The Tukhachevsky Affair. by Victor Alexandrov; John HewishReview by: Raymond L. GarthoffSlavic Review, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Mar., 1965), pp. 126-127Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2492998 .

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126 Slavic Review

the proper devils in the Communist underworld. Aragon is supposed to have been allowed to use the Soviet archives, though he tells nothing beyond the official Soviet revelations of 1956 and 1961. Lacking both notes and bibliography, Aragon's work is neither good literature nor useful history.

There is little point in prolonged criticism of Aragon's history from the standpoint of Western scholarship, since it is manifestly a work of partisan apologetics. The interesting thing about it is the manner of defense that a committed Western Communist felt compelled to make in the year 1962. Aragon dutifully repeats each of Khrushchev's criticisms of Stalin's record from March 1917 to the Second World War, but like the new official Soviet histories his book grafts these barbs artificially onto an intrinsically Stalinist interpretation of the Soviet past, the Soviet economic performance, and the Soviet role in world affairs. In his apology for such Soviet moves as in Fin- land in 1939 and in Korea in 1950 Aragon proves to be a bolder Russian nationalist than any Soviet writer. Oddly enough for a Communist, he never once mentions the idea of international revolution or the Communist International. He turns Soviet history into a patriotic fable of foreign plot- ters versus native heroes.

Aragon is at his worst, mendaciously straddling the fence, on the issues which Khrushchev, in his repudiation of Stalin, raised but without going to the bottom of the truth already known or suspected abroad. On the Moscow Trials Aragon pleads that "there is no official document that allows one to establish the proportions of truth and of forgery to be found in the trial, the confessions, and the general picture that arises from them" (page 313). His excuse for the undeniable is that "the monstrous nature of Hitlerism gave likelihood to the Moscow trials" (page 320). Without so much as a word of transition Aragon moves from a criticism of the forced confessions to a rosy account of the 1936 polar explorers as "the reflection of the new society" (page 329). If the reader did not know better, he would suspect the author of deliberate irony.

On the credit side Louis Aragon must at least be put down as a man of consistent faith. His epic is concluded with triumph, he feels, in the con- quest of outer space and in the announced program to make the Communist utopia a reality in Russia. No critical faculty awakened by the Stalin ex- perience has intruded to make Aragon doubt that "the dream of commu- nism in Lenin's sense of the word is showing itself as within man's reach..." (page 650).

University of Vermont ROBERT V. DANIELS

V7ICTOR ALEXANDROV, The Tukhachevsky Affair. Translated from the French by John Hewish. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1964. Pages 201. $4.95.

The sudden execution of Marshal Tukhachevsky and a number of other senior Soviet military chiefs in 1937 immediately provoked widespread astonishment and curiosity. Neither the interest nor the curiosity has been

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Reviews 127

fully spent; indeed, they have been stimulated as we have gradually learned more of the bizarre circumstances of the case.

Victor Alexandrov's account aims at popular appeal and dramatic impact rather than scholarly precision. In general, the story as he recounts it is probably accurate, and he has used all the major available sources. Regret- tably, from the standpoint of professional readers, he generally does not document his sources, and such literary devices as reproducing allegedly verbatim conversations at third or fourth hand are not reassuring. Apart from some conversations of the author with Raskol'nikov, there is no really new data. Still and all, it is well written and probably a substantially accurate popular account of the framing and purge of Tukhachevsky.

By now there can remain no doubt that by indirect collusion the NKVD and the Gestapo planted false documents with President Benes, allegedly proving treasonous contact of Tukhachevsky with the Nazis. Benes, who accepted them as true, sent them to Stalin, thus facilitating the dictator's purge of the Marshal and other generals. The elaborate plot included the use of emigre Russian double (and triple) agents, notably General Skoblin of ROVS (Rossiiskii Obshchevoinskii Soiuz) in Paris, who subsequently was spirited off to oblivion by the NKVD. All this Alexandrov reports well.

The one remaining mystery, which Alexandrov skirts, is whether Tukha- chevsky was disloyal to Stalin. Beyond doubt the documents Stalin used to incriminate him were not only Gestapo forgeries but were also totally incor- rect in suggesting treasonous relationships with Germany. On the other hand, General Alexander Orlov and others have produced evidence that materials showing (or at least purporting to show) that Stalin had been an agent of the tsarist Okhrana were uncovered by an NKVD officer and were shown to Tukhachevsky and others, prompting them to conclude that Stalin should be removed. On the basis of evidence so far uncovered, this allega- tion has yet to be proven or disproven. There has been, however, no indi- cation that he and the other military and police figures allegedly involved actually plotted to overthrow Stalin. In short, Tukhachevsky was innocent of the charges leveled by Stalin, probably innocent of any real plot to over- throw Stalin, but perhaps inclined to sub rosa views and conversations which Stalin would have regarded as disloyal. Of course there were other reasons for Stalin's purge of the military leaders, reflected in the general purge and the substitution of Stalin's terror and personal dictatorship for the rule of the Communist Party.

In all, this book is recommended for insights into Soviet history, though not as the history of the Tukhachevsky affair.

The Johns Hopkins University RAYMOND L. GARTHOFF

L. JAY OLIVA, Misalliance: A Study of French Policy in Russia during the Seven Years' War. New York: New York University Press, 1964. Pages xi, 218. $6.00.

After an exhaustive investigation of the French archives and the pertinent published documentary source materials, Professor Oliva has written a highly informative work on an exceptionally important period in European

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