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Article: The liberation of one.
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- September 26, 1986
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1986 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Liberation of One, by Romuald Spasowki (Harcourt Brace, 687 pp., $24.95)
In 1772, Catherine the Great signed a secret agreement with Prussia and Austria to partition Poland "in order to re-establish order inside this country and to give it a political existence more in conformity with the interests of its neighbors." Those preambular words of the treaty signed in St. Petersburg more than two centuries ago have the ring of modernity about them, except that now the code word would be "socialism."
During the first partition, France and England stood by, ignoring the destruction of Poland. Catherine's "fellow-travelers"--the philosophes Helvetius, ...