Arnold Beichman

Latest by Arnold Beichman in Chronicles

• Reviews

  July 1996

  Truth Against the Grain

  Richard Gid Powers' history is a powerful, even brilliant, piece of scholarship which documents one of the most bizarre political phenomena of the 20th century.

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• Reviews

  August 1995

  Learned Liars

  Let us at the outset dispose of one of the major criticisms of Sovietology and Sovietologists: their failure to predict the end of Soviet communism and the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

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• Vital Signs

  July 1995

  Soviet Spies and Agents of Influence

  Probably the greatest triumph in public opinion manipulation in modern history was the West's elevation of the Soviet Union into a symbol of righteousness and a country beyond criticism.

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• Reviews

  March 1995

  A Pig in a Poke

  Never did I appreciate so much the genius of the Founding Fathers as after finishing this remarkable biography of President Clinton.

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• Reviews

  December 1994

  If Nixon Had Been Friends With Bob Woodward

  One, all the stories in Mr. Woodward's book are pro-Clinton. The chaos, the disorganization, the indecisiveness, the running around in all directions, the President's fumbling of issues, begging congressmen for their individual votes, none of this behavior makes Mr. Clinton look bad.

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• Reviews

  September 1994

  Go Figure

  In preparing my review of this riveting biography, I gathered samples of what has recently been written about Richard M. Nixon, and I must say they make a bewildering collection.

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• Reviews

  May 1992

  Playing Possum

  [Mr. Navrozov] believes, first, what has been happening in the Soviet Union since March 1985, namely its visible decomposition, is a KGB disinformation achievement, that the "collapse of communism" is what he calls a "mass fiction," that perestroika is a "Trojan horse" and that Eastern Europe "has not been set free."

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• View

  June 1991

  Willing Belief

  William James was much concerned about "faith-tendencies," which he defined as "extremely active psychological forces, constantly outstripping evidence." The Gorbachev era fully confirms his apprehensions.

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• Cultural Revolutions

  May 1991

  Confirm An Appointment

  In Moscow, several months ago, I telephoned an American friend to confirm an office appointment. Since I was going by taxi, I asked him how much I ought to pay for the ride.

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• Cultural Revolutions

  February 1991

  Filming an Execution

  Filming an execution at San Quentin Prison is what San Francico's KQED has asked the U.S. District Court in California for permission to do: it wants the unedited tape to run nationwide over the Public Broadcasting Service network.

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• Cultural Revolutions

  January 1990

  Selective Amnesia

  Selective pernicious amnesia is the endemic disease of Establishment politics. Its symptoms are evident whenever the Soviet Union does something awful . . .

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• Reviews

  November 1989

  Pire qu'un Crime . . .

  The Pollard treason case is so unusual that I want to start my review of this book with a review of the reviews. I do this because the first-hand story by the Washington correspondent of The Jerusalem Post and the book's equivocal subtitle attracted some exceedingly well-informed people as book-reviewers.

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• Correspondence

  April 1989

  No Miracles This Time

  Last year, when I was in Helsinki, I made a great discovery:, probably the best informed people on Soviet affairs are the Finns, whose Russian-watching goes back almost two centuries, long before the Bolshevik coup of 1917.

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• Reviews

  November 1988

  The President's President

  Richard Nixon's second term as president ended over two years early with his resignation on August 9, 1974. Someday, when President Reagan's papers and telephone logs are made public, I think they will reveal that Nixon completed his presidential term in the second Reagan administration as the vicar of US foreign policy.

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• View

  October 1988

  Neither Law Nor Justice

  A few weeks ago, I was listening to Radio Moscow's Joe Adamov answering mail-in questions from his North American audience. One query came from somebody in Nova Scotia: How important was Stalin to the Soviet victory in World War II?

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• View

  January 1988

  Stopping the Long March Through the University

  Substitute "professor" for "Leninist" and the quotation would appear almost a cliche to many American academicians. Yet such corollary Leninist themes and variations have become a commonplace in the American university.

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• View

  September 1987

  A Soviet Psychosis

  As Mikhail Gorbachev moves forward in his role as the new Vozhd of the USSR, he must take pride in a unique achievement. In a few years, he has managed to internationalize a Russian word—glasnost—and by its repeated use at home and abroad has dazzled the world with miracles that have yet to materialize.

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• Correspondence

  June 1987

  Letter to Another Editor

  I hope you will overlook this example of what the French call l'esprit de l'escalier. I should have thought of your little essay "The Category Crisis" when you said laughingly, but not amusingly after a few moments' conversation at the Newport party, "Oh, you're a professional anti-Communist."

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• View

  September 1986

  And the Kennedy KGB Handed Out Hot Soup

  It was now the beginning of the seventh year of the genocidal invasion of Afghanistan. To many Americans it appeared that the war would never end, not until the entire population of Afghanistan was either dead or in exile.

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