Abstract

Piers Ploughman is evidently thoroughly conversant with trends in political writing-and reading-in the Soviet Union, as I am not. My essay is written from the perspective of a specialist in the politics of the United States and applies to a purportedly scholarly publication, published in America for an American audience, the same standard one would normally use in assessing any other work of scholarship. It is discouraging to learn, first from the evidence of Mr. Gromyko's performance, and then from my commentator, how inappropriate that standard still is. Is it really true that the rules of behavior for Soviet intellectuals are unchanged since the time of George Orwell, or of Merle Fainsod's first edition? I thought it gratuitously patronizing to assume so, and especially to assume that a treatise offered to American readers as an exemplar of U.S.A. Institute work would make so little concession to the norms of ordinary scholarly discourse. The result fortifies my commentator's contention that this book, regardless of its American publication, was indeed written for Russian internal consumption. Conceivably, then, the best evidence of its success with its intended audience will be rejection by Western scholars. In this small way we Americans can join hands with our Russian colleagues and certify to Soviet authorities that a Russian author has not somehow wandered off the reservation and in his impropriety disobeyed W. H. Auden's commandment to commit no social science.

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