The Hot Seat: Reflections on Diplomacy from Stalin's Death to the Bali Bombing by R. Woolcott (Book Review) [2004] JSPL 7; (2004) 8(1) Journal of South Pacific Law

BOOK REVIEW

The Hot Seat: Reflections on Diplomacy from Stalin’s Death to the Bali Bombing  

By Richard Woolcott  

Harper Collins Publishers 2003, 324 pages, ISBN 0 7322 7125 8  

Reviewed by Myint Zan*   

As a student of international law, Richard Woolcott’s book and especially the ‘sub-title’ which indicates a wide range in terms of events, duration and topics attract the reviewer’s attention and interest. I was aware that as a career diplomat Woolcott witnessed some of the events that he narrated about ‘first-hand’. Though it is expected that Woolcott’s book would primarily be a personal memoir and his reflections would be from the perspective of a diplomat I still hope to learn from the book.  The reviewer feels that only part of this expectation has been met and the main reason for this is the writing style of the author. There are at least about three dozen places in the book where this reviewer has made changes in terms of expressions or style in the margins of the pages. There are quite a few –indeed a fair bit of-  paragraphs and sentences where the reviewer feels that the author could have written more clearly, concisely and effectively. Just to give a random example: before typing this particular sentence I randomly opened the book and the first sentence that I chance to read was as follows: 

Strategically situated and host to major American naval and air bases at Subic Bay and Clarkfield, with at one time a larger economy than Malaysia and Singapore and with the second largest population in ASEAN –over fifty million when I started my posting as ambassador- the Philippines was in 1978 an important regional neighbour in which I believe that there would be real opportunities for Australia to expand its bilateral relations (page 175). 

The sentence is grammatically correct but one feels that shorter and clearer sentences could have been employed for more effective communication. Indeed a grammatically dubious expression followed just one pager later in this paragraph:  

I was offered the ambassadorship in Moscow but felt I had done my duty there and declined. I was then offered the position of high commissioner in Ottawa. There was more policy work there than in Moscow and I have always found our Canadian colleagues friendly and helpful, but I still felt that I’d be being pushed aside if I went to Ottawa. (page 176, emphasis added) 

The phrase that appeared in italics above seemed to me grammatically dubious or at least stylistically infelicitous. But aside from that and the risk of being accused that I am ‘nitpicking’ about matters of style there are a few factual errors or questionable statements in the book. Writing about his second diplomatic stint in the then Soviet Union in the late 1950s (his first diplomatic stint being in the early 1950s) Richard Woolcott writes that the views of the then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev about the ‘ “two camps” theory in history, first put forwarded by Lenin’ was  ‘largely shared by President Richard Nixon at that time’ (pages 42-43). At that time (the period that Richard Woolcott was writing about) was about the year 1959 and Richard Nixon was not then President but the Vice-President of the United States of America.

 As stated in the sub-title Woolcott begins his memoirs starting with his first diplomatic stint in the Soviet Union in August 1952 (page 4). Within seven months of his arrival to take up his first posting in Moscow Joseph Stalin died on 5 March 1953 . Walcott writes:  

... the outpouring of public grief  when Stalin’s death was announced was remarkable ... a bearded Russian with no legs [who]

had lost them during the war [and whose] body rested on a wheeled trolley ... looked up at me with a sadness in his eyes and tears streaming down his cheeks. Waving his arms he cried ‘What are we going to do? What will happen to us now the great Joseph Vissarionovich has gone?’ The man’s mutilation and grief was such that I was lost for an answer. (page 12).

 

Liberal human rights advocates and at least some international lawyers would most probably have a generally very negative view of Stalin mainly due to the human rights violations  he had caused to commit or had  ‘sponsored’ during his 29 years  rule of the then Soviet Union. Woolcott who witnessed first hand the Soviet public’s reaction to the death of Stalin provides another glimpse of the impact or influence of this man whom some (mainly in the West) have ranked the same with Hitler if not worse. They apparently based their views  in terms of the deaths these two tyrants had perceived to have caused internally within the countries in which they had ruled. One should not accused Walcott of being ‘a leftie’ (though he did acknowledge that ‘at the tender age of seventeen he had purchased the Communist Manifesto at the Left Bookshop in Geelong, and had read it’, page 5) when he writes that  

It is impossible to evaluate Stalin adequately in a few words. While he has been demonised in the West and denounced in Russia itself because of the purges in the1930s and his cruelty, his achievements are remarkable despite the human cost. He is credited with ensuring that the revolution succeeded, driving the Soviet Union out of its backwardness, and with organising the heroic defence of the country against Germany. (page 12)