Death in the Forest: The Story of the Katyn Forest Massacre.

TWO EXCELLENT BOOKS merit reading, as well as reviewing, together: Stalin and the Kirov Murder (Oxford, $16.95), by Robert Conquest, and Death in the Forest The Story of the Katyn Forest Massacre (Hippocrene Books, 171 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016; $8.95), by Janusz K. Zawodny, first published in 1962, now in a new edition. Each begins with the factual account of a crime, goes on to examine the relevant evidence, and concludes with an assessment of the historical significance of the events. The effect, finally, is comparable to that produced by one of those rare crime novels in which, though the solution is apparent throughout, the reality of the action is so consummate as to generate total absorption and a kind of false suspense.

The assassination of Sergei Mironovich Kirov, Secretary of the Central and Leningrad Committees of the AllUnion Communist Party, on December 1, 1934, by Leonid Vasilevich Nikolayev, not only set in motion the responses and counter-responses culminating directly in the great Soviet Terror later in the decade; in Conquest's words, it "was made the central justification for the whole theory of Stalinism and the necessity for endless terror." It also provided "the key moment which determined the development of the Soviet system, and so the future of the world."

Kirov was certainly no Menshevik; he was rather "the very model of the hard-line old Bolshevik," who, between 1930 and 1933, enthusiastically helped to wage th"class war" against the kulaks. By 1933, however, the completeness of the Bolshevik victory indicated to Kirov and others that a relaxation of the dictatorship was in order, in accordance with orthodox Marxist belief. Beginning in that year, a "Kirov line" began to develop as an alternative to Stalin's. Stalin, though accusing him of "liberalism," nevertheless indulged the mood of unanimity, which reached its apogee with the XVIIth Congress, held in February 1934, where a number of senior delegates approached Kirov with the proposal that he agree to become the new General Secretary. Though Kirov refused the offer, on the grounds that the effect of his replacing Stalin would be to undercut all that the Party had accomplished in the construction of socialism, as many as 289 of the 1,966 delegates present voted against Stalin. (These facts were only made "public"-if that is the word-by samizdat historians in the 1970s.) The sitting General Secretary, naturally, neither forgave nor forgot the episode; henceforth Kirov seems to have lived in fear of his life. But not for long.

The Leningrad NKVD, having combed police files, alighted finally on the disgruntled Nikolayev, whom it instigated and aided in effecting the shooting. This much at least is certain. Also certain is that the national reconciliation for which Kirov had worked was an instantaneous second casualty. Less certain is whether Stalin was involved, though Conquest makes the circumstantial case that the order for Kirov's death came from him. In any event, the official stories concocted to explain the murder were expanded over the next three years to include all of Stalin's "enemies," real and imagined, leading ultimately to the great Purge Trials. "If the Kirov case is the key to the Soviet Thirties," Conquest concludes, "it is also, in a different sense, the key to the Soviet Eighties. As the truth is flatly and finally told in Moscow, then we can really think in terms of the beginning of a true abreaction of Stalinism."

Death in the Forest, now nearly thirty years old, is to my knowledge the first full and scholarly account of how the NKVD slaughtered 15,000 captured Polish officers in the spring of 1940 in a deliberate attempt to divest Poland of its best and brightest, and of how, when the graves were discovered in 1941, Moscow sought to blame the massacre on the German occupation forces. Forty-five years after President Roosevelt protested to his Special Emissary for Balkan Affairs, who had just finished presenting him with evidence implicating the Soviets, "George, this is entirely German propaganda and a German plot. I am absolutely convinced the Russians did not do this," nobody on the right side of the Iron Curtain doubts that the Soviets were responsible. Nevertheless, Zawodny's descriptions of how 448 Polish officers out of 15,000 were culled by the NKVD, saved from death, and sent to undergo indoctrination intended to fit them to command a Red Polish Army, and of how the huge remainder went to their death and were stacked in mass graves above which young trees were planted, retain all their original force. When the first details of the massacre leaked out, they were instantly suppressed by the United States Government, which in fact managed to "lose" its chief extant report. During the Nuremberg Trials, the case of Katyn was obligingly dropped when facts embarrassing to the Soviet prosecutors began to be pushed forward, and for years after the war had ended the U.S. effectively squelched discussion of the affair where it could. "It can be understood why President Roosevelt avoided the issues which could bring about disharmony [in the Alliance]," Zawodny writes. "It might be the subject of interesting speculations, however, why after the cessation of hostilities . . . Katyn . . . was still suppressed by government officials in the United States?" ences with everything from cancer cures to flying saucers. The host, in turn, can humor or bully them, ridicule or insult and hang up on them. There is enough drama in this to indulge the insomniac listener's every need from feeling superior to those poor boobs to outright sadomasochism.

Bogosian, who has listened carefully to these "shock radio" programs, and who is a terrific mimic in writing and speaking, as well as an oversized, discomfiting personality in his own right -rather like a huge, bug-eyed teddy bear possessed by a particularly foul demon-made a fascinating stage figure out of the host, Barry Champlain. (Notice how well that nom de broadcasting resonates.) He showed us how this Jewish man used the Holocaust disingenuously to make himself holier than thou while also arousing the religious, patriotic, fascist fanaticism of some of his fans. And he sketched in just enough figures around Barry: his devoted young producer who is also his mistress, his station manager who bullies him as Barry bullies his staff, his most dangerously volatile fan, whom Barry foolhardily invites to the studio (in Cleveland on stage, but upped to Dallas in the movie), the fellow inspecting his show for national syndication.

The film, however, introduces pretentious excesses. First, Barry's ex-wife and former collaborator, on whom Barry is still emotionally dependent; second, elements ftom a book about the murder by neo-Nazis of the Denver talk-show host Alan Berg, perhaps even weirder than Champlain. All this opens up and sensationalizes the movie, as does Stone's overheated direction; lost, though, is much of the everynight pathos and bittersweet ludicrousness of talk radio.

The main difficulty with the transfer is that-even more than Harvey Fierstein-Bogosian is a performer and persona too big for the screen. You sit there watching him burn a hole into the film while Stone is hitting you with frenetic camera work and commensurately incontinent sound, and it's overkill time once again. The flashbacks to Barry's clothing-store-clerk beginnings don't help, Ellen Greene is too obvious as the ex-wife, and the Alan Berg increments make for a tabloid addition that really detracts from the basic, pervasive sordidness the play was so effectively exposing.

Most of the supporting roles are adequately handled, but the standout is Alec Baldwin's ruthless station manager. Baldwin is proving himself much more than the standard jeune premier. On stage, he did fine work in British character parts in Loot and Serious Money; on screen he showed his versatility as Michelle Pfeiffer's Mafioso husband in Married to the Mob and as Melanie Griffith's stud in Working Girl. He is the young actor to watch: he makes it even with an Oliver Stone around his neck.