|
|
|
|
|
|
Resources |
|
|
|
Harbinger of New Realities
| Article
# : |
11228 |
|
|
Section : |
BOOK WORLD
|
| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1986 |
1,790 Words |
| Author
: |
Jean-Pierre Gabriel
Jean-Pierre Gabriel is a free-lance writer residing in Paris. |
"Only those blind to the repression of the Soviet empire would be irritated by Revel."
--Le Monde
To many of his fellow journalists, political essayist Jean-Francois Revel doggedly sticks to his reputation as a troublemaker. In 1970, he outraged the European intelligentsia by maintaining in his book Neither Marx nor Jesus that the winds of change for long to come were to be expected not from the Soviet world, nor from Europe or the Third World, but from the United States.
In 1976, he went further in The Totalitarian Temptation by demonstrating that Stalinism was not an accidental deviation, but the real essence of communism, that the communists had always made fools of the socialists, and that capitalism, far from being an absolute evil, was, on balance, rather positive. Those things were not easy to say in the years when the so-called "union of the Left" was blossoming in France and gathering socialists and communists for a common program of government.
In 1983, Revel struck again with How Democracies Perish, a brilliant essay showing how all past attempts of accommodation with the Soviet bloc have failed and represent nothing but a means for Moscow to expand and a way for the democracies to dig their own graves.
The book immediately made a tremendous impact in France where it remained on the best-seller list for twenty-four weeks. The monthly literary magazine Lire said it ought to be considered not only as another statement thrown in the
... (1994 of 10948 Characters)
Read Full Article
|
|
