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Inside Russia Today
The books that made Gunther famous in his time were the "Inside" series of continental surveys. For each book, Gunther traveled extensively thru the area the book covered, interviewed political, social & business leaders, talked with average people, reviewed area statistics & then wrote a lengthy overview of what he had learned & how he interpreted it. The books in the series:
Inside Europe (1936)
Inside Latin America (1941)
Inside Asia (1942)
Inside U.S.A. (1947)
Inside Africa (1955)
Inside Russia Today (1958)
Inside Europe Today (1961)
Inside South America (1967)
Inside Australia and New Zealand (1972)
About Inside Europe, Gunther wrote, "This book has had a striking success all over the world. I was fortunate in that it appeared at just the right time, when the three totalitarian dictators took the stage and people began to be vitally interested in them."
Inside Europe (1936)
Inside Latin America (1941)
Inside Asia (1942)
Inside U.S.A. (1947)
Inside Africa (1955)
Inside Russia Today (1958)
Inside Europe Today (1961)
Inside South America (1967)
Inside Australia and New Zealand (1972)
About Inside Europe, Gunther wrote, "This book has had a striking success all over the world. I was fortunate in that it appeared at just the right time, when the three totalitarian dictators took the stage and people began to be vitally interested in them."
- GenresHistoryNonfictionRussia
591 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1958
About the author
John Gunther
94 books632 followersJohn Gunther was one of the best known and most admired journalists of his day, and his series of "Inside" books, starting with Inside Europe in 1936, were immensely popular profiles of the major world powers. One critic noted that it was Gunther's special gift to "unite the best qualities of the newspaperman and the historian." It was a gift that readers responded to enthusiastically. The "Inside" books sold 3,500,000 copies over a period of thirty years.
While publicly a bon vivant and modest celebrity, Gunther in his private life suffered disappointment and tragedy. He and Frances Fineman, whom he married in 1927, had a daughter who died four months after her birth in 1929. The Gunthers divorced in 1944. In 1947, their beloved son Johnny died after a long, heartbreaking fight with brain cancer. Gunther wrote his classic memoir Death Be Not Proud, published in 1949, to commemorate the courage and spirit of this extraordinary boy. Gunther remarried in 1948, and he and his second wife, Jane Perry Vandercook, adopted a son.
While publicly a bon vivant and modest celebrity, Gunther in his private life suffered disappointment and tragedy. He and Frances Fineman, whom he married in 1927, had a daughter who died four months after her birth in 1929. The Gunthers divorced in 1944. In 1947, their beloved son Johnny died after a long, heartbreaking fight with brain cancer. Gunther wrote his classic memoir Death Be Not Proud, published in 1949, to commemorate the courage and spirit of this extraordinary boy. Gunther remarried in 1948, and he and his second wife, Jane Perry Vandercook, adopted a son.
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May 1, 2026
Another of John Gunther's "Inside" books, this one written in 1957 in the midst of the Cold War primarily between the Soviet Union and the United States. To dispense with the biggest concern one might have in reading this book today: its age. Is it dated? Of course it is! As are most books from previous time periods. Therefore can it get a bit tiresome reading about the - looking back on it - foolishness and rigidity that characterized prevailing Cold War attitudes on both sides? Most definitely. However, given that, is the book still worthy of reading today? Absolutely.
First, Gunther is simply an excellent writer, being able to paint vivid pictures of the places that he goes, the people that he speaks to, the food that he eats, the sights that he sees; in total, his experience doing a deep dive into another country/countries. He makes pithy observances that probably would not fly today, yet help color in the portrait that he is painting. An example of this comes on page 40, when he is writing about the drabness and conformity of clothing, and life in general, in Moscow: "Clothes have no shape; but then neither have most Russian women. Moscow would look a hundred percent better if every citizen lost thirty pounds."
Not all sentences are so opinionated though. In fact, most are not, and one of the things that I like most about Gunther is that he writes in a thoughtful manner, trying to offer his mainly U.S. readers context behind other peoples and places in the world. In fact, oftentimes in this book, when he mentions something negative that Russians do, or the Communist government does, he will make an equal point that something similar occurs in the U.S. if one stops to think about it. For example, Russia feels threatened by NATO (some things definitely do not change), and while Gunther supports NATO and notes that Russian aggression helped bring it to life, he also asks how would Americans feel if the Russians created a close alignment with Canada?
Gunther spends several chapters documenting his stay in Moscow. He writes that housing is cramped and quite uncomfortable for most Russians. So much so that, despite the wintry weather, citizens would spend most of their evenings outside going somewhere so as to avoid returning to their small apartments. The state meets the needs of its citizens, but just barely. Everyone, for example, has access to healthcare (what a wild notion to some even in 2026 America!) but that care is basic at best and if someone thinks they need more advanced care, they can seek out and pay - at their own expense - to visit a specialist.
It is a closed-off society in many ways: contact with foreigners makes Russians very skittish. Many times throughout the book Gunther documents fleeting interactions with both everyday Russians and with people high up in the government. He takes pains to note that, almost without exception, everyone he spoke to was genuinely friendly and seemed inquisitive about the United States. Yet at the same time, they seemed quite guarded, parochial, eager to boost Russia at America's expense, and usually terminated conversations abruptly and without reason, as if they did not want to have anyone observe them being too friendly with an American journalist. On page 361 he writes: "One of the most pronounced of Soviet characteristics is that most citizens, in talk with an outsider, always say that every thing is perfect, although they complain without end among themselves." To that point, he provided an interesting viewpoint on whether or not he and his wife were followed. Ultimately, he thought mostly not, but could not be completely certain.
He writes that Russia is a land of contradictions. While things were opening up in the post-Stalin era, they were nowhere near what Americans would consider to be a good life. Everybody had a job - indeed work was one of the biggest themes that Gunther came away with. Work, work, and more work. All in the name of the state, with individual creativity almost totally squashed. This included women; Gunther writes that "everyone" works in Russia. Yet, he also noted that racism was virtually unknown, unlike the U.S. He wrote how it was basically impossible for him to set up formal interviews with top Russian leaders (Gunther meets with the heads of countries in most places that he visits). Yet, at the same time, he did meet and talk to not only Nikita Khrushchev but ALL of the top Russian leaders. How did he manage this? He said that all of them were surprisingly accessible - at evening parties. He said that almost anyone could come in where a party was being held, and speak to these leaders. He contrasted this by daring an American to just waltz into a Washington dinner party and expect to get close to President Eisenhower, let alone chat with him for a few minutes.
Speaking of Khrushchev, Gunther devotes an entire chapter to him and the reforms that he was instituting since the death of Joseph Stalin four years earlier. He writes that by no means is Khrushchev liberal or progressive, and that he has a large helping of crudity and bellicosity that does not help Russia on the world stage. Yet, at the same time, he was doing much to eliminate the ingrained terror and arbitrariness of Stalin's long dictatorial rule. Gunther also includes a helpful chapter titled "A History of Russia in Half an Hour". It served as a nice primer on explaining in large part why Russia was as he found it in the mid and late 1950s. The overwhelming feeling that i came away with from this part of the book is that Russia is a prisoner of its own past.
Education is another major theme of the book, and Gunther is mainly - but not wholly - complimentary of Russia here. Russia provides immediate daycare services (since the women almost all work) and schooling for every child up through age 17. The state has worked had to all but eliminate illiteracy. Children are forced from a young age to learn a foreign language and are given a choice of a few to choose from (English being one of them). And while the education is robust, it is heavily tilted towards science, so much so that Gunther felt it was an unhealthy preoccupation with the government wanting to produce the scientists of the future so as to combat the U.S. militarily. He writes that the arts are both encouraged yet also conscripted. Painting, sculptures, literature, plays - they are all maddeningly bland under the concept of "social realism" which Gunther said is difficult to accurately define but it more or less discourages individual creativity. Bookstores, he notes, are always crowded with customers, and frequently are sold out of many of the most desirable Russian books. But he also notes on pages 296-297 that there is a serious lack of non-Russian books in the shops: "But if I were stranded in the USSR for a couple of years and my reading was restricted to English or American books I could find in English in Russian bookstores, death from starvation would come very soon."
Interestingly, he notes that, while on the whole things are much better for citizens since Stalin died, that there is a narrowing of distance in thought and attitude between those of the citizenry in general and of the government. Page 396: "The regime is in its forty-first year. The means that nobody at present has much knowledge of the past, of pre-Revolutionary Russia, except people over sixty. Hence, indoctrination becomes easier and more effective year by year." Yet he also notes late in the book (page 502): "In the very long run, the Soviet Union may disintegrate or even collapse if it does not root itself more firmly in the will and desires of the people...". I do not think that Gunther would have been surprised that, thirty-five years later, the USSR would indeed implode of its own morbidity and rigidity. I think he would be surprised, however, to see that Russia has gone backwards towards the Stalin era in this century thanks mostly to Vladimir Putin.
And while he takes pains to point out positives that have occurred in Russia and its satellite countries (he spends a few late chapters on his travels through those areas as well), Gunther is by no means blind to the cruelty that was inflicted on thousands of its own citizens - oftentimes for no reason other than that those persons existed. A pointed instance of this is found on pages 458-459: "The most startling thing in Tashkent, as well as in several other Central Asian towns, is the astonishing number of amputees.... At first I thought that these unfortunates might have been shipped down there because the climate is salubrious. I should have known better. A few years ago the authorities decided to clean up Moscow, Leningrad, and other metropolitan Russian cities of their more obvious disfiguring elements.... Of people who deface society, amputees are, of course, the most conspicuous. So tens of thousands of them were simply picked up, corralled, and shipped out to remote places in Central Asia, and here they stay. Unable to work, they are not given wooden legs. In order to keep them from starving, the local administration gives them things to sell."
As for the Cold War that was pretty hot at the time of this book, Gunther presciently foresees something that would occur just five years later with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Page 477: "There is always the possibility that they will overreach themselves in a diplomatic maneuver, and miscalculate western reactions. The chief danger of war is in an acute blunder." Gunther is a very astute observer, which is one of the reasons why I like his books so much. For me, despite their age, I have found most of the ones that I have read thus far to be both illuminating and entertaining. And while he did not intend this at the time that he was writing, they also now serve as a time machine to step back in time and view a country through Gunther's eyes. Well done.
Grade: A
First, Gunther is simply an excellent writer, being able to paint vivid pictures of the places that he goes, the people that he speaks to, the food that he eats, the sights that he sees; in total, his experience doing a deep dive into another country/countries. He makes pithy observances that probably would not fly today, yet help color in the portrait that he is painting. An example of this comes on page 40, when he is writing about the drabness and conformity of clothing, and life in general, in Moscow: "Clothes have no shape; but then neither have most Russian women. Moscow would look a hundred percent better if every citizen lost thirty pounds."
Not all sentences are so opinionated though. In fact, most are not, and one of the things that I like most about Gunther is that he writes in a thoughtful manner, trying to offer his mainly U.S. readers context behind other peoples and places in the world. In fact, oftentimes in this book, when he mentions something negative that Russians do, or the Communist government does, he will make an equal point that something similar occurs in the U.S. if one stops to think about it. For example, Russia feels threatened by NATO (some things definitely do not change), and while Gunther supports NATO and notes that Russian aggression helped bring it to life, he also asks how would Americans feel if the Russians created a close alignment with Canada?
Gunther spends several chapters documenting his stay in Moscow. He writes that housing is cramped and quite uncomfortable for most Russians. So much so that, despite the wintry weather, citizens would spend most of their evenings outside going somewhere so as to avoid returning to their small apartments. The state meets the needs of its citizens, but just barely. Everyone, for example, has access to healthcare (what a wild notion to some even in 2026 America!) but that care is basic at best and if someone thinks they need more advanced care, they can seek out and pay - at their own expense - to visit a specialist.
It is a closed-off society in many ways: contact with foreigners makes Russians very skittish. Many times throughout the book Gunther documents fleeting interactions with both everyday Russians and with people high up in the government. He takes pains to note that, almost without exception, everyone he spoke to was genuinely friendly and seemed inquisitive about the United States. Yet at the same time, they seemed quite guarded, parochial, eager to boost Russia at America's expense, and usually terminated conversations abruptly and without reason, as if they did not want to have anyone observe them being too friendly with an American journalist. On page 361 he writes: "One of the most pronounced of Soviet characteristics is that most citizens, in talk with an outsider, always say that every thing is perfect, although they complain without end among themselves." To that point, he provided an interesting viewpoint on whether or not he and his wife were followed. Ultimately, he thought mostly not, but could not be completely certain.
He writes that Russia is a land of contradictions. While things were opening up in the post-Stalin era, they were nowhere near what Americans would consider to be a good life. Everybody had a job - indeed work was one of the biggest themes that Gunther came away with. Work, work, and more work. All in the name of the state, with individual creativity almost totally squashed. This included women; Gunther writes that "everyone" works in Russia. Yet, he also noted that racism was virtually unknown, unlike the U.S. He wrote how it was basically impossible for him to set up formal interviews with top Russian leaders (Gunther meets with the heads of countries in most places that he visits). Yet, at the same time, he did meet and talk to not only Nikita Khrushchev but ALL of the top Russian leaders. How did he manage this? He said that all of them were surprisingly accessible - at evening parties. He said that almost anyone could come in where a party was being held, and speak to these leaders. He contrasted this by daring an American to just waltz into a Washington dinner party and expect to get close to President Eisenhower, let alone chat with him for a few minutes.
Speaking of Khrushchev, Gunther devotes an entire chapter to him and the reforms that he was instituting since the death of Joseph Stalin four years earlier. He writes that by no means is Khrushchev liberal or progressive, and that he has a large helping of crudity and bellicosity that does not help Russia on the world stage. Yet, at the same time, he was doing much to eliminate the ingrained terror and arbitrariness of Stalin's long dictatorial rule. Gunther also includes a helpful chapter titled "A History of Russia in Half an Hour". It served as a nice primer on explaining in large part why Russia was as he found it in the mid and late 1950s. The overwhelming feeling that i came away with from this part of the book is that Russia is a prisoner of its own past.
Education is another major theme of the book, and Gunther is mainly - but not wholly - complimentary of Russia here. Russia provides immediate daycare services (since the women almost all work) and schooling for every child up through age 17. The state has worked had to all but eliminate illiteracy. Children are forced from a young age to learn a foreign language and are given a choice of a few to choose from (English being one of them). And while the education is robust, it is heavily tilted towards science, so much so that Gunther felt it was an unhealthy preoccupation with the government wanting to produce the scientists of the future so as to combat the U.S. militarily. He writes that the arts are both encouraged yet also conscripted. Painting, sculptures, literature, plays - they are all maddeningly bland under the concept of "social realism" which Gunther said is difficult to accurately define but it more or less discourages individual creativity. Bookstores, he notes, are always crowded with customers, and frequently are sold out of many of the most desirable Russian books. But he also notes on pages 296-297 that there is a serious lack of non-Russian books in the shops: "But if I were stranded in the USSR for a couple of years and my reading was restricted to English or American books I could find in English in Russian bookstores, death from starvation would come very soon."
Interestingly, he notes that, while on the whole things are much better for citizens since Stalin died, that there is a narrowing of distance in thought and attitude between those of the citizenry in general and of the government. Page 396: "The regime is in its forty-first year. The means that nobody at present has much knowledge of the past, of pre-Revolutionary Russia, except people over sixty. Hence, indoctrination becomes easier and more effective year by year." Yet he also notes late in the book (page 502): "In the very long run, the Soviet Union may disintegrate or even collapse if it does not root itself more firmly in the will and desires of the people...". I do not think that Gunther would have been surprised that, thirty-five years later, the USSR would indeed implode of its own morbidity and rigidity. I think he would be surprised, however, to see that Russia has gone backwards towards the Stalin era in this century thanks mostly to Vladimir Putin.
And while he takes pains to point out positives that have occurred in Russia and its satellite countries (he spends a few late chapters on his travels through those areas as well), Gunther is by no means blind to the cruelty that was inflicted on thousands of its own citizens - oftentimes for no reason other than that those persons existed. A pointed instance of this is found on pages 458-459: "The most startling thing in Tashkent, as well as in several other Central Asian towns, is the astonishing number of amputees.... At first I thought that these unfortunates might have been shipped down there because the climate is salubrious. I should have known better. A few years ago the authorities decided to clean up Moscow, Leningrad, and other metropolitan Russian cities of their more obvious disfiguring elements.... Of people who deface society, amputees are, of course, the most conspicuous. So tens of thousands of them were simply picked up, corralled, and shipped out to remote places in Central Asia, and here they stay. Unable to work, they are not given wooden legs. In order to keep them from starving, the local administration gives them things to sell."
As for the Cold War that was pretty hot at the time of this book, Gunther presciently foresees something that would occur just five years later with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Page 477: "There is always the possibility that they will overreach themselves in a diplomatic maneuver, and miscalculate western reactions. The chief danger of war is in an acute blunder." Gunther is a very astute observer, which is one of the reasons why I like his books so much. For me, despite their age, I have found most of the ones that I have read thus far to be both illuminating and entertaining. And while he did not intend this at the time that he was writing, they also now serve as a time machine to step back in time and view a country through Gunther's eyes. Well done.
Grade: A
May 14, 2021
This one is a real treasure. It's a travelogue, recounting Gunther's many experiences on his 1956 trip to the Soviet Union, but it's not just a travelogue---it's also a bold attempt to summarize the entire country as it existed at the start of the Khrushchev era. We get multiple informative history sections; post-Stalin Communist Party politics; science and education; culture, from writing to film to ballet (so much ballet). Inside Russia Today also represents a political statement, analyzing the USSR from a firmly American perspective, rooted in some of the tensest years of the Cold War.
At the time of this book's revised edition Sputnik had just been launched, signaling the communist world's (illusory) scientific and economic superiority. There was a lot of fear going around, anxiety that the democratic system was not, in fact, best equipped to survive, and in writing his snapshot of the Soviet Union John Gunther did a very good thing---he answered fear with facts. His book goes to great pains to show the Soviet aversion to war. Instead of a totalitarian monolith about to mobilize against the free world, he paints a nuanced picture of a society burdened by an oppressive ideology, but nevertheless straining towards greater freedom, and most importantly eager for peace. There are no obvious exaggerations or inaccuracies that I found in the text; for an American in the high Cold War, he is remarkably unbiased, and willing to admit the Soviet system's strengths without apologizing for its atrocities.
How is it as a book? Very good. Gunther is rarely boring to read, except maybe in the sections on Soviet ballet. He organizes his thoughts well and the extended length is very tolerable because there is just so much richness packed into it. One gets a very good sense of the broad sweep of the USSR at a specific moment in history. For any Soviet aficionados who can get their hands on this rare volume, I would highly recommend giving it a read!
At the time of this book's revised edition Sputnik had just been launched, signaling the communist world's (illusory) scientific and economic superiority. There was a lot of fear going around, anxiety that the democratic system was not, in fact, best equipped to survive, and in writing his snapshot of the Soviet Union John Gunther did a very good thing---he answered fear with facts. His book goes to great pains to show the Soviet aversion to war. Instead of a totalitarian monolith about to mobilize against the free world, he paints a nuanced picture of a society burdened by an oppressive ideology, but nevertheless straining towards greater freedom, and most importantly eager for peace. There are no obvious exaggerations or inaccuracies that I found in the text; for an American in the high Cold War, he is remarkably unbiased, and willing to admit the Soviet system's strengths without apologizing for its atrocities.
How is it as a book? Very good. Gunther is rarely boring to read, except maybe in the sections on Soviet ballet. He organizes his thoughts well and the extended length is very tolerable because there is just so much richness packed into it. One gets a very good sense of the broad sweep of the USSR at a specific moment in history. For any Soviet aficionados who can get their hands on this rare volume, I would highly recommend giving it a read!
August 15, 2010
During our two years at Park Ridge's Lincoln Jr. High School we were all required to spend time in its library, learning how to use the card catalog to check out books and write research papers on the order of "What I Want to Be When I Grow Up" and "The Person I Most Admire". One of the books I read in that place was Gunther's Inside Russia Today.
My choice of Gunther was likely the result of four factors. One, it was big and I wanted to impress my teachers. Two, Dad followed current events and read history books. Three, since Kennedy's election, I also had been reading newspapers and magazines and watching current affairs programming on television. Fourth, Ms. Kurtzenbaugh, our Social Science teacher, had been showing us anti-communist and anti-Soviet films in class while Mr. Nordskog, in Math/Science, frequently went on tangents warning us about the same threats.
Gunther was a good read as an antidote to the rather ignorant anti-communist line we were being fed. His book humanized the Russians and some other nationalities of the old USSR for me.
Oh, I wanted to be, first, an airline pilot, then, when research showed me that my eyesight made this impossible, a pharmacist. Well, actually, learning about pharmacy made me not much want to be a pharmacist, but it was too late to change the thesis. And the most admirable person? Douglas MacArthur of course.
My choice of Gunther was likely the result of four factors. One, it was big and I wanted to impress my teachers. Two, Dad followed current events and read history books. Three, since Kennedy's election, I also had been reading newspapers and magazines and watching current affairs programming on television. Fourth, Ms. Kurtzenbaugh, our Social Science teacher, had been showing us anti-communist and anti-Soviet films in class while Mr. Nordskog, in Math/Science, frequently went on tangents warning us about the same threats.
Gunther was a good read as an antidote to the rather ignorant anti-communist line we were being fed. His book humanized the Russians and some other nationalities of the old USSR for me.
Oh, I wanted to be, first, an airline pilot, then, when research showed me that my eyesight made this impossible, a pharmacist. Well, actually, learning about pharmacy made me not much want to be a pharmacist, but it was too late to change the thesis. And the most admirable person? Douglas MacArthur of course.
September 4, 2011
I probably did not read all of this book in my grammar school years in the 1950's, but I read enough to understand something about the Politburo, something about the Russians as people, and enough to gain some perspective about foreign countries, and about how motives of those with political power oftentimes neither match nor benefit the general population. I am grateful to that book for its accessibility, even to a child in grammar school.
December 10, 2023
This book provides a first eye account of what the soviet union was back in the 50s as described by an american. It would often be said that american writings about the soviet union in the 50s are nothing more than western propaganda, but I must say that this one is somewhat different, because the author compares his visit in the late 50s to that he made in the late 30s, providing us with a good comparison as to how has life change in the two decades that have passed.
July 11, 2022
The most fun history book I have read in a while - largely because it actually focuses on people not just isolated events. He writes like the journalist he is and that’s what makes it so endearing.
98/100 - genuinely brilliant
98/100 - genuinely brilliant
December 22, 2025
Cut to the chase: Is INSIDE RUSSIA TODAY still worth reading? Absolutely. John Gunther reminds us, "Scratch a Russian and you find a Tartar. Scratch a Tartar and you find another Tartar". One great takeaway from this book, the result of a trip to the Soviet Union under Khrushchev and decades of distillation in thinking since Gunther first visited the country in the 1930s when Stalin was on top, is that Russia fundamentally never changes, no matter who is in charge, and that the Communist transformation after 1917 is vastly overrated by foreigners. Gunther very strongly believes in national character. The Russians are a people used to sacrifice and suffering, something evinced in everything from their literature to the iconography of the Orthodox Church, and have developed a fatalistic outlook on life, the result of a combination of foreign invasions from the days of the Norse to the Tartars to twice by the Germans and domestic chaos, highlighted by the Time of the Troubles after Ivan the Terrible to the Stalinist Purges. Russians do not holler; at best they grumble at the hands of their masters. Some of Gunther's observations on the U.S.S.R. are incisive and funny, "Of all the dull things about this dull land the dullest is the state of newspapers", and others prophetic; he surmised that a burning nationalism in the fifteen Soviet Republics lay just beneath the surface of Soviet rule, "Moscow is willing to let the Republics do anything they wish provided it is harmless". Of special note is his trip to Ukraine. The Russian speakers there deny there is any difference between the Russian and Ukrainian languages, but Gunther's Russian translator cannot speak to any Ukrainians in their native tongue; a quite prophetic observation. INSIDE RUSSIA TODAY is a reporter's notebook of a first-rate journalist who also proved himself a valuable and readable political scientist and historian of the future.
September 24, 2016
This couldn't have possibly been written at a better time. Inside Russia Today, was published in the late 50s, just as Russia had launched the first man-made satellite into orbit. The Russians had just defeated Germany and had been left with half of Europe, the strength of communist parties in Italy, and France were leaving the West very nervous, and now they had disproved Western assumptions of technological superiority leaving many people wondering if the USSR was the superior nation and the way of the future.
What a perfect moment for John Gunther to travel through nation and give us a valuable account of Soviet geography, politics, history, education, culture, and even simply everyday life.
As an obvious fan of state regulation and planned economies (refer to his account of the Tennessee Valley Authority in Inside USA) It was interesting to read his perspective. He most admired the educational system, (so did I), but he never held back from pointing out the nation's flaws, being especially disgusted by it's authoritarianism in the realm of thought, and even rolled his eyes at overtly pessimistic predictions of Soviet world domination.
He gives an in depth analysis of the government, perfectly timed as always with some historical even or other, in this case with the destalinization being carried out by Khrushchev.
I enjoyed his perspectives on culture and society. He describes state sponsorship of all sorts of art from the visual to the musical, especially ballet, and the schools that would go on to train all those painters and sculptors that would make the ubiquitous propaganda murals and statues.
He discusses everyday society, never reluctant to enthusiastically engage everyone he meets with in detailed and enthusiastic conversation. Recently Westerners have been surprised by stories of Russian prudishness about sex and even swearing, yet it's amusing to find Gunther expressing the same surprise 60 years ago.
I enjoyed his perspectives on the future of the Soviet Union as well. Writing about any potential Soviet world domination, he says it will come to pass more through Western stupidity than Soviet genius. Predictions of the USSR's inevitable collapse had not exactly been a novelty since the nations foundation in the three decades before this book was written, and Gunther appears to take into account their failures, made worse by the unexpected launching of Sputnik in the face of Western presumption of superiority, as a warning against joining that bandwagon.
Gunther is cautiously realistic about the USSR's future. He doesn't predict any collapse but I don't think he would been surprised by it either. He had a good understanding of the country, even a bit of respect for any good he saw.
What a perfect moment for John Gunther to travel through nation and give us a valuable account of Soviet geography, politics, history, education, culture, and even simply everyday life.
As an obvious fan of state regulation and planned economies (refer to his account of the Tennessee Valley Authority in Inside USA) It was interesting to read his perspective. He most admired the educational system, (so did I), but he never held back from pointing out the nation's flaws, being especially disgusted by it's authoritarianism in the realm of thought, and even rolled his eyes at overtly pessimistic predictions of Soviet world domination.
He gives an in depth analysis of the government, perfectly timed as always with some historical even or other, in this case with the destalinization being carried out by Khrushchev.
I enjoyed his perspectives on culture and society. He describes state sponsorship of all sorts of art from the visual to the musical, especially ballet, and the schools that would go on to train all those painters and sculptors that would make the ubiquitous propaganda murals and statues.
He discusses everyday society, never reluctant to enthusiastically engage everyone he meets with in detailed and enthusiastic conversation. Recently Westerners have been surprised by stories of Russian prudishness about sex and even swearing, yet it's amusing to find Gunther expressing the same surprise 60 years ago.
I enjoyed his perspectives on the future of the Soviet Union as well. Writing about any potential Soviet world domination, he says it will come to pass more through Western stupidity than Soviet genius. Predictions of the USSR's inevitable collapse had not exactly been a novelty since the nations foundation in the three decades before this book was written, and Gunther appears to take into account their failures, made worse by the unexpected launching of Sputnik in the face of Western presumption of superiority, as a warning against joining that bandwagon.
Gunther is cautiously realistic about the USSR's future. He doesn't predict any collapse but I don't think he would been surprised by it either. He had a good understanding of the country, even a bit of respect for any good he saw.
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May 6, 2015One of the oldest of literary definitions is that a literary movement consists of two writers who live in the same community and hate each other.
royalties:
for a novel are tallied partly by length of the work or even how many characters it has;
are reduced the more a novel sells;
standard for a playwright are 1.5 percent of box office (after "deductions) per act--so a four-act play earns the author more than a two-act play;
16,000 ruble fee for translation of a foreign play;
poets paid a flat rate per line (14 rubles)
the Order of Motherhood Glory--to any woman who had 10 or more children (plus a stipend of 40-150 rubles monthly)
royalties:
for a novel are tallied partly by length of the work or even how many characters it has;
are reduced the more a novel sells;
standard for a playwright are 1.5 percent of box office (after "deductions) per act--so a four-act play earns the author more than a two-act play;
16,000 ruble fee for translation of a foreign play;
poets paid a flat rate per line (14 rubles)
the Order of Motherhood Glory--to any woman who had 10 or more children (plus a stipend of 40-150 rubles monthly)
July 26, 2016
Cold War era US-oriented popular assessment of the Soviet Union. Not shrill, and genuinely interesting at times. Opens with a chapter regarding Soviet geography, say, which is intended to show how the US is better situated, and ends up demonstrating that the Soviets had much more to overcome in terms of climate, hydrological management, sea access, and so on, compared to the US.
November 12, 2013
I really enjoyed the overall idea of the book. I was surprised I liked it so much.
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October 3, 2016Published in 1958. Things would be different in Russia today.
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