628
So far, so good. But-and
this
is
my first major quarrel with Mr. Birn–
baum-if such distinguished but not
infallible students of Soviet society as
Bertram D. Wolfe have overestimated
the fundamental rigidity and homo–
geneity of the System, Mr. Birnbaum
errs more grievously by grossly exag–
gerating its openness and fluidity. He
dismisses as nonsense the notion of
limited and peaceful de-Stalinization:
"If
a genuine opposition emerges in
the Soviet Union it will define itself
through conflict." Many will agree
with this, but some will conclude that
"genuine opposition" is not likely to
emerge in the Soviet Union for quite
a while. Not so Mr. Birnbaum. "There
will be strikes, demonstrations and
violence in the Soviet Union before the
process can be completed." Again an
arguable proposition. But one becomes
wary when Mr. Birnbaum goes on to
declare: "The very possibility of such
CORRESPONDENCE
conflict . . . had diminished the intel–
lectual respectability of those sorts of
anti-Communism which insist on the
impossibility of open political conflict
in the Communist states."
The argument would be much more
compelling had the likelihood of strikes,
demonstrations, etc. been demonstrated
rather than merely postulated. What–
ever amount of grim satisfaction one
may derive from Khrushchev's belated
admissions, the fact remains that both
the Twentieth and the Twenty–
second Congresses of the Soviet Com–
munist Party were totalitarian perform–
ances. The bitter struggle for power
and the concomitant factional strife
had been driven underground. The
"anti-Party" villains were not given
their day in court. In fact, it is still
possible to maintain that where the
Communist regime is in effective con–
trol-in 1956 such controls collapsed
in Hungary and were on the verge of
SHAW: The Style and the
Man
by
RICHARD
M.
OHMANN,
Editor of
Inqui;y and Expression
and
The Making of Myth
"In brief, my position comes to this: The very many decisions
that add up to a style are decisions about what to say, as well as
how to say it. They reflect the writer's organization of experi-.
ence, his sense of life, so that the most general of his attitudes
and ideas.find expression just as characteristically in his style
as in his matter, though less overtly. Style, in this view, far from
being intellectually peripheral ornament, is what I have called
'epistemic choice,' and the study of style can lead to insight into
the writer's most confirmed epistemic stances." - from the
author's Introduction.
$5.00
from·the publishers of the Wesleyan Poetry Program
~WESLEYAN
UNIVERSITY PRESS
MIDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT
