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The Other Side of Coexistence: An Analysis of Russian Foreign Policy. By Weeks Albert L.. (New York: Pitman Publishing Co. 1970. Pp. 304. $7.50.)

The Other Side of Coexistence: An Analysis of Russian Foreign Policy. By Albert L. Weeks. (New York: Pitman Publishing Co. 1970. Pp. 304. $7.50.) Since we know little in detail of how Soviet foreign policy has been made and have only limited and external insights into its implementation, the literature of the subject tends to concentrate on interpretation. Professor Weeks is legitimately concerned to dispel the illusion always likely to emerge in periods of apparent detente that there is a natural convergence of interests and hence of attitudes between the Soviet Union and the United States. He is also desirous of showing that "co-existence" by no means implies an abandonment of the fundamentally expansionist impulses of the Soviet regime and to deny the possibility of drawing a sharp line between ideological and material aims. If Professor Weeks had confined himself to an analysis of what we know about Soviet policy along these lines, he might not have produced anything very original, but at least the book would have fallen into a recognizable category. In fact he has tried to do something more complicated: to tell the story of Soviet foreign policy and in particular of Soviet expansion with particular reference to relations with the United States; to give a good deal of information, some of it quite illuminating on the economic relations of the two countries; to support his view that the Krushchev era represented an attempt by the Russians at a serious detente which Khrushchev's successors abandoned in favour of a more militarist posture, and to speculate on the Soviet Union's future policies in the light of the growing prominence of the split with China. The book was completed some time in 1969, apart from a brief epilogue apparently written early in 1970; and already (reading it in May 1972) it sounds very dated; much has happened since the book was written, and although some of what happened was predictable from Mr. Weeks's book, a good deal was not. In particular his contention that the Russians' fear of Germany is such that they only pretend to wish for the break-up of NATO and would prefer the Americans to remain in Europe and four-power control to persist over Germany, in however shadowy a form, does not look at all plausible now. What Mr. Weeks has done is to mingle two perfectly proper kinds of writing—scholarly analysis and day-to-day journalism—in 'an amalgam which meets the criteria of neither. Indeed one suspects that much of the book has been the result of a weaving together of articles on the successive events and publications that have attracted Mr. Week's notice. The weakness is particularly marked in the treatment of the Khrushchev period, for which some analysis both of the Khrushchev-Kennedy confrontation at Vienna and of the Cuban missile crisis is essential if one is putting forward a theory of Soviet motives; Mr. Graham Allison in his book The Essence of Decision has shown that one can make some useful assertions about the Cuban crisis at least. But Mr. Weeks passes over the events themselves as though they did not need to be explained. Similarly for the postBrezhnev period, Mr. Weeks never seriously deals with the intervention in Czechoslovakia nor with the circumstances surrounding the armed clashes with China. What Mr. Weeks is good at is quotation, wresting meanings out of Soviet texts; and one admires his stamina and patience in dealing so lovingly with material so essentially rebarbative. He is also not above a little kremlinology in dealing with the Soviet Union's internal governmental structure. The book is poorly written with an irritating admixture of colloquialisms out of place in a serious work. There are also some quite extraordinary errors of fact. He describes Bainbridge Colby as "Ambassador to Russia" at a time when Colby was Secretary of State and the United States had no Ambassador to Russia (p. 46); he gives the impression (p. 81) that Port Arthur was part of the territories acquired by Russia from China in 1860 (the lack of any maps does not help the reader). Whatever kind of socialist Stafford Cripps was he was certainly not a "Fabian Socialist" (p. 91). And even if Clausewitz's ancestry was Polish, this hardly makes the most famous of all German writers on strategy a Russian (p. 262). Perhaps a British reviewer may be forgiven for pointing out that the rules governing the use of titles are not very difficult to learn and that to ignore them is discourteous; C. P. Snow if one thinks of the novelist or Lord Snow if one thinks of the public figure, but never "Lord C. P. Snow" (p. 135). As for "Lord William M. A. Beaverbrook" (p. 91) for a self-made man raised to the peerage (and one who used Max for his given name) why, the mind boggles.