This is the third title to appear in the Conference on Latin American History (CLAH) publications series. Over seven years in preparation, it reflects a growing interest among United States scholars in the writings of Soviet Latin Americanists and constitutes a major effort to make available in English translation a representative selection of these writings. The volume contains forty-seven articles, including individual chapters from monographs and collaborative works, written by twenty-eight Soviet specialists. It is divided into ten sections dealing with the struggle for national liberation, socioeconomic reform, labor and trade unionism, peasant unrest, agrarian reform, urbanization, economic development, imperialism, ideological rivalry, and the Cuban Revolution. An initial grouping of three articles outlines the objectives and achievements of Soviet research on Latin America.
The book seeks “to furnish to students of the Soviet Union and of Latin America, in convenient form, source materials for the study of Soviet policy in Latin America” (p. xiii). From this perspective it is by and large successful, bringing together in generally good translation a representative body of pertinent writings. The compiler has selected materials from both official and scholarly publications which accurately reflect Soviet views on contemporary Latin America. Students of Soviet foreign policy, however, might have preferred a broader selection of official materials, including articles and analyses from leading organs of the Soviet press. (For additional writings of this nature, see Stephen Clissold, ed., Soviet Relations with Latin America, 1918-1968. A Documentary Survey [London, New York and Toronto, 1970].) Historians, on the other hand, will be disappointed by the minimal number of research articles selected for inclusion.
Materials contained in this compilation are mostly expository in nature, setting forth the fundamental premises on which Soviet interpretations of present-day Latin America are based, Z. I. Romanova, an economist and senior research scholar at the Latin American Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences (LAIAS), for example, summarizes the principal ways in which foreign capital binds Latin America to the world capitalist system (pp. 269-279). Iu. A. Zubritskii, an assistant professor of Latin American history at the “Patrice Lumumba” People’s Friendship University, analyzes the concept of “Latinidad” as an expression of bourgeois ideology serving the interests of imperialism (pp. 264-269). S. S. Mikhailov, a Soviet diplomat and former director of LAIAS, reviews the key determinants of revolutionary struggle in Latin America (pp. 34-43). And A. F. Shul’govskii, an historian and senior research scholar at LAIAS, examines middle-sector attitudes toward economic independence (pp. 70-85) and the reformist appeal made to those attitudes by the molders of U.S. foreign policy (pp. 85-100).
Immediacy and utility aside, however, this volume suffers one serious flaw; sponsored by an association of professional historians and addressed presumably to historians, it fails to treat of history. The CLAH publications series, reads the foreword, is “devoted primarily to works of general importance for the improvement of training and research in the United States related to Latin American history” (p. vii). Yet of the twenty-eight contributors, less than half are historians and only five have made significant contributions to Soviet historical literature on Latin America. Moreover, several distinguished Soviet specialists in this field have been omitted altogether, while those whose names do appear are not done justice by the writings selected. In sum, this volume contributes little to our knowledge of Soviet historical scholarship on Latin America.
