The Phantom Revolt

George Fischer's study is undoubtedly a memorial to painstaking scholarship, especially since in the past its subject has been rudely buffeted about by the uninformed. Just a few years ago, for instance, people were muttering imprecations over General Vlasov and his cadres of anti-Stalinist Russians, pointing to their alliance with Hitler Germany and their treasonable assaults on our embattled ally. Recently, comment has changed in form, if not in error, with the public magnifying the numbers and effectiveness of this phantom army and the chances of domestic revolt it angures. Fischer has collected reams of facts, distilled them, presumably with care, and pressed them into a compact book, all to set the record straight.

What is not so impressive is the tenuous connection between what the author is describing and what he is expounding. He has a thesis to advance, an incisive one. Organized resistance in Russia, he says, is as much a phantom as Vlasov's army; only a tremendous surprise attack on Russia can produce it. The basis for this assertion is something Fischer calls Inertness, the quality of the Russian mind which excludes initiative and makes action wholly dependent on minutely detailed orders from on high. The most interesting part of "Soviet Opposition to Stalin" is Fischer's exploration of this vacuum of will, where he lucidly and briefly outlines what conditions mold such a mentality and how. When he is done, his thesis seems unexceptionable.

What leaves me puzzled, though, is the minor role his chronicle of the Vlasov movement has in these arguments. His detailed account of the movement's internal squabbles, its frustration by Nazi cynicism and brutishness, and the background of its sources of support contribute little to Fischer's broad thesis save the services of a none-too-satisfactory illustration. There is nothing, for instance, in the tragic gyrations of Vlasov's army that leads one to the all-important concept of Inertness. Nor did Fischer have to explain the expatriates' every motion to prove that, as a result of confusion rampant in the Kremlin during the invasion's initial stages, authority collapsed, taking with it all semblance of organization, resistance, and loyalty. Nothing more than enumeration of the many defections during that period, moreover, is necessary to convince readers that the breakdown in authority suspended Inertness, set the Russians mulling over past injustices as they never had before, and thus created the only conditions in which organized resistance might thrive.

This is my major complaint, then. Fischer has advanced a stimulating thesis along with a host of facts which at best seem incidental. It is the lack of a compelling connection which disappointed me, for what's the use of poring over dry details if they don't lead anywhere?

This may not bother you as it did me. In fact , it mayneven be a boon, for to the extent that Fischer's thesis depends on the Viasov movement, it is subject to all the frailties of a generalization based on but one instance (the Viasov movement is the only case of organized opposition under modern Russian conditions). Since so little of basic importance does depend on Vlasov, the appearance of an entirely different sort of rebellious group would not invalidate Fischer's main argument.

Further, I am bound to say, Fischer's description and exposition are very closely related in one field, that of ideology. The impression glossed from his book is that Russian opposition helds aim far closer to those of the 1917 Revolution than to the ideals of the West. (I realize that the New York Times reviewer took a dim view of this section, but his review seemed to me two-thirds proving his familiarity with the subject, and one-third dogmatic and substantiated denunciations of Fischer's thesis).

In any case each portion of this book, thinly connected though they seem, is quite absorbing and well worth the effort of plowing through Fischer's dessicated prose. Like the other books produced by members of the Russian Research Center, "Soviet Opposition to Stalin" contains many an insight and many a fact which are both interesting in themselves and crucial to understanding the problem faced by the United States