The Myth of Rescue by William D. Rubinstein

Family Reunion

On March 19, 1994, a Jewish family reunion took place in Givat Haim, a kibbutz situated midway between Tel Aviv and Haifa.

Le Carre in Russian Eyes

John Le Carré's faithful followers in this country have found the master at the top of his form in his most recent novel, The Night Manager.1

A Postscript on Finlandization

In the 1970's the term “Finlandization” entered the political lexicon and became for a while a major bone of contention.

Glasnost & Its Limits

Glasnost, both the term and the concept, has a long and honorable history. Glasnost is a specifically Russian phenomenon: the attempt to combine a non-democratic or anti-democratic mode of government with a certain degree of cultural freedom, with accountability, and with "transparency."

Beyond Glasnost

Literary periodicals are in great demand these days in the Soviet Union, and issues of particular interest are sold out in hours, if not in minutes. The reason is simply that, as in 19th-century Russia, literature in the Soviet Union provides a framework within which views can be expressed that cannot be aired in other venues--even at a time, like the present, of relative relaxation.

How Has the United States Met Its Major Challenges Since 1945?

Exactly forty years ago, in the first issue of COMMENTARY (November 1945), its found- ing editor, the

Is There Now, or Has There Ever Been, Such a Thing as Totalitarianism?

NO IDEA in our time has provoked more impassioned debate than the idea of totalitarianism. Used indiscriminately

European Diary

Political and social observations in: Liverpool, London, Points South, Essen, Brussels, and Zurich of Walter Laqueur.

Le Carr'e's Fantasies

Many years ago Jacques Barzun noted that the representative figure of our age was not the statesman, the soldier, or the divine, but the spy. The most successful and most interesting practitioner of the contemporary spy story is John le Carre.

What We Know About the Soviet Union

The present transition period in Moscow, the third in three decades, has left Western-observers more uncertain than its two predecessors. Secretary of State George Shultz recently said that the experts on the Soviet Union apparently did not know any more than he did about what was going to happen in Moscow. It seemed an obvious conclusion, and it was quite wrong.

Hannah Arendt, by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl

This book is a labor of love. It is also an interesting and valuable study, essential to an understanding of a formidable and complex intellect.

What Poland Means

The first reaction to the military coup in Poland was shock and confusion, followed by a wave of indignation, anger, and protest. Protests are important, but they will lead nowhere unless an analysis is made of what went wrong and why. A defeat always contains lessons for the future. What are the lessons of the defeat in Poland?

Reagan & the Russians

Not even President Reagan's arms-reduction proposals of late November can redeem the impression that in foreign policy, 1981 was unfortunately not an annus mirabilis. Evidence for this conclusion lies all around but perhaps nowhere so saliently as in the main area of international affairs, U.S.-Soviet relations.

Hollanditis: A New Stage in European Neutralism

Holland has become one of the weakest links in the Western alliance. The problem is deeper; a desire to keep out of world problems and an aversion to spending money on defense.

Pity the Poor Russians?

Aside from a few choice spirits, the Western world had never taken any interest in Poland. Recent discussions in the West over the future of Poland have all too often betrayed an ignorance of the facts.

Containment for the 80's

Whatever the result of the coming election, problems of defense and foreign policy will demand more of the time, thought, and energy of the President and his advisers than during any period since World War II.

Euro-Neutralism

Self-Finlandization, the voluntary subordination of the European political order to the interests and wishes of the Soviet Union, has made considerable advances in recent years.

The Mysterious Messenger & the Final Solution

It has been known for a long time that the first authentic information about Hitler's decision to destroy European Jewry came from a German industrialist who visited Switzerland in July 1942. What follows is a report of my attempt to trace who he was, what made him act as he did, and what became of him subsequently.

Kissinger and His Critics

Success and failure in politics are seldom absolute categories; compared with his predecessors and his successors, Henry Kissinger acquitted himself well.

Jewish Denial and the Holocaust

ON APRIL 5, 1943, Hershel Johnson, the United States Ambassador to Sweden, sent a cable to Washington

Heavy Sands, by Anatoly Rybakov

I first came across the name of Anatoly Rybakov in 1950 when I read his novel, The Drivers (Voditeli). This, a product of the late Stalinist era, was a boring description of the life and work of a group of truck drivers.

Why the Shah Fell

The Iranian crisis is far from over; in fact it may still be in its early stages. Nevertheless, the mythmakers are already hard at work.

The Psychology of Appeasement

EVERY historical situation is unique, but now and then an event recalls the past with such force that

Is Peace Still Possible in the Middle East?: The View from Tel Aviv

TEL AVIV. To comment today, and from Israel, on the prospects of peace and war in the Middle East has become a more painful endeavor than at any time in the past. It is easy enough to point to...

The World & President Carter

AMONG the more engaging features of the American political system is the custom of extending wide indulgence to every incoming administration, both in foreign policy and in domestic affairs.

Europe: The Specter of Finlandization

The term "Finlandization"-meaning that process or state of affairs in which, under the cloak of maintaining friendly relations with the Soviet Union, the sovereignty of a country becomes reduced-has entered the political dictionary despite the protests of Helsinki.

Russia-Beyond Brezhnev

Almost every new Russian ruler for the last two centuries has been hailed as a liberator upon acceding to power, and in almost every case initial euphoria has given way to disappointment, and worse. Now that yet another change in leadership is taking place in the Soviet Union, new commentators in the tradition of Sir Bernard Pares and Isaac Deutscher have appeared.

The Issue of Human Rights

On June 15 in Belgrade, representatives from the thirty-five signatory countries of the Helsinki pact will assemble to review the progress achieved since the final act of that agreement was signed in 1975. If Belgrade represents a test for the Soviet Union, it represents an even greater challenge to the United States.

America and the World: The Next Four Years: Confronting the Problems

"Critical" is one of those adjectives whose value has been severely depreciated by overuse, yet in speaking of the importance of future developments in American foreign policy no other word will do. In the past few years there has been a marked deterioration in the position of both America and its allies and new problems have by now emerged on top of the old familiar ones which remain unresolved.