Volume 41, Number 15 · September 22, 1994
Getting Russia Right
By David Remnick
The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991
by Martin Malia
Free Press, 575 pp., $24.95
The fall of Sovietology was as cruel as it was quick. One may reasonably restrain one's sympathy for the displaced men of the Central Committee, but it is a stunning thing to see what the collapse has done to professors on university faculties—to the historians, the political scientists, the sociologists—who studied them. An entire academic industry has been shaken. The cold war had been good for the Sovietology business (if not always good for Sovietology); a nervous government, obsessed with the great Other in a Manichaean world, showered cash not only on defense contractors and Central Intelligence Agency analysts, but also on academics who explored everything from the state of public health in the Soviet army to the living conditions of Yakutian Eskimos. Foundations of all kinds also showed their interest and largesse. The need to know was outsized, a national interest.
Review, 6813 words
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