Stanley Hilton has researched and published intensively on the foreign affairs of Brazil, with particular reference to political movements and ideologies on the right and the left. In the present work Professor Hilton analyzes the Brazilian policy toward the Soviet Union during the 30 years after 1917. The emphasis is on the analysis of the perceptions of Brazilian political elites and Soviet intentions toward Latin America.
Although written without access to the recently released material from the archives of the Comintern—and apparently without consulting the Soviet archives or sources in Russian—the work largely achieves its objectives. It goes beyond the customary (and usually boring) narrow limitations of diplomatic history and provides an accurate reconstruction of the beliefs and practices of the ruling class in Brazil during the period. The basic features of this class are well documented— its congeniality with illegal violence and torture, its enthusiasm for secret police operations and anti-Semitism. This analysis was possible thanks to the scholarly use of such new archives as the papers of Filinto Muller, a former army rebel of the 1920s, police chief, and torture coordinator in the 1930s and 1940s.
Professor Hilton shows a full familiarity with his subject and writes with rigor and precision. Nevertheless it is rather surprising that when dealing with Brazilian political figures, he omits first names or parts of last names. This sometimes makes it difficult to recognize, under Pacheco and Luis, Foreign Affairs Minister Felix Pacheco and President Washington Luis. But of course, this is of secondary importance.
Perhaps Professor Hilton s outstanding research would be more significant if some kind of sociohistorical background could help the reader situate the diplomatic and ideological representations of the events to which the documents refer. As in most cases, these representations are illusions of the elites or even sheer lies—as, for example, regarding the 1935 Communist revolt or the 1937 coup d’état. The discourse of the rulers is not sufficient in itself to understand the facts. In any case, Professor Hilton’s valuable work will be very helpful not only to foreign relations specialists but to all scholars and students who want to know more about the formation of an authoritarian state between the two World Wars—an original experiment in a modern but hierarchical society such as Brazil.
