The Forgotten Republics by Clarence Augustus Manning

The Forgotten Republics Reviews

• 
  Marti Martinson

  Not exactly what I was hoping for. The author was a professor, so the book is obviously well written and erudite, but it simply assumed far too much preexisting knowledge on the part of the reader. (In one spot the reader is expected to know what anacreontic verse is.....) More than a few times names and places were mentioned without general nor specific background information; this reflects more on me than Manning. He is certainly correct that the Baltics have been screwed by the East and West; screwed by the Catholics, the Protestants, and the Orthodox; screwed by Emperors as well as themselves. Written during the cold war, he correctly calls out the totalitarian in that nefarious Soviet state, but he pins his hope on the collective action of the glorious Western democracies to get them back in the world game as independent nations; this was 1952. Manning, I am sure, was a fine son, husband, and father, but he was no Howard Zinn.
  
  I do disagree with him here, page 251 of the first edition hardback, when writing on Moscow:
  
  In their considered actions there is a deeper lawlessness, a more fiendish barbarism than in the ignorant cruelty or primitive savages or men of the stone age, a deeper brutality.
  
  Barbarism is always fiendish, cruelty always ignorant, savagery always primitive, and brutality always deep. Freedom IS free: it is empire, intrigue, and oppression that cost -- and are costly.
  
  Blessed be the Baltics.