Russia [antikvár]

Introduction This is the first of a series of books designed to give the American reader a clear and comprehensive picture of what life is like in a number of the world's great countries. It is fitting that this first volume should deal with Russia. It is not always easy for people in a democratic society to form a measured and realistic image of a country they have been brought to view as a political and military adversary. It is easier and for some reason more comforting to stamp such a country in one's mind as the "enemy," to equate it with any other enemy, to assume the worst and not to want to know the details. The experience of two world wars has shown that this is a dangerous tendency. It is precisely the adversary that most needs to be carefully and objectively studied in countries where public opinion is the basic force in molding policy. The present volume represents a bold and informed attempt at such an appraisal, as conveyed in text by Charles W Thayer (former U.S. Foreign Service official and the author of Bears in the Caviar and Diplomat) and in illustrations by a corps of perceptive photographers. The book is concerned with the country which in recent years has been the seat of the most dangerous and (if Communist China be excepted) the most violent hostility the American people have ever encountered. Any study of this scope and dimension must of course deal cursorily with many intricate and controversial points of interpretation, historical and otherwise. No one could satisfy all the experts on all these points, and many of the judgments and formulations expressed in this volume will inevitably find challengers among the historians and the professional "Sovietologists." This will not change the fact that the Editors of Life, through Mr. Thayer's text and the complementary paintings and photographs, have given here a broad and useful picture of Soviet life, embracing a variety of aspects that are not often combined in any single account. The result should be an important help to American understanding in a field where understanding may soon be the key to the preservation of American security, perhaps even to her survival. George F. Kennan former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union