Beleaguered Bolsheviks: Attacks by Cossacks and Capitalists

FOR those eager to be convinced that Nikita Khrushchev is an evil, evil man Conquest Without War is recommended reading. The book is "an analytical anthology of the speeches, interviews and remarks of Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev," with a running commentary by two men who have read all of Mr. K's speeches and lived to tell about it. N. H. Mager and Jacques Katel are the two heroes, and they lay the Whole Truth on the line: Stalin's real name was Dzhugashvili; Russian farmers are short of fertilizer; the per capita income of the U.S.S.R. is only $310 a year; and the Soviet Union (despite what many people think) actually seeks to undermine the status quo.

Such are but a few of the countless revelations included in the editors' commentary, which fills a good half of the book. The other half consists of Khrushchev's own statements, few of which are allowed to pass without some kind of rejoinder in the commentary. When unable to fight their adversary with established facts and statistics, the editors resort to snide remarks and rhetorical tricks. All else failing, they even adopt Lenin's old technique of refutation by quotation marks: e.g. Soviet women are "emancipated" (sneer).

BUT all is fair in ideological warfare, I suppose, and that after all is the primary business of Mager and Katel. For contrary to appearances, theirs is not a scholarly book. To be sure, the book has a certain air of dispassionateness, thanks to its anthology form; we are to hear Khrushchev speak for himself. At the same time the commentary maintains an impression of scholarly research by expropriating recently published charts and opinions; it even feigns moderation by slipping from time to time into the academic pitter-patter of Harvard's own Russian Research Center. But let there be no mistake; in its heart of hearts Conquest Without War is a polemicist's handbook, motivated by the kind of simple-minded hatred that gave John Birch his distinctive charm and abandon.

The editors tip their hand on the very first page. "The contemporary equivalent of Mein Kampf," they tell us, "is contained in the millions of words uttered in almost every latitude and longitude (sic) by the leader of the world communist movement. From this flow of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and epithets (not to mention adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions) there emerges a Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev who considers himself the most powerful man on earth. ... He makes no secret of his desire to rule the world. ... Conquest is the central theme of all he says, the objective of everything he does." Thus, Mager and Katel. For lack of subtlety in thought and expression they can't be beat.

THE editors also take high honors for distortion. As if the power of paste and scissors were not enough to make Khrushchev say what they want, Mager and Katel put words into his mouth. At one point, for example, they present the following statement in the Roman type reserved for the words of Khrushchev: "Since the world-wide triumph of 'socialism' would mean that the Soviet Union would become the dominant world power, there is no conflict between Soviet national power considerations and the Marxist-Leninist view of the progress of social transformation of the world...."

This quotation is one of the most crucial for the confirmation of the editors' thesis, for in it Khrushchev admits that whenever he says "triumph of socialism" he means world empire for Russia. Unfortunately, Mr. K never admitted anything of the sort. As a look at the footnotes will show, the sentence is not from one of Khrushchev's speeches but from a study done by a Harvard-Columbia Research Group for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The Editors' attempt to pass the quotation off as a bit of authentic Krushcheviana is not strictly ethical.

SUCH petty chiseling is understandable when one considers the editors' deep commitment to their thesis. Still, one wonders whether the end product justifies their faith. For though Conquest Without War is sure to guard its readers from being "taken in" by Khrushchev, it is doubly sure to prevent them from understanding or successfully opposing the Soviet leader. But no matter. Conquest Without War will find its way into many schools and libraries. And Simon and Schuster will receive their due from this diatribe-anthology.N.S. KHRUSHCHEV