SOURCE: Laqueur, Walter. “People without a Country.” New York Review of Books 8, no. 5 (23 March 1967): 23-4.

In the following review, Laqueur compliments The Jews of Silence as a moving account of Soviet Jewry in the mid-1960s.

It is still widely believed that everything that happens in the Soviet Union is planned according to some overall theoretical blueprint. Reality is more complex; in their internal policies Soviet leaders have been so preoccupied with economic problems that they have hardly been able in recent decades to pause for reflection and re-examination of anything except the most urgent issues. This much, at any rate, they seem to have in common with political leaders in democratic countries.

There is far less deliberation and planning in the non-economic sphere and far more improvisation than is usually thought. Basic ideological tenets exist, but these are often out-of-date and inapplicable in a modern society. In...