Volume 4, Number 8 · May 20, 1965
The Third World
By Asa Briggs
The Third World in Soviet Perspective.
edited by Thomas Perry Thornton
Princeton, 355 pp., $7.50
The Challenge of Modernization
by I.R. Sinai
Norton, 256 pp., $5.50
Rapid social and political change leaves most people bewildered. It forces a minority, however, to seek historical bearings, to relate the precarious present both to past and future. These two books reveal the extent of common preoccupation with such themes in the Soviet and the non-Soviet world. The collection of Soviet papers, carefully edited by Thomas Perry Thornton, reflects a deliberate, if not always consistent, attempt to place changes in the 'third world' in what the editor calls 'Soviet perspective': in the carefully chosen words of the Communist summa, 'Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism,' 'one of the basic problems today is that of the paths and prospects of historical development of the countries liberated from the colonial yoke.' Mr. Sinai, who is less interested in choosing his words carefully than in shocking the tender-minded reader, argues powerfully that contemporary men of power, above all others, need to be guided by 'a long-term historical perspective, by a tough-minded public philosophy endowed with the insight to understand the world's turmoil and to see beyond the turbulence of the present to the possibilities of the future.'
Review, 1913 words
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