576 SEER, 8o, 3, 2002 scrutinized,the views and opinions he collected and assessed inescapably, often biased, partial, subjective and even conflicting represent in totothe most comprehensive and balanced review of the process of attempted sovietization of Central-European higher learning establishments after the Second World War available so far. Because of the wealth of material taken into account, it would be unreasonable to expect a reviewer to sum up adequately the relative importance of all the elements at play. The intricate networks of professorial bodies, students' organizations and communist authoritiesoperatingat differentlevels and all actingwith differentdegrees of sophistication and effectivenessand attempting to outwit each other, constituted the institutional framework. Yet, each network played its role very differently in each country. With the help of evidence, only now made availableto researchers,the authorunravelsa tangledweb of open and hidden political pressuresand intriguesapplied to control the independent sourcesof free thought and to undermine the uncensored character of all scientific inquiry. The book is very well documented, making it a most reliable source of information. The bibliographyitselfcovers twenty pages and includes books, articles,dissertations,officialcollections of laws and statutes,newspapersand journals in Czech, German, Polish,Russian and English, as well as the names of over forty individuals personally interviewed by the author. The latter include writers and well-known scholars such as Czeslaw Milosz, Stefan Kieniewicz, Jozef Gierowski,Josef Polisenskyand Piotr Hubner. Needless to say, the author also took into account revealingbooks by people like Seweryn Bialer, Zbigniew Brzezinski,Alexander Dubcek, Ernest Gellner, Karl Hartmann , Jan Havranek, Ralph Jessen, Jurgen Kuczynski, Jacek Kuron, Wolfgang Leonhard, Hans Meyer, Adam Podgorecki,Jerzy Tomaszewski, PiotrWandyczand many others. In consequence, this book enables one to identify the methods used with considerable determination and ruthlessnessby the ruling political forces t;o extinguishliberalideas in the citadelsof freethought and researchwhich have always been the universities of the western world. It also permits one to perceive the forms of resistance to political pressure used to subdue one extremely importantpillar of national identity and culturalindependence -that of higher education. This work will enable though, regrettably, somewhatbelatedly -scholars inWesternEuropeandAmericato appreciate the courage and readiness of numerous (yet, by no means, all) academics in Central-EasternEuropean countries dominated by communism, to sacrifice their own careers and prospectsfor advancement in order to defend, against enormous odds, the role of establishmentsof higher learning and researchin protectingthe centralsystemof valueswhich characterizefree societies. London J.J. ToMIAK Schwartz, Stephen. Intellectuals andAssassins.Anthem Press, London, 2000. i88 pp. Index. [I4.95 (paperback). STEPHENSCHWARTZ'S aim in Intellectuals andAssassins,a collection of articles and book reviews published mainly in periodicals such as The Wall Street REVIEWS 577 J7ournal, TheLosAngeles Timesand TheSpectator between i 988 and 2000, is to discredit the Western left's version of history, particularlyits own history, in the twentieth century. In so doing, he seeks to challenge a situation in American and Western European intellectual culture in which 'anti-antiCommunismisstillthereigningorthodoxy '(p. 6o),notablyin 'theuniversities' (p. 64). Schwartzrepeatedlydrawsattention to the contrastingway in which those on the extreme right and those on the extreme left are perceived in the West. Forexample, Soviet propagandistPaul Robeson is considered a victim of the authorities(ratherthan his own political decisions),while Hitler propagandist Ezra Pound is not; South Africanpoet Breyten Breytenbach,betrayedby his Communist comrades, neverthelessfails to subject their activity to the same moral examination to which he subjects supporters of apartheid; Jose Saramago, winner of the i998 Nobel Prize for Literature, speaks at the FrankfurtBook Fair on 'Being a Communist Author Today', but a Fascist equivalentis unimaginable.Regrettably,however, Schwartzdoes not explore this paradox beyond blaming it upon a self-perpetuating left intellectual conspiracy.Rather, typicalof his method in the collection, havinglaid out the 'facts',he expects the reader simply to share his self-righteousindignation at what the left has got away with. This lack of argument beyond the sheer weight of tendentiously expressed information means that Intellectuals and Assassins does not rise above the status of counter-propaganda,often resembling a piece ofglasnost'-period 'truth-telling'journalism, but also smackingof the Westernright'striumphalismin the immediate post-Communistperiod. Schwartz's approach is to take more or less well-known figures from the Western, and particularly the American left, including Robeson, Andre Malraux,PabloNeruda, Tina...