Taste of Ashes

I ENJOYED reading Gavin Bowd’s review (Books, 6 April) of The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe by Marci Shore.

It is for the most part a fine and fair-minded one. However, is he really serious when he states that “Shore also peddles the old lie that the Red Army deliberately betrayed the Warsaw uprising, ignoring the fact that it was an independent initiative of the Polish Home Army”? Of course it was certainly an independent initiative, that much is true. Does he really think, however, that the Polish Home Army should have asked Stalin’s permission to rebel against the Nazis before expecting any help from the Red Army?

I am afraid Gavin Bowd’s statement is pretty close to Orwellian, or at the very least starkly economical with the actual truth.

(DR) Mario Relich

Allan Park Loan

Edinburgh