Black, J. L.

English

Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)

Comptes rendus / Book Reviews 249theoretical or philosophical works. Babe suggests that the similar early-life experi-ences of the Foundational Ten (religious upbringing; strong mother figures; out-sidermentalities owing to geography, class, ethnicity, or disposition; graduate studyabroad) partially explain their later scholarly orientation (pp. 307308). But thiscluster of variables arguably applied to a wide cross-section of Canadian intellectu-als born before 1920. In casting in sharp relief the critical Foundational Tenagainst their administrative American brethren, Babe downplays the importanceof Frankfurt School critical theorists like Theodore Adorno and Herbert Marcuse,who spent more time in the United States than, for example, did Grierson in Canada.Finally, links between some of Babes scholars and leading social theorists gounmade. For example, a section on Innis and Grierson discussing the role of thepseudo-environments engendered by the yellow press and by public relations onpeoples capacity for critical thought (pp. 107109) would have benefited from abrief treatment of Habermasian debates on the erosion of a rational-critical publicsphere. Likewise, Smythes discussion of the Consciousness Industry  how themedia construct common sensical understandings of culture and the marketplace(pp. 129130)  suggests parallels with Gramscian-inspired works using hege-mony theory.These are small matters, however, and do not detract from the overall impressivescope and intellectual maturity of Babes book. Ours is an academic age where inter-disciplinary scholarship is more often preached than practised. Fortunately, Babeproves the exception here.Daniel J. RobinsonUniversity of Western OntarioAloysius Balawyder  In the Clutches of the Kremlin: Canadian-East EuropeanRelations (1945–1962). New York: East European Monographs, no. 546, distrib-uted by Columbia University Press. Pp. 192.This slim volume is divided into nine short chapters, plus a conclusion and severalappendices. The author focuses on Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, payinglittle attention to Bulgaria, Romania, or Hungary and ignoring East Germany andAlbania altogether. He summarizes Canadian official attitudes and policies towardsEastern Europe (used but not defined here as a geopolitical term) and providesseparate chapters on the three main states noted above, topped up with chapters onimmigration, trade, religious persecution, and the CBC-IS  PsychologicalInstrument, as well as a strangely repetitive final feature on Canadian representa-tives to the countries under review.Aloysius Balawyder approaches his subject from the Canadian perspective, rely-ing mainly on documents from the National Archives of Canada and the Departmentof External Affairs. He draws from interviews conducted with ten Canadian officialsand former diplomats in 1984 and 1985. The topic is worth well exploring, and thethorough examination and sequential application of hitherto unused archival mate-250 Histoire sociale / Social History, vol. xxxv, no 69 (2002)rial make this book useful as a starter. For a thoroughly analytical treatise, however,Balawyders sources are too narrow for a coherent picture of the subject at hand.More published materials from various Canadian Slavic societies and ethnicallybased associations  wartime and after  would have been helpful. Readily avail-able sources from the Communist Party of Canada and the Communist InformationBureau (Cominform, 19471956), in which headquarters Canadian communists(such as Stanley Ryerson) worked, would have added context and substance to thestudy as well.This is a difficult volume to review, in part because Balawyders earlier efforts onCanadian-Russian and Canadian-Polish relations lead one to expect better of thisone. Too many crucial moments, organizations, and institutions are left unexplained,weakly interpreted, or too lightly treated. The Czech coup [sic], featured through-out as a central turning point, is the most glaring example of this weakness. Onecould also point to the Yalta Conference, the Warsaw Treaty Organization (foundedin 1955; Yugoslavia was not a full member, although this is implied on p. 142),COMECON (CMEA), and peaceful co-existence as important subject mattercommented upon only in passing. In light of Balawyders contention (p. 21) thatCanadas relations with Eastern Europe were determined by Ottawas relations withMoscow and the foreign policies of Soviet Satellites [sic] were dictated by theKremlin, one wonders how the narrative can be expected to work with the Krem-lin, for the most part, missing from it. Among other things, the failure to providesubstantive context renders meaningless the books catchy title, In the Clutches ofthe Kremlin.Too many puzzling non-sequiturs: for example, in an election relatively free fromcoercion and bribery, ... the [Czechoslovak] Communists [sic] Party won only 38percent of the seats in 1946. In a parliament with proportional representation, 38 percent of the votes, placing the Communist Party first among many parties and makingits leader the legitimate premier, should be regarded as an unusually good result. Aone-shot reference to a threat on Norways independence (p. 88) as a chief reasonfor forming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization deserves clarification.Many names appearing in the text are left out of the index (George Drew, Bole-slaw Bierut, Davidson Dunton, to name but a few). Some individuals are mentionedin the text but not clearly identified; others are re-identified almost every time theyare mentioned. The index, in fact, is very incomplete.Too many unnecessary mistakes: Malenkov (not in the index) is said to have beenthe secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to1956 (p. 32). He was not; Khrushchev was. Worse, the Cominform (not in theindex), which should have been a centrepiece of this study, is said to have beenfounded in 1948 (pp. 5556). In fact, it was opened in September 1947, at a meet-ing in Poland. Even though he notes that the first Cominform headquarters was situ-ated in Belgrade, Balawyder claims that Yugoslavia did not join the organization.He is wrong. Yugoslavia was a founding member, but was expelled against Titoswill in June 1948.This latter event, and not the Czech coup, signalled the tightening of Stalinistcontrol of East and East Central Europe (against Titoism), leading directly to theComptes rendus / Book Reviews 251Berlin Blockade of 19481949 and the de facto division of Germany into two sepa-rate states. The blockade and the reasons for Canadas failure to participate in theconsequent Berlin airlift are not referred to here, though they should have been.The chapter on Canada and religious persecution in Eastern Europe might haveprofited from some mention of the World Council of Churches and the prominenceof Canadas James Endicott in it and in the Soviet/EE-sponsored world peace move-ments. But Endicott, a sometime spokesman for Polands Bierut and apologist forSoviet behaviour in Eastern Europe, is not even mentioned.As one might have gathered from these observations, the text is so severelymarred by poor writing, non-sequiturs, awkward syntax, typos, misspellings, andodd punctuation that one wonders if it is not the draft that has been published bymistake. Personal names are misspelled (even L. B. Pearson on p. 21 and Khrush-chev almost everywhere, including in the index) or spelled in more than one way(Dank/Danko, both on p. 45). A seemingly random use of acronyms, sometimeslong after an organization has already been mentioned several times, is irritating.References to the United Nations international Refugee Organization (IRO), forexample, appear five times in the same paragraph.Even a casual proofreading would have grabbed the without that makes senseonly as with (p. 43); woe would have been turned properly into woo (p. 15);and the Nations missing from Most Favoured Treaties (p. 12) would have beennoticed. The unfortunate phrase along with Egypt, Burma, India, and Egypt mighthave been avoided, as would the missing words on, for example, pages 65, 94, and111. There is no excuse for such extraordinarily sloppy editing, which greatlydetracts readers from the useful parts of the book.Readers may see this review as fixated on textual issues, but I know that ProfessorBalawyder has done much better work. I urge him to rewrite, provide a broader con-text, and rigorously edit so that this important subject can be truly comprehended.J. L. BlackProfessor Emeritus, Carleton UniversityJonathan Beecher  Victor Considérant and the Rise and Fall of French RomanticSocialism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Pp. xvi, 584.In 1971 Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu published in English translation ananthology of lengthy excerpts from the works of Charles Fourier (17721837), athinker more often cited than read. This made available utopian texts and also someonly recently published musings of Fourier on eroticism, the aspect of Fouriersthought which had always been most problematical to his contemporaries in thenineteenth century. In 1986 Beecher published a 500-page biography of Fourierwhich included much arcane lore, amassed in highly specialized runs of little jour-nals like the Cahiers of the Association dÉtudes fouriéristes of Besançon, aboututopianism as well as transcriptions of archival manuscripts. In 2001 he published a450-page study of Victor Considérant (18081893) which discusses the long life of

Aloysius Balawyder — In the Clutches of the Kremlin: Canadian-East European Relations (1945-1962)

https://hssh.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/hssh/article/download/4493/3688

Aloysius Balawyder — In the Clutches of the Kremlin: Canadian-East European Relations (1945-1962)

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)