrous to the working class. As for the LaFollette movement it has long been established in the Marxist movement that bourgeois parties are not to be supported politically. No less an authority than James P. Cannon, a central leader of the party in the 1920's has some very relevant comments on the opportunist and half-baked nature of this proposal. All in all, I think that Draper's position is influenced by looking at these maneuvers through the prism of the Popular Front policies of the 1930's when the party allegedly increased its influence by pandering to the New Deal Democrats and other bourgeois formations.

The party's rocky road continues with the process of the `Bolshevization' policy of the party ordered by the head of the Communist International Zinoviev to bring all parties in line with the Russian party organizational forms. I have heard of and seen much about this policy and about Zinoviev's role in it but mainly at the level of high policy in the Comintern. Mr. Draper, for the first time in my experience, presents an analysis of the effects of the process at the base of the American party. Jesus, it was even more bureaucratically organized at the base than at the top. This was not accidental, as the cell structure mandated by the Comintern lends itself to easier bureaucratic control at the top. Zinoviev may have historically been underappreciated as a revolutionary politician and agitator but certainly this scheme does nothing to enhance his reputation.

Very important sections of Mr. Draper's book deal with the intersection of communism and the black question and the struggle for American Trotskyism. I will not address the issue of American Trotskyism here as I have dealt with that topic elsewhere in this space and the reader really should read Cannon's History of American Communism and History of American Trotskyism to fill in the details. However, Draper's chapter on the black question is one of the best overviews of this question available.

The section on the development of communist work among blacks, the creation of a black cadre and the formulating of the question of a black nation with the right to national self-determination is an essential chapter (including footnotes at the back) for any militant trying to find the roots of communist work among blacks. Although the 1920's was not the heyday of black recruitment to the party, the pioneer work in the 1920's gave the party a huge leg up when the radicalization of the 1930's among all workers occurred.

Nevertheless, the left-wing movement in America, including the Communist Party and its offshoots has always had problems with what has been called the Black Question. Marxists have always considers support to the right of national self-determination to be a wedge against the nationalists and to put a class axis on the situation. In any case, that has always been predicated on there being a possibility for the group to form a nation. Absent that, other methods of struggle are necessary to deal with the special oppression, here of black people. Part of the problem with the American Communist position on self-determination is that the conditions which would have created the possibility of a black state were being destroyed with the mechanization of agriculture, the migration of blacks to the Northern industrial centers and the overwhelming need to fight for black people's rights to survive under the conditions of the Great Depression. Carefully read this section.

After reviewing the history of the American Communist party from 1919- 29 I have come away with one nagging question. How did militants from different pre-World War I radicals organizations that were clearly attracted to the Russian revolution and wanted to bring such a revolution here wind up as Stalinist publicity agents for Soviet foreign policy? I think James P. Cannon, one of the militants attracted to the Russian revolution, had his finger on an answer. Most of his fellow militants started out sincerely wanting to make a revolution (I reserve my judgment on that comment in the case of William Z. Foster) but made their accommodations with bourgeois society at some point in the 1920's when the immediate possibilities of an American revolution looked very bleak. In short, it is easier being a cheerleader for someone else's revolution than to make your own. As is well known revolutionary movements are great devourers of human material. That this process occurred here in the 1920's set the radical movement a long way back. Read more and make up your own mind.

This slim volume offers a good look at George F. Kennan's brand of realism, and the implications of this for his views on US diplomacy.

One of the major themes that emerges here: Kennan's skepticism that the U.S. tends to over-moralize in its foreign policy, at the expense of being able to appreciate power realities, to the detriment of our national interest.

For example, Kennan argues that had the U.S. given more credence to European political concerns prior to WWI, and recognized that these impacted U.S. security, then America might have been able to bring its influence to bear on Europe and help bring the senseless destruction of WWI to an earlier end. Kennan believes that a proper appraisal of U.S. interests at stake would have involved raising a large army before WWI, which could have backed up U.S. diplomacy.

Whether or not one agrees with Kennan's observations and assertions, this text prompts deeper reflection about the major impulses that have shaped, and continue to shape, U.S. foreign policy.

Readers should buy the later version of this book, which includes lectures from 1984, where Kennan discusses how his views evolved over the years. The book I am reviewing here is only a series of 1950 lectures, plus Kennan's famous "Sources of Soviet Conduct" article in Foreign Affairs, and another one, "America and the Russian Future."

Anyone who wants to know how the economy of Stalin's USSR really worked has to read this book. Forget the talk of five-year plans, the controlled economy, Stakhanovites and anything which might suggest the economy ran on organised lines. Witkin spells out with fascinating clarity the extraordinary extent to which anarchy ruled and is especially good on the back-stabbing venal managers who were so keen to promote their own interests that they did huge damage to the enterprises where they worked. The flowery passages on Witkin's unhappy love life are less interesting but do not really detract from the power of the work as a whole. Michael Gelb deserves a reward for uncovering such a crucial memoir.

Graves was the American Major General in charge of 5,000 US Army troops sent to Vladivostok in August, 1918. The book is a detailed history of the events leading up to and during the 18 months these soldiers spent in Siberia. Graves apparently took some unjustified criticism for the eventual total collapse of the Japanese-supported Kolchak regime, with it's bloodthirsty Cossack enforcers. (Graves notes that at the time, he had very little information on the more violent American actions around Archangel- a couple thousand miles away.)

Recall that in November 1918, the Kerensky government was unseated, and the Bolsheviks were proceeding with discussion of a "separate peace" with Germany at Brest-Litovsk. Quite upsetting the Allies...

Much of the book focuses on the conflicts between the Allies who had pledged "non-intervention" in Russian politics as a precondition to "rescuing" the 8,000 or so Czech soldiers cut off from the war against Germany and Austria. What Graves found was that the Czechs needed no rescuing, and had in fact taken the Trans-Siberian railroad and many whole towns along it, chasing off any local revolutionaries who objected. Japanese and hired Cossacks (Semeonoff and Kalmikoff), prodded by the Brits and French (who had few troops in the region)were enthusiastically murdering, raping and pillaging any and all Siberians who did not support Kolchak, the last vestige of the Czar's rule.

There was little Bolshevik military activity in Siberia when Graves arrived. He spread the US troops around to guard several hundred miles of railroad, supposedly against the Bolshies. Instead, he soon and continually found the Japanese, Brits, and then even US diplomatic types (including the Consul General) attempting to get the Americans into Bolshevik hunting parties. Many examples of Japanese-staged provocations and manipulations, including shooting of Americans, are catalogued.

Graves stuck to his orders, and refused to be drawn into the war on the Soviets. Really hacked off the Brits, who called for his replacement. The Canadians fully agreed with him, and were likewise appalled at the idiocy and duplicity of the Allied support for Admiral Kolchak. When the Americans finally left on April 1, 1920, Graves estimated that over 90% of the population fully supported the Soviets, largely due to the brutalities and corruption of Kolchak and company. Graves succinctly discusses the difficulties in justifying American participation in this "non-" intervention, particularly the (to him) obvious negative perception of the Allied activities by all Russians. "...the various Governments taking part in the intervention take very little pride in this venture. Who can blame them?"

Had the Allied diplomats and politicians listened to General Graves instead of their ill-informed and ill-intentioned fellow ideologues, the vicious and near-permanent Bolshevik hostility might not have developed. Of course, the same can be said of Ed Lansdale and the idiotic French and American war managers in Viet Nam.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


I recommend this text to you, the reader. It is written by Mikhail Levitin, who has reached a high level of skills in several different kinds of sport as well as having a formal fundamental educational background.

Mikhail Levitin has been successfully teaching the Martial Arts since 1972. He holds a fifth degree black belt in Karate and Ju Jitsu. In addition he has over 30 years experience in physical education and therapy. Mr. Levitin is a Master of Sport, an Olympic Athlete and a respected instructor in both Russia and America. He has been a consultant to professional athletes since 1976. Mr. Levitin has Master's Degrees in Engineering and Physical Education. He has studied and practiced Alternative Medicine since 1972. Mr. Levitin is a lifetime member of Who's Who in America, appearing in the millennia edition. Mikhail Levitin holds 14 US Patents including the environmental protection, therapy, and engineering fields. He has successfully applied his patented program, Tune-Up, to a cardiac rehabilitation program in the Cardiac Rehabilitation Center in Brooklyn where he was in charge from 1990 to 1993 upon completion of his training at Montefiore Hospital. He established the school of Longevity in Pennsylvania in 1993.

Mr. Levitin's book should be of interest to the beginner as well as the expert, as it has techniques, which will appeal to both. This book will appeal to the beginner because it zeros in on a few techniques, which can be mastered for each situation, instead of having an encyclopedia of techniques, which tend to confuse the beginner. Also, it is of merit because it explains and builds the techniques step by step, so that it is not complicated for beginners.

This book will appeal to the advanced student because on the one hand, it reminds us of the basic faints and distractions, which we were taught, back in the 60's, but haven't thought of or used since. On the other hand, it has some unusual techniques, such as self-defense using a belt, and orientation to possible multiple opponent responses. This is a needed addition, because too much of our modern martial arts deal with sparring with one person and with preparation for tournament.

In short, every one who has the rudiments of punching and kicking has something to learn from this book, and I recommend it to you heartily.

Sincerely,
William C. Phillips, President of Patience T'ai Chi Association.

The debut novel of Cindy L. Dague, The Ancient Treils is a fantastic saga in which the natural balance of life teeters dangerously. Winafir is thrust into the crossroads of destiny, guided by the Elements in a quest to return The Light Energy to Treil Forest before all is lost. His search will take him across kingdoms and even below the deathly Shadow Mountain. A sweeping, majestic saga about the effort to fight back against madness and decay, for the sake of survival, honor, and love. Highly recommended.

An excellent real life love story set in the backdrop of russian revolution. Beautiful and touching- a must read!