BREAKTHROUGHSoviet and Western Scholars Issue a Challenge...

BREAKTHROUGH

Soviet and Western Scholars Issue a Challenge to Build a World Beyond War edited by Anatoly Gromyko and Martin Hellman (Walker: $9.95)

What is remarkable about the Beyond War Foundation, which is publishing this book simultaneously in the United States and in the Soviet Union, is that it has been able to attract a broad following without compromising its dyed-in-the-wool idealism. Debunking the myth that the wider one’s audience, the more diluted one’s political message must be, “Breakthrough” has won plaudits from people not usually associated with coalitions for disarmament and greater Third World aid (e.g.--Mary Louise Smith, former Republican National chairwoman, and William Colby, former director of the CIA) even though it forwards a vision of social responsibility considered radical by many members of Congress: “There is no known physical or technical reason,” the Soviet and American editors of this volume write, “why basic needs cannot be supplied for all the world’s people into the foreseeable future.”

The joint authoring of most of these essays has its disadvantages--the writing is often wooden and sometimes obscured by statements carefully worded to avoid offending officials in Moscow. While the authors clearly condemn U.S. aggression in Vietnam, for instance, the criticism of the Soviets’ invasion into Afghanistan is more muted, “recognizing” that the “conflict can only be solved by political means.” On the whole, however, the arguments in “Breakthrough” are clear, original and convincing. The authors underscore the need for ecological, economic and cultural interdependence by showing the high odds for nuclear war. The “Soviet threat,” in turn, seems less menacing if one believes the assertions in these pages by prominent Soviets such as Anatoly Gromyko, who argues that superpower leaders must work together to ensure the continuation of both Socialism and capitalism.