THERE is a story current in the Soviet Union that whenever Maurice Hindus crosses the border into Russia the news is telegraphed instantly to the hamlet where he was born, with the instructions "Brush up the village, boys, Hindus is on his way!" Whether or not the man's first publications, "Humanity Uprooted," "Broken Earth," and "Red Bread," offer openings for such an apocrypha, his latest collation will give no satisfaction to those who think him a blind enthusiast. On the contrary it is only too apparent that he is leaning over backwards in pursuit of objectivity. He relates in detail the ghastly breakdown of the agricultural sector, asserts that the standard of living is lower after the Five Year Plan than before, and intimates that the political prisons are not the last word in humanitarian institutions.

As the Red Armyists tramp lustily through the streets, Hindus is forced to contrast their robust health, good, clean uniforms, and strong shoes with the dark, patched garb of the proletariat. However, though trying his best to achieve impartiality, the author cannot avoid partisanship any more than all the other commentators who have flooded Russia and regurgitated their findings to us. Throughout the book Hindus impresses upon the reader his own firm conviction that despite all difficulties and whatever the cost, the Revolution will sweep on, brushing from its path all impediments, crushing all opposition. "The Great Offensive" will continue, for the idea has become part of the modern, Russian's soul; it is the nation's expression if itself. The Soviet Union has been committed to the industrialization of the country of a socialist basis, to the collectivization of agriculture on a huge scale; there is no possibility of turning back.

Mr. Hindus makes no pretence of packing the whole Communist problem into the confines of one book. The strictly philosophical and economic aspects of Russia are largely omitted; except for a digression on the extent of the country's natural resources and a sketchy resume of the Five Year Plan, the book keeps pretty closely to the "human relations' side of it, in many ways resembling very strikingly Ella Winter's "Red Virtue." It scope ranges from anecdotes of peasant life and collective struggles through a discussion of morality, prostitution, art, jails, the army and other points to a travelogue of Siberia and an essay on world revolution.

One of the most interesting chapters is "The Last Stand," in which Hindus indicates quite shrewdly the reasons why Protestantism was doomed almost from the beginning. It was nurtured during the early days of the Revolution because of its antagonism toward the Greek Catholic Church whose grip the Bolsheviks were intent upon breaking; but the honeymoon was soon ended. For it became cleared as the Protestant movement developed that its emphasis on the priority of the individual soul, on the recompenses of the Life of Come, on the sacredness of gospels which the Soviet materialists considered so much eye-wash, on the precedence of God before the State was wholly antithetical to Bolshevik ideals. Professing these principles it is no great wonder that the Revolution swirled angrily over Protestantism and sucked away its foundations, more by the power of what is loosely termed "propaganda" than by direct persecution. But whatever the means employed, the outcome was never in doubt. One or the other had to give way, and the Kremlin held all the aces.

"The Great Offensive," despite its unacademic style and journalistic presentation, is an authoritative study of Russia up to the fall of 1933. These who have read Hindus's previous books will find, perhaps, considerable repetition of subject-matter; but each month calls for a new interpretation of this quickly-changing country. As Ella Winter never tires of repeating, every Russian "fact" should have a date attached; tomorrow it may be no fact at all, or at least a greatly altered one. It there are to be successors to "The Great Offensive" in years to come, it would be well for them to retain the dispassionate critical, sense rooted in wide personal observation that makes this book as enjoyable as it is valuable.