Books: Man's Hope or Man's Fate?

THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR OF THE SOVIET UNION—Joseph Stalin—International Publishers ($1.75).

POLAND AND RUSSIA—James T. Shotwell & Max M. Laserson—King's Crown Press ($2).

EUROPE IN REVOLUTION—John Scott—Houghton Mifflin ($3).

THE BIG THREE—David J. Dallin—Yale University Press ($2.75).

Americans like to dismiss Russians and their policies as enigmatic. Few Americans have investigated Russia's purposes and plans by reading the basic writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Nikolai Lenin and Joseph Stalin. But for at least a generation those purposes are likely to constitute the world's No. 1 political argument.

To this argument the four books listed...