Books: A Russian Drainpipe

NOT BY BREAD ALONE (512 pp.)—Vladimir Dudintsev—Dutton ($4.95).

No less a literary critic than Nikita S. Khrushchev has called this book "wrong at the root" and misrepresenting life "as through a crooked mirror." Before the Russian censors caught on to this view, the Moscow magazine Novy Mir published the novel in three installments last year. At the time, the world jumped with astonishment: a Russian novelist had not only written critically of the Soviet regime, but had done so bluntly, sarcastically, rudely. With Poland and Hungary threatening to tip the boat, Not by Bread...