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The Mensheviks: From The Revolution Of 1917 To The Second World War. Edited by Leopold H. Haimson. Translated by Gertrude Vakar. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1974. xxiv, 476 pp. $22.50.

This is a singularly pointless book. Because there is no preface, the reader can only guess what Professor Maddox intended. He provides virtually no new information or documentation on a subject already frequently treated. Consequently, a research contribution was apparently not his purpose. If he aimed to offer a new interpretation of Wilson's decision to intervene, an article would have sufficed. Moreover, his interpretation is ambiguous, if not muddled. The dust cover claims that the book shows "how willing President Wilson was to violate his own expressed convictions about 'self-determination,' 'open diplomacy' and the constitutional process, in pursuit of his private intentions to prevent Japanese or even Allied seizure of Russian territory and to topple the Bolshevik regime." But the author's conclusion is contradictory on even this "revisionist" point. Maddox states (on page 136) that Wilson "detested communism and hoped for a successful counter-revolution, but this does not prove he tried to promote one." Yet the author claims (on the same page) that Wilson supported intervention for anti-Bolshevik reasons, despite the president's statements and behavior to the contrary. In asserting Wilson's duplicitous promotion of intervention, Maddox echoes rather than adds to earlier criticisms of Wilson's Russian policy by Lasch, Mayer, Williams, and Levin. The case Maddox presents is weak. He makes intuitive judgments about Wilson's intentions, draws inferences from highly selective facts about what the president really meant, and offers a simplistic view of the complex matter of United States policy toward Russia. The book is well written but it would be best if it had not been written at all.