České Vesnice v Rumunském Banátě. by Jaromír Jech; Milena Secká; Vladimír Scheufler; OlgaSkalníkováReview by: Zdenek SalzmannSlavic Review, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Autumn, 1994), pp. 940-941Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2501593 .

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940 Slavic Review

on central issues that this country and the worlld face. This volume, an excellent examl-ple of the Council's work, is the product of a study group of European and American men- and women specializing on western Europe. They miet at the Council on a number of occasions in 1990 and 1991 to discuss the way in which the thenl Common Market states would organize andc operate after 1992. Together, they outlilled the principal problems, assigned respon-sibility for chapters, reviewed clraIts, an(d de- fined agreeml-ents and disagreements. The published volume therefore reflects canldicd but friendly discussion on major themes and chapters on particular issues by scholairs who have benefited from-i such commen-ts. It represents the "conventional wisdomii" of scholars and administrators who have workecd, an(d will contiinue to work, near the centers of power. For example, editor Gregory Trevertonl is a Senior Fellow at the Council who specializes in European- political-military issues and who has served on the Harvard faculty, the staff of the Senate Select Comml-ittee on Intelligence and the National Security Council. Helen Wallace is director of the West European Progri-ammiiie of the Royal Institute of Internation-al Affairs in London and a visiting professor of the College of Europe in Biuges.

This volume was conceived before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and went to press shortly after the failed Moscow COuLp in August 1991. The collapse of the movement toward European Monetary Union, the utter failure of westerin Europe an-d the United Nations in Bosnia, colfutsioIn and disarray withini the former USSR, the continiued rise of unemployml-ent in western Europe, aind the slowing of theJapanese economy are amoing the major developments the authors failed to anticipate and that unlderm-iine the volum-ne's confiden-ce in contin-ued progress toward some kindc ot SuI-

pranation-al Europe. Except for the flood of acron-ymiis in the essay ly Wolfgang Danspeckgruber, this

volulmie is one any educated American can ulnderstandcl. In spite of the significaint chan-ges that have occurred since its publication, Thle Shlacpe of the Newv Europ)e ser-ves as a useful guide. But it is more significant as a sample of a process that has become popular in the west and as an illustration- of the ways that European andI Americain specialists and opinion-makers viewed European prospects in 1990 anld 1991.

Rom,iwil F. BX3'RNFS

Indian,ia University

Ceske vesnice v rumunskem Bandte. By Jaroimnir 'jech, Milen-a Secki, Vladimir- Schetlfler an(d Olga Skalnikovi. Ncirodo/pisnd4, knlz&nice: Cesi v cizine, 5. PraguLe: Ustav pro et- nografii a folkloristiku CSAV, 1992. 224 pp Photographs. Paper.

During the early 1820s, three groups totalin-g soml-e eighty Czech famrfilies left Bohiemiiia to move to the highlancds of the southern- Bainat in what today is soulthwesterni Romiianiia. The heiads of m-iost of these families-landless laborers, journieymiien- and farm-ning cot- tagers-were attiactecI by the offer of Georg Magyarly of Oravita, who pron)mised to give them decent pay for steady work, f-ee lum-iber for the construction of dwellings, temporar-y exemption from taxes and indivicdual plots of land in exchalnige for their- labor in his extensive lumibering enterprises. A seconid wave of migration froml- Bo- hemia-no longer under the auspices of Magyarly, who hadl Unexpectedly left the area-took place a few years later and lasted uLntil about 1830. Altogether some 2,000 Czech-speakin-g Bohemian colonists established several villages in the hills just north of the Danulbe. Six of the villages are still in existence today and, rem-narkably, their inhabitants have preserved Czech as their- first language duLriig the near-ly 170 years of separ-ation f-om the home country. The Czech naml-es of these villages are Gerniik, Eibental, Biger, Rovensko, (Svata) Helena andc Sumiice.

The book is a recently published report 1based on four- field trips miacde between 1961 and 1964 by several Czech ethnlographers, folklorists, ethnomTLsicologists an-d one dialectologist. Although published 30 years after all the data were obtained (not the fault of the coauthors), Czech Villages iM thle Ronranian Banat is far fromi an ana-

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Book Reviews 941

chronism: not only is the inforrmation surprisingly variecd andc rich, but the Czech- speaking villagers in the southern Romanian Banat have remain-ecd so isolatecd that much of mnodern technology seems to have passecd them-l by.

A large part of the text has been contributed by Scheufler, who covers the histor- ical background, natural environment, arriangement of farmhouses andic agricultural outbuildings, as well as the materials from which they were constructecd, crafts, agri- cultural work, crops grown ancd the musical culture of the villagers. Skalnikovi clis- cusses the village diet and dress, the family and special family observances (baptismas, weddings, funerals), the harvest festival ancd the ceremonial church calencdar (for ex- ample, Christmas, carnival, Easter and the feast dedicated to the patron saint of the village church). jech has contributecd a chapter on storytelling, including inform-lation concerning the storytellers, their repertories ancd forms of presentation. The rielatively small but important section by Secki deals with those Romanian Czechs who returniect to Czechoslovakia after Worldc War II, ancd the clegree to which they have managed to adapt to and integrate themiselves into Czech society.

Several usefuil supplements appear throughout the text. In one, villagers clescribe in their own worcds certain village activities, for example, builcling a house. In another they recollect what their forefathers hacd to say about the experiences of the origin-al immigrants (the accounts are interesting but fragmentary ancd not entirely reliable). In still others villagers give examples of the main- genres of their folk prose andc of their religious ancl folk songs. The book concludces with a selectecd bibliography, Eng- lish and Romanian summaries, andc 21 pages of black-and-white photographs.

Although the relatively small volume makes reference to all six of the Czech villages and briefly acquaints the reacder with various aspects of both their m1aterial and nonmaterial culture, it conveys a con-sicderable amount of information, albeit in a traditional ethnographic style. Considerinig the variious articles published over the years by some of these authors, as well as still other-s about particular- cultural aspects of this enclave, we now know a great deal about these small isolated villages so long removecd from-l their ancestial homelancd. Because the population-s have been steacdily dwindling an-d growing older, this book miay someday be the major source clocu- menting the long existence of the six Czech-speaking villages of the Romal ian1 Bainat.

ZDENFK SAzN1IANN Northerni Arizona. University

Women in the Face of Change: The Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China. Ecls. Shirin Rai, Hilary Pilkington and Annie Phizacklea. New York: Routledge, 1992. x, 227 pp. Index. Tables. $74.50, barcd boundc; $17.95, paper.

"Does socialism liberate women?" Hilda Scott asked in 1974.Judging from the twelve articles in this book, the answer is a firm "no," although the essays may also provoke readers to question the utility of applying the term "socialist" to the regimes that until recently governed in the former Soviet Union andc in eastern Europe, and that still governs in China. For the common thread that binds these contributions, about half of which are on the former USSR ancd a thircd of which cover China, is that the communist regimes never intended to change gender roles and that in some instances governmental policies only reinforced the biological determinism (essentialism) al- ready prevailing in those countries. The other common theme is the mobilization of women in the ostensible namne of emancipation but actually for the achievement of the state's own goals (e.g. revolution, socialism, modernismn). These conclusions, and the analysis of women's double and triple burdens, are hardly novel, although much of the terminology that the authors employ is. But it is useful to have these papers grouped together for comparative purposes. Although the essays were written no later than summer 1991, they are for the most part not dated. Readers new to either gendelr analysis or rural sociology will find the book useful, while those with expertise in only one geographical area should be stimulated by the comparisons.

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