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that they will discover their common humanity and shared interest
in survival through such apolitical contacts.
It
is further postulated
that once this happens, each in their own country will start exerting
pressure on their respective governments to disarm or reduce their
nuclear arsenal and pursue more peaceful policies. The Ground
Zero Pairing Project has released across the United States (including
academic communities with a highly educated population) vast
reservoirs of ignorance and naivete about the Soviet Union, pro–
viding fresh evidence of how little progress has been made over the
years in understanding the character of Soviet society. (Four major
flaws of this approach may be noted here briefly. They include the
belief that ordinary Soviet citizens can engage in informal, nongov–
ernmental contacts with citizens of the United States; that they can
bring to bear pressure on their government to modify its policies or
propose new policies; that they would be willing to propose policies
different from those already publicly embraced by their government;
and that the "discovery" of common human characteristics such as
love of one's children, the interest in certain recreational activities,
the preference for peace over war, etc . , will transcend historical–
political-cultural differences between the two political systems.)
The fear of nuclear war as a factor in the current development
(or stagnation) of public and even elite understanding of the Soviet
Union cannot be underestimated. Unilateralists, freeze supporters,
and pairing project enthusiasts are at one in their desire to redefine–
overtly or subliminally - the nature of the Soviet system in order to
justify their hopes and wishes . For those bent on such a wishful
redefinition of the Soviet regime, it is essential to substitute for the
image of a system expanding its political and military influence that
of a political system which responds to the needs and wishes of its
citizens.
There have been echoes of the popular wishes and fears among
Soviet specialists too. It will be recalled how, for example, An–
dropov's rise to power prompted a wave of wishful speculation about
the enlightened and rational policies this supposedly Westernized
political figure was to initiate; more recently we were assured by Mr.
Armand Hammer (on the op-ed page of
The New York Times)
that the
new leader, Chernenko, is the one "we can work with." (Mr. Ham–
mer managed to work with them all.)
One of the major accomplishments of
Dictatorship over Needs,
perhaps the most substantial of the volumes here reviewed, is its
serious and sustained effort to come to grips with the question: Are
