SOVIET FOREIGN PROPAGANDA

Professor Barghoorn's headline arrest and dramatic release by the Russians will precipitate greater interest in his book and the publishers have accordingly accelerated the publication date.... There are probably persons still alive today who are able to recall the time when ""propaganda"" was still a fairly innocent word, uncharged with such connotations as ""subversion"", ""biased communication"", etc. Be that as it may, here is yet another volume on the apparently inexhaustible, extremely popular subject of Communism's particular uses of this peculiar, non-brand-name sort of advertising. This author's special advantages are, in brief, a thorough-going scholarship and a generally unemotional approach; his most conspicuous disadvantages, it must be stated, stem from the same sources and can be lumped together under the heading of a dryness of style bending strongly towards monotony. He takes his subject from its earliest stages as taught and practised under Lenin, up to the present day, but he is mainly preoccupied with the persistent Soviet efforts to link Communist objectives with such worldwide aspirations and grievances as peace, colonialism, nationalism, and material and cultural progress. His concluding chapters, which are the most interesting and original, are devoted to the more particular matters of technique in rhetoric and organization.