54
PARTISAN REVIEW
development, and that there is only one kind of realism. But if the term
has any meaning, realism means the completest possible view of human
motivations; and as so;:iety aligns itself more and more in an overt class
struggle, class motivations become a conscious part of each ind1vidual's
psychological equipment. So that a book that ignores class-motivations
in our time is truly unrealistic.
One great contribution of bourgeois
realism was the discovery of sex; but this discovery was not an immaculate
conception on the part of bourgeois writers. It had its origin iu the disin·
tegration of bourgeois society, and particularly in the disintegration of the
family relationiship. That was one revolution in literature. Now all
the talk on "propaganda in art" shows that another revolution is in
progress. And the new psychological dimension that the critics are un·
willing to accept is called by a derogatory term-"propaganda." Just as
the discovery of sex, before it was accepted, had its opprobrious designation
from the
Cl
itics, and was known as
smut.
But Miss Smedley's political realism is justified not only from the
point of view of resthetics, but from a utilitarian point of view. For her
book, like the Red Army that it tells about, is also embattled, waging a
war against the world-wide siandering of the Red Army. Throughout
the capitalist world the Red Army is a horde of "bandits"-while the most
brutal exploitation of the peasantry and industrial workers by the landlords
and foreign imperialists, and the official murder of tens of thousands of
red partisans by the Kuomintang, is condoned.
GERTRUDE DIAMANT
ON THE RUINS OF THE OLD GHETTOS
WHERE THE GHETTO ENDS,
by
Leon Dennen. Alfred
H.
King, Inc.
$2.50.
Dennen's method in "Where the Ghetto Ends" is one of obliqueness,
and through it he gains a curious, casual force. Limiting himself, first
of all, to the study of a national minority, the Jews both within and out·
side of Russia, he throws an indirect but immensely revealing light upon
the whole program of the U. S. S.
R.,
its aims, actual achievements, and
the difficulties that confront it in reaching a solution not only of the racial,
but of all other problems, a solution which Dennen shows cannot be any–
thing but socialist. Or as he states in his introduction, with a naivete that
can hardly be other than deliberate: "The Soviet leaders are Marxists
and, like Marx, they believe the Jewish question to be simply an economic
problem deeply rooted in the existence of bourgeois society...
It
is in the
light of this theory that Soviet leaders set out to solve the problems of the
Jews and also of the other numerous national minorities ... Whether one
agrees with Communism or not, one must realize that the attempt of the
Soviet Government to solve the Jewish problem is not merely a gesture
but is inherent in the Soviet philosophy."
