Victor Rosenberg

Perils of Pankratova: Some Stories from the Annals of Soviet Historiography: Zelnik, Reginald E.: Seattle: University of Washington Press, 137 pp., Publication Date: July 2005

We may not be able to make you love reading, but perils of pankratova some stories from the annals of soviet historiography a memorial volume will lead you to love reading starting from now. Book is the window to open the new world. The world that you want is in the better stage and level. World will always guide you to even the prestige stage of the life. You know, this is some of how reading will give you the kindness. In this case, more books you read more knowledge you know, but it can mean also the bore is full.

The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism: Payne, Stanley G.: New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 400 pp., Publication Date: May 2004

tember 1938 to pose the question of whether the Soviet Union could have, and would have, joined a coalition against the Third Reich in defense of Czechoslovakia. At that time, British and French leaders had discounted the relevance of a Russian counterweight to German ambitions, based on Joseph Stalin’s wholesale purge of his officer corps and the logistical obstacle posed by the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia lacking a common border. Indeed, the countries that rested uneasily between the two would-be allies, Poland and Romania, could hardly be expected to welcome the Red Army. Policymakers in Paris and London, their views no doubt hardened by ideological antipathy, looked at Stalin as, at best, an ineffective strategic partner and, at worst, as an insidious warmonger bent on fomenting communist revolution. Ragsdale, relying on unexplored or little-cited Romanian and Russian documents, challenges these assumptions and the subsequent historiography shaped by them. Ragsdale convincingly makes a case for the Kremlin’s self-interest in stemming a Drang nach Osten. Soviet mobilization and deployments along the Polish frontier in September 1938 aimed both to intimidate that country’s leaders against joining a Nazi offensive against Czechoslovakia and, if necessary, to cross Polish territory to engage the Wehrmacht. As for Romania, that country’s geography made it an unlikely conduit for Russian troops, but the available evidence supports the contention that Bucharest would have cooperated with the shipment of munitions to its Petite Entente partner in the event of war. Indeed, Ragsdale offers tantalizing, albeit circumstantial, evidence that some shipments may have already begun to move. The Soviets, the Munich Crisis, and the Coming of World War 11, complementing studies by Michael Carley and Igor Lukes, makes a singular contribution in that it relies heavily on recently, belatedly, and only partially opened Soviet-era archives. Ragsdale candidly portrays himself as someone raising questions that can be answered fully only by future historians. His closing description of the “furtive Neanderthals who are the keepers of the secrets of the Russian archives” (192) would seem to clinch that last assessment.

St. Petersburg: Russia's Window to the Future, The First Three Centuries: George, Arthur L., and Elena George: New York: Taylor Trade Publishing 673 pp., Publication Date: September 2003

occurred . The book is divided into six chapters, which trace the treatment of cruelty as a cultural issue from Seneca to Montaigne. The simple outline of those chapters shows that cruelty was an important issue in imperial Rome in the first centuries A.D. With the adoption of Christianity, cruelty virtually disappeared as a topic for theoretical speculation, a trend even more pronounced in the early Middle Ages. Beginning in the twelfth century, cruelty emerged as a cultural tool used to define the “other,” both external invaders and what Baraz calls internal marginalized groups such as heretics or rebelling peasants. The sixteenth century, which forms the core of the last chapter, witnessed a break from medieval treatments of cruelty. Here cruelty became an objective category, one that could be quantified to show that some groups were more cruel, some less. But, the chronological outline of the treatment of cruelty is perhaps the least important part of this fascinating book. For Baraz, the treatment of cruelty is a cultural issue and must be considered apart from the actual practice of violence. This approach shifts attention from narrative reports of violence to the conceptual framework within which those reports were written. The waxing and waning of discussions of cruelty match the fluctuations in the West of Roman cultural influences. Seneca’s context of cruelty-always as an aspect of tyranny or the product of barbarian violence-was not the context of the early medieval writers. Thus, even writers such as Gregory of Tours, whose histories are filled with acts of violence, did not emphasize the cruelty of those violent acts in specific language and only associated cruelty with attacks on the defenseless or the church. By the twelfth century, though, the cultural role of cruelty began to increase, a change reflected in more frequently explicit discussions of some violent acts as acts of cruelty. By the sixteenth century, the conceptual framework of cruelty had shifted dramatically to differentiate certain groups and justify violence against them. Baraz uses a wide range of material in his study, from a simple lexical list of words to comparative assessments of chronicles and martyrologies. His argument is sound and thoroughly convincing. Because he carefully provides the historical context for each episode that he discusses, Medieval Cruelty is suitable both for general readers and experts.

Provincial Landscapes: Local Dimensions of Soviet Power, 1917–1953: Raleigh, Donald J., ed.: Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 424 pp., Publication Date: September 2001

view revolution as an “objective and mainly spontaneous process,” Mau and Starodubrovskaya recognize that revolutionary leaders can exert substantial influence on “the form of that process, and in many cases on the speed of the transformation” ( 1 79). Their interviews with Mikhail Gorbachev, Alexander Yakovlev, Yegor Gaidar, and Gennady Burbulis draw out the insights of those four key participants as to why things happened as they did. For all of us trying to understand that extraordinarily important and complicated period in contemporary Russian history, Mau and Starodubrovskaya offer a fresh and useful perspective. Their book is certain to provoke debate, but even if one does not entirely accept its thesis. il is a useful counterweight to the more typical focus on personalities, political maneuverings, or the allegedly flawed policies of the West. This is a serious and substantial work, rich i n insights. It is not for the casual reader but is worthy of careful attention by those who take the time to study it.

Voices of Revolution, 1917: Steinberg, Mark D.: Trans. Marian Schwartz New Haven: Yale University Press, 404 pp., Publication Date: November 2001

communism to the Soviet hinterland and became a major building block in Stalin’s drive to industrialize the Soviet Union. The struggle to feed and house such a large number of people in such a remote area, along with the need to fight disease, build hospitals, educate a predominately illiterate society, and transform a traditionally nomadic people into a viable work force, posed overwhelming problems for the Bolshevik leadership. Payne’s analysis of this raciaVethnic component is an important part of his book, because the vastness of Turksib placed it in the broader picture of bringing civilization to what was perceived as a backward, uncivilized region of the country. Payne also discusses the role of the enginccrs and workers in that cultural revolution. At first, the only engineers available were those who had built railroads in tsarist days, hut since the Bolsheviks did not trust this group, they worked hard to replace them with younger Soviet engineers who graduated after the 1917 Revolution. Also, it proved difficult to mold the nomadic Kazakhs into an industrial proletariat. The resulting conflicts among those groups and the Soviet officials caused many problems and delays in the completion ot Turksib. Payne weaves his way through those complexities with skill and clarity. In the end, Turksib was finished ahead of time and opened with much fanfare on 26 April 1930. Although it lacked the operational infrastructure necessary for it to play its proper role in the ever-expanding Soviet industrial system, i t was agreed that those shortcomings would be corrected in later five year plans. Payne’s research in previously closed archives in Moscow and Kazakhstan is exhaustive, and his style eminently readable. The inclusion of maps and photos also adds to the value of the monograph. In presenting a grassroots example of how the Soviet industrialization drive worked and how it affected the managers and workers, as well as the party and the country, Payne has written a valuable book aimed primarily at the scholarly community.

Lenin: A Biography: Service, Robert: Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 561 pp., Publication Date: October 2000

the need for comparisons with other medieval cultures, never takes this lesson to heart, and though she laments the historiographic tendency to isolate Visigothic Spain, she basically does it herself. Indeed, she is surprisingly vague about early medieval society in general. In the end, a sensc of frustration takes hold of the reader because Stocking provides almost no evocation of Visigothic culture, apart from a limited intellectual and legal one, and s o hcr intcrpretations of the Toledo councilh ;ilways seem somewhat arbitrary. The book rcads more like a very nuanced paraphrirw of Visigothic legal codes, and how those laws tried to classify Jews, hcretics, v)tlomites. and Christians, than like a study using thc Toledo councils to grasp the world o l the Visigoths i n the late sixth and early seventh centuries. It is this accomplished sumniari/ing of the riches contained within the third and fourth Councils of Toledo, and not the overall argument o r method, that will be the lasting value of this study.

Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to the Cold War: Brooks, Jeffrey: Princeton: Princeton University Press, 319 pp., Publication Date: January 2000

context, but in the current work the period covered is considerably broader (the fifth to the fifteenth century), and the subject is more limited since Duby concentrates solely on the visual arts. He focuses on the way works of art functioned for the people at the time, the reasons works of art were created, and the roles that they were expected to fulfill. As Duby points out, changes in living conditions such as the revitalization of towns, changes in spirituality such as the increased internalization of Christianity in the late Middle Ages, and changes within the Church itself such as the rise of the Mendicant orders affected both the type of art chosen and how it was presented. For example, murals that provided clear and easily comprehensible imagery proved particularly suitable for the hall churches of the Franciscans, where nothing was supposed to come between the faithful and the pulpit, and the desire in word and art was to move and inspire. As in his earlier work, Duby adopts a broad, narrative approach. Art and Society in rhe Middle Ages offers the general reader and the lower-level undergraduate a sense of the gradual transformation of Europe as it took shape from the days of the disintegrating Roman Empire to the cusp of the Renaissance. Indeed this transformation serves as a strong secondary theme as well as an underlying explanation of changes in the visual arts. It was, after all, the rise of trade and the rebirth of towns, so noticeable in the thirteenth century, that generated the crowds that flocked to the before-mentioned Franciscan churches. Although this work has sixteen black-andwhite plates, Duby does not dwell on specific examples. Rather, he provides a general framework that his reader can later fill in, an approach with obvious value for the person who needs a way to enter the Middle Ages and to get a sense of its overall configuration. Art and Society in the Middle Ages is provided with a chronology and, seen in terms of the overall length of the book, an extensive scholarly bibliography. However, given the nature of the presumed reader, one wonders if the inclusion of a shorter, annotated bibliography stressing works that might provide the reader with the next, and not too abrupt, step in exploring the Middle Ages might have been advisable.

Models of Nature: Ecology, Conservation and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia: Weiner, Douglas R.: With a New Afterword Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 324 pp., Publication Date: August 2000

against Nazi Germany, resulting in unprecedented human and material losses. Stone argues that if funding had been directed more toward productive investment instead of just thc amassing of equipment, the USSR would have fared far better in the war. Ironically, the militarization of the Soviet economy made it too rigid and inflexible, leading to the eventual undermining of the Soviet state itself. Although meant primarily for the student of Soviet history, Hurnrrier und Ripe deepens our understanding of a crucial aspect of the Stalin revolution. Five appendixes, including ow on abbreviations and terms and another fcaturing biographical sketches of the main actors, add to its overall value.