“Baroque: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting”, edited by Rolf Toman

500 pages, HF Ullmann, ISBN-13: 978-3833160011

Heh heh heh…oh, this is good: Baroque: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, edited by Rolf Toman, is one of these art history books for the generalist and, so, not very detailed…but…heh heh heh, oh, this is choice, ‘cause you would think an editor worth his salt would have seen that the word “architecture” is spelled “architectuce” on the spine. Hoo, doggy, but that’s swell. Anyway, with that off of my chest…stupid spelling errors aide, the biggest complaint I have with this book are the pictures; there are lots of them but they are so very small. The Baroque era produced some of the most lavish buildings, ornate sculptures, and lush paintings, but damned if you can tell by these teeny tiny photographs. Not all of the photographs, mind you, but enough to make you want to chuck the thing across the room. However, I have to say that, although the articles are written by experts in their fields who use professional art historical and architectural terminology, they do so but in an understandable manner, and so it is an easy read. Organized by media and geography, this is an okay addition to your library, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to track it down.

“Arrested Voices: Resurrecting the Disappeared Writers of the Soviet Regime”, by Vitaly Shentalinsky, introduction by Robert Conquest

336 pages, Free Press, ISBN-13: 978-0684827766

You’ve heard of repressed memories, right? Y’know, those memories that have been unconsciously blocked due to the memory being associated with a horrible trauma? There was a rash of these things in the States several years ago as adults stepped forward to claim abuse when they were kids that they had forgotten, or repressed. Ever wonder what would happen if such a phenomena occurred on a nationwide scale? No need to speculate, as it did occur in the former Soviet Union, as the memories of decades of terror and suppression have seemingly…disappeared. In Arrested Voices: Resurrecting the Disappeared Writers of the Soviet Regime, Vitaly Shentalinsky has ploughed deep into KGB archives searching for official documents about the mysterious silencing or outright disappearances of a whole generation of soviet writers. Men and women, such as Anna Akhmatova, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov, Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam, Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel, Boris Pilnyak, Andrei Platonov and Nina Gagen-Torn being among the best known victims, though by no means all of them (and forgive me, but I really dig Russian patronyms).

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with its unchallenged power, attempted to collectivized everything – even literature – by installing a state controlled Writers Union, which created its own Gulag: those writers who were considered critical of the regime or didn't follow the official line, were literally (executed) or figuratively (publication interdiction) eliminated. Shentalinsky provides extensive (perhaps too extensive) biographical notes on each writer, but then how could he not? He wants them all to be rediscovered and remembered. Meanwhile, the importance and nature of the recovered documents themselves vary tremendously, including as they do diaries, letters, and interrogators’ reports. Isaac Emmanuilovich’s file is compelling because it is unusually comprehensive and reveals how Babel first succumbed to his interrogators’ demands and later attempted to save those whom he had implicated, while the ethnographer and poet Gagen-Torn “seemed to soar above all the horror of the camps” in the words of one who suffered alongside her. Amongst some of the most painful reads are the forced written confessions of the authors; while they were promised a free leave if they avowed to be traitors, after their confession what they got instead was a bullet in the back of the neck (Shentalinsky even found the exact dates of their executions). Other chilling episodes includes the murder of Andrés Nin Pérez, the leader of the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, or POUM, as well as some dreadful stuff featuring Maksim Gorky, a servile mouthpiece for Stalinism during the Kulak liquidation whose son, nevertheless, was still murdered as a dire warning that his position was far from safe.

This depressing book is a must for all those interested in the history of the USSR and, more specifically, in its treatment of literature and its status within the totalitarian State. Shentalinsky’s journalistic narrative moves freely between personal narrative – his attempts to start up the commission; his accounts of working with intriguing KGB archive personnel; his visits to Gulag sites – and chapters focusing on the fates of individual writers. There can be doubt that poet Shentalinsky has undertaken a meaningful and monumental task in heading the commission to recover previously secret documentation pertaining to writers interrogated, imprisoned, and murdered by the KGB, and his findings are horrifying, as about two thousand writers were arrested over the life of the Soviet horror, while more than fifteen hundred of those died in prison or work camps.

“Why We Were In Vietnam”, by Norman Podhoretz

240 pages, Simon & Schuster, ISBN-13: 978-0671445782

Ready for another blast form the past? I picked up Why We Were In Vietnam by Norman Podhoretz from Avalon Books, one of my go-to used book stores from back in the day that has gone the way of the dodo (thanks, Amazon). Anyway, it was published in 1982 and was Podhoretz’s detailed account of the American domestic political history of the Vietnam War. Podhoretz, an American neoconservative pundit and writer for Commentary magazine, covers the political debate (or lack thereof) at each stage of American involvement in Vietnam; from refusing to enter to help the French, to providing assistance to the independent South, to entering combat, to drawing down, to negotiating an end to US involvement, to refusing to sell the South Vietnamese ammunition for their self-defense – it’s all painfully there. As would be expected from a writer of Podhoretz’s caliber, he is meticulous in his research, quotes and footnotes of the various sides at different times during the war; indeed, one of the drawbacks is that the reading is a bit thick due to the frequent in-depth quotes from sources with different styles, and you may have to re-read a section once in order to make sure the context is correct, but this is a minor quibble.

I believe that Podhoretz’s biggest contention is that the Vietnam War was fought on the cheap; to elaborate his point, Kennedy (yes, Kennedy; for God’s sake stop giving him a pass from starting our involvement just because he was murdered young by a deranged Communist…who acted alone) and Johnson tried to fight the war below the radar of the general public and, therefore, even though most Americans supported our efforts in Vietnam early on, the Presidents never made the case for the war to the public. America was never put on a war-footing, in other words, and Americans at home were not asked to make any sacrifices. This had a deleterious effect on Americans later on during the conflict, when the public mood was shifting (not as you might imagine as the author points out), and political leaders failed to make the case for American involvement. By contrast, extremist elements opposed to the war (and any war, and America itself), were able to gain broad support and mainstream acceptance of their “facts”. Johnson blundered in trying to “not dignify those allegations with a response” and also in trying to fight the war out of the public eye, while simultaneously trying to get his Great Society boondoggle launched, during all of which he squandered his limited credibility. By the time Nixon was elected, the issue of withdrawal was settled (even though there had never really been a debate), with the only questions being timing and method.

Podhoretz spares no one, equally embarrassing those who favored involvement and those who favored withdrawal. He highlights hypocrisy on all sides, across all three administrations and exposes hidden agendas and prejudices galore (he even points out fallacies and errors in his own articles, written during the war; I mean, how’s that for honesty?). There is no question that Podhoretz supported involvement for the right reasons, in the right way, but he carefully draws the distinction between blind support of a poorly lead war effort by a leadership that squandered political opportunities, and support for those in South Vietnam who honestly wanted to remain free from North Vietnamese (read, Communist) domination. This is not an easy book to read, and is not recommended for light reading, either: the reader has to really think about what is being said and the context, but If you want to learn more about politics surrounding American involvement in Vietnam, this book provides critical balance missing in almost all histories of the war.