Moscow's Orbit

The Twilight of Comintern, 1930-1935 by E.H. Carr

xi + 461 pp. (Macmillan, 1982)

E.H. Carr's most lasting achievement will probably be A History of Soviet Russia, a fourteen-volume assertion that what happened in the twelve years following the October Revolution could be given the same kind of treatment as any other series of past developments. Before his work was published, the subject was usually an excuse for moral diatribe or partisan celebration. True, even after his death, strong emotions are still aroused by it, on occasion to an extent beyond belief. Nevertheless, without doubt, what E.H. Carr began his most important collaborator R.W. Davies and others will continue.