The Use and Abuse of Sovietology

"This is a work by a fighter, a thinker, and an idealist. Leo Labedz is a fighter who minces no words in his contempt for the apologists of totalitarianism. He never rests in his efforts to enlarge the scope of human freedom, and many have felt the sharp edge of his political scalpel. He is a thinker with a penetrating mind and encyclopedic knowledge. He is an idealist who believes in sacrificing for the just cause to which he has dedicated his life." With these words of extraordinary praise, Zbigniew Brzezinski opens this volume of critical and polemical essays by Leopold Labedz. His knowledge of Soviet affairs, as seen through the eyes of the crusaders and critics of the Modern Russian State, is peerless. Chapters, which include major studies of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, George Orwell, Noam Chomsky, George Kennan, and Leszek Kolakowski among others, establish Labedz as among the most incisive analysts of Soviet affairs as well as those who presume special expertise in this arcane field.

Labedz's impassioned writing covers not only Sovietologists, but also the major fault lines with which totalitarian systems have been uniquely identified. His writings on the Holocaust, student revolt, European unity, and the meaning of detente, help provide a perspective with which to assess present moods and policies within the still ever-present Soviet bloc. The anthology was prepared and edited by Melvin J. Lasky, the editor of Encounter, in which many of these materials initially appeared.