government has at least tried, within the limitations imposed by a most unfavorable power balance, to illustrate to the Soviet Union that the manipulation of foreign | minorities can be a two-way street. Prior to assuming power, the Romanian Communist party had abided by Lenin's prescription to promise self-determination to all ethnic minorities. However, under Moscow's prodding, this slogan was distorted to include support for the annexation of Bessarabia by the Soviet Union, on the unsubstantiated ground that the inhabitants considered themselves to be of non-Romanian (Moldavian) ancestry. Following the Communist takeover in the wake of World War II, the Romanian leadership docilely accepted Soviet control of Bessarabia. However, as Romania moved toward a more autonomous stance vis-à-vis Moscow in the 1960's, there were growing references to the national bond joining ethnic Romanians on either side of the Soviet-Romanian border, and numerous indications have appeared in recent years that the propagation of such sentiments by Romania has triggered vibrations among the Bessarabian population, as well as consternation in Moscow. outside the country's borders. During the Hungarian uprising, members of Romania's Magyar population participated in antiSoviet mass meetings and demonstrations, and some even crossed the border to aid their ethnic brothers. Since then, Bucharest has been more intent upon containing than encouraging nationalist sentiments among the Magyar minority, and in 1968 it dissolved the state's only autonomous region (the Mures-Autonomous Hungarian Region). The tangible impact of this action upon the lives of the Magyars living in the former Autonomous Region has probably been slight, since the Romanian Constitution still contains the usual cultural and linguistic guarantees. But, apropos of the question raised earlier concerning the psychopolitical impact of administrative units bearing ethnic designations, it is interesting to note that the Romanian leadership apparently felt that the Hungarian Autonomous Region had developed into a significant symbol of Magyar national consciousness. Further evidence of such a conviction on the part of the Romanian as well as other governments of the area has been the rather extensive application of gerrymandering to minority regions a practice which, as pointed out earlier, has also been resorted to by China and the Soviet Union in dealing with their own respective national minorities. On balance, however, it is evident that the presence of a sizable Hungarian (Magyar) minority within Romania's borders causes Bucharest to be the more vulnerable in the game of ethnic diplomacy. Somewhat ironically, it was It is true, of course, that the key the apparently spontaneous, anti-role currently played by ethnicity Moscow response of this minority to events within Hungary during 1956 which, by demonstrating the intensity of the group's ethnic sentiments, made Bucharest cognizant of the fragility of its own control of these people in the face. of ethnically-attired appeals from in the diplomatic dramas of Eastern Europe is hardly a recent development. In reading the King, velopment. In reading the King, Lubachko, and Steiner studies, one is struck by the continuity of specific national problems extending from before World War I, through the Hitler period, all the way to the present. What is new, however, is the absence of a threat of immediate war between neighbors as a means of settling a national minority conflict. It is not the comparative strength of any one East European state or coalition of those states that is apt to decide such an issue. The Soviet Union remains the ultimate arbiter, and since Moscow would frown upon. open hostilities between fraternal socialist states, disputes between the governments of the area over ethnic issues often assume such highly subtle forms as indirect allusions, pseudo-historical debates, and the citing of sometimes quite obscure passages from Marx, Engels, or Lenin in support of one's own position. But, as King's book makes clear, the absence of resorts to violence by the European socialist states has not been due to a lessening of interstate frictions involving the national question. THE COLLECTIVE message of these books is that legatees of Lenin have proven more adroit at allying themselves with nationalism than at suppressing it. When it has suited their purpose of the moment to encourage nationalism, whether at home or abroad, they have generally been remarkably successful; but when they have tried to counter it, again whether at home or abroad, their record is certainly far from impressive. As noted earlier, national movements are today posing challenges to multinational state structures on a nearly universal scale, and it would therefore be unfair to single out the Marxist-Leninist states as alone having failed to solve the national question. And yet, it is pertinent to inquire whether Lenin's formula for eradicating nationalism, later encapsulated in the slogan "national in form, socialist | self-preservation largely in terms in content," did not err in ignoring the possibility that political and cultural forms carry a content of their own. Several references have already been made to the impact that the existence of an administrative unit formed along ethnic lines can exert upon national consciousness. Observing the Flemings, Quebecois, Tamils, Ukrainians, and other peoples who have phrased their urge for national of preserving their language, one force that self-identification with a particular ethnic group, its past and its future, which is nationalism. Lenin was correct in his perception of nationalism as a matter of attitude rather than of overt characteristics. But in perceiving that attitude as simply a collective response to past oppression and discrimination (and therefore exorcisable by a policy of national equality), he confused a catalyst with essence. The "Dnepropetrovtsy" as Young Men By John A. Armstrong KONSTANTIN S. GRUSHEVOI: Togda, v sorok pervom... (Then, in '41...). Moscow, Voenizdat, 1974. WESTERN SOVIETOLOGISTS have, with the assistance of such research aids as The Current Digest of the Soviet Press, scrutinized with increasing thoroughness the mass of newspaper and other periodical publications coming out of the USSR, and even esoteric references in this literature are rapidly fed into the Kremlinologists' mill. Unfortunately, Soviet books-while generally more readily available than periodicals -are not examined as carefully. No single Western periodical or group of periodicals even purports to review all Soviet books dealing with the politics and society of the Soviet Union. When-more or less haphazardly-books are noticed, they almost always go to a as inconsequential, although as Arnold Horelick has recently em to be scrutinized carefully for the information they contain on Soviet decision-making processes.' The fact is that Grushevoi's memoir is extraordinarily revealing of important, if quite different, aspects of Soviet affairs. reviewer whose specialty appears The wartime memoir of Col. Gen. Konstantin S. Grushevoi is a good case in point. One of a series of "Military Memoirs," this volume could easily have gone for review to Sovietologists specializing on World War II. Military experts, finding little new on wartime operations in this book, would likely have dismissed it Since V. V. Shcherbitsky replaced P. Ye. Shelest as head of the Ukrainian Communist Party in May 1972, all observers of Soviet politics have recognized the crucial importance of the Dnepropetrovsk provincial party apparat as the origin of key members of many branches of the Soviet power elite today. Indeed, even before Shelest's fall, close observers like 1 Arnold L. Horelick, A. Ross Johnson, and John D. Steinbruner, The Study of Soviet Foreign Policy: A Review of Decision-TheoryRelated Approaches, R-1334, Santa Monica, The Rand Corporation, December 1973, p. 55. 2 Werner G. Hahn had stressed the significance of this apparat because of its intimate relationship to Leonid Brezhnev. Hahn specifically noted Grushevoi's leading role in advancing the Brezhnev "cult." Consequently, although Grushevoi's formal association with the Dnepropetrovsk organization ended during World War II, his memoir can be expected to illuminate some of the factors which make that regional apparat a distinctive element of the Soviet elite. At several points Grushevoi does, in fact, stress the solidarity of the Dnepropetrovtsy (literally, "those from Dnepropetrovsk"). The book presents a fascinating collection of pre-1941 portraits of a number of the Dnepropetrovsk apparatchiki, both in words and in photographs of these individuals, who were then mostly in their thirties. Among those pictured is Ya. I. Brezhnev, obviously (from the patronymic initial and family resemblance) Leonid's brother, although he is not mentioned in the text. As is to be expected, L. I. Brezhnev's photograph leads all the rest, and the treatment accorded him in the text accords with the panegyrics traditionally due the top leader in the USSR. (In fact, Brezhnev, then a minor secretary in the provincial party organization with responsibility for aspects of industrial production, was a subordinate of Grushevoi, who, as second secretary, was in charge of the provincial party organization at the outbreak of war, and a careful reading of this volume makes it clear that Brezhnev's participation in war measures was despite Grushevoi's glowing descriptions 2 The Politics of Soviet Agriculture, 1960-1970, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1972, pp. 219, 264-65. actually relatively unimportant.) Grushevoi obviously considered it essential also to introduce Shcherbitsky, singling him out for mention when he refers to the thousands of ordinary party members dispatched to military service in 1941 (at the age of 23, Shcherbitsky had just graduated from the Dnepropetrovsk Chemical Institute). More significant than these conventional bows is the light that Grushevoi casts on the organizational connections of the Dnepropetrovsk apparat, both internal and with higher authorities, for the ties established three decades ago have continued to shape channels of personal and group influence. One set of connections which Grushevoi discusses at great length is that between the apparat and the military commissar system. A high proportion of all officials of the Ukrainian CP entered the political officer corps temporarily, but the Dnepropetrovsk group appears to have contributed more than its share. Moreover, a number of these party figures retained or renewed their links with the military after the war. Grushevoi remained in the commissar system and is currently Chief of the Political Directorate and member of the Military Council of the Moscow Military District. Brezhnev spent a period after Stalin's death in 1953 as a deputy to the Chief of the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy. Grushevoi, who stresses the fact that he insisted on keeping a field assignment during the war, seems to be obliquely criticizing apparatchiki (could he have present Politburo member A. P. Kirilenko in mind?) 3 Krasnaia zvezda (Moscow), Jan. 14, 1975. who opted for industrial supervision in the Urals. In describing the work of the party's political officers, Grushevoi notes that they had to stand up to line military demands more than once-a rare public acknowledgment of conflict in Soviet decision-making. Even more significant is the information Grushevoi provides on the wartime importance of party personnel direction and its relationship with police control. Ukrainian Party Cadres Secretary Moisei S. Spivak (apparently purged as a Jew during Stalin's last years) occupies a prominent place in the narrative, which indeed he deserves according to unofficial wartime reports. It was Spivak who issued orders to destroy the regional party archives if they could not be evacuated; Spivak who directed all party officials to start wearing uniforms; Spivak who monopolized clandestine contacts with the Dnepropetrovsk party underground in occupied territory; and apparently Spivak who selected the head (a cadres official) of this underground. The cadres sections in general, and Spivak in particular, are known to have worked intimately with the police; and Grushevoi emphasizes his own close association with the provincial director of the NKVD (Narodnyi Kommissariat Vnutrennykh Del-People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) in directing evacuation. These ties have more than "historical" significance, for, as Hahn has noted, the Dnepropetrovsk apparatus was the career starting point for several contem 4 See John A. Armstrong, The Soviet Bureaucratic Elite: A Case Study of the Ukrainian Apparatus, New York, Praeger, 1959, p. 84, fn. 4. 5 Ibid., p. 74. porary police directors, including | surviving director, A. P. Karavan- The history of partisan and underground activity in Dnepropetrovsk, as elsewhere, has contained many clues for subsequent Soviet political development. Grushevoi's account provides a modest contribution to this history. He discusses at length the formation of the "destruction battalions" which constituted the backbone of the early partisan movement, but (in contrast to some recent accounts ) does not admit that they were directed by the NKVD. Unfortunately, Grushevoi does not describe the tragic fate of these units, which we know in a one-sided fashion from German reports.' His account of the Pavlograd-Novomoskovsk partisans is somewhat fuller (confirming German reports about their lavish, though ultimately futile provisioning). Grushevoi's discussion of specifically underground operations is still more detailed, although it is not as complete (partly because it terminates in early 1942) as the treatment of the Pavlograd underground by its • See, for example, S. B. Bilenko, Istrebitelnye batalony v velikoi otechestvennoi voine (Destruction Battalions in the Great Patriotic War) Moscow, Voenizdat, 1969, p. 16. 7 See my "Partisan Warfare in the Dnepr The most difficult aspect of any Soviet memoir to evaluate relates to its intimations concerning the personalities of apparat officials. It would appear that Grushevoiin contrast to many earlier memoirists made a studied effort to stress the human qualities of the wartime apparatchik. In his account, officials openly avow concern for the well-being of their families. Grushevoi and his associates can barely force themselves to burn the unharvested grain rather than let it fall into German hands. He recounts the complaints by a crowd of women that the authorities were abandoning them and tells how he was sympathetic, if firm, in refuting their allegation. TO OUR READERS: A notice of errata in the January-February 1975 issue appears on p. 41. know that during the Civil War, there were numerous examples of even more Russified Tsarist army officers who asserted their Ukrainian identity by allying with Ukrainian independence forces. It is not wholly fantastic to envisage a future parallel development within a Soviet apparatus undergoing severe internal strain. One must be very cautious in drawing inferences from works like Grushevoi's. Any publication dealing with the apparatus-far more than specialized sociological and historical works—is evidently still cautiously vetted by the party indoctrination sections. The period which Grushevoi covers, moreover, is remote from the present. Yet this past may be of particular relevance for specialists in Soviet affairs, who, for want of better information, have increasingly looked at the life cycles of Soviet officials to locate critical experiences which may have affected age cohorts differentially. The intense preoccupation of a whole Soviet generation with the World There is also passing reference to the complex ethnic composition of the province. No direct mention of the large, vulnerable Jewish population appears (German reports allege that Jews were prominent in the partisans), but Grushevoi praises a few officials with obviously Jewish surnames. He also hints, in one passage, at the Ukrainian ethnic background of heavily Russified officials like | War II experience exemplified in himself: shocked by Grushevoi's telephoned warnings of a German approach, the Kirovograd provincial first secretary, P. S. Gorenkov (listed in at least one prewar newspaper story in the Ukrainian form "Horenko"), reverts momentarily to Ukrainian speech. The incident may have no general significance. On the other hand, it suggests that the veneer of Russification, impenetrable as it appears on contemporary officials like Ukrainian Party First Secretary V. V. Shcherbitsky, can crack just a little bit in moments of extreme emotional strain. We this memoir-like innumerable other works dealing with partisan and regular military operationssuggests to the Sovietologist that this particular critical experience will remain salient as long as the present generation of party leaders remains in power. When a book covers the background of what has turned out to be a crucial segment of the Soviet apparatus, members of the Dnepropetrovsk provincial party organization at the outbreak of the war, it particularly merits rescue from the oblivion which has overtaken too many significant Soviet books. 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