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DOI: 10.1177/0265691412458504t

2012 42: 706European History QuarterlyJames D. White

LeninLars T. Lih,

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Gerard and Burke, which, though diverse in many ways, supported the notion of a

universal standard of taste. That the standard would have been found in antiquity

was predetermined for elite Europeans, who had long assumed the Greco-Roman

past to represent a common cultural heritage and were thus schooled in the classics.

To finish their education, aristocratic Britons such as the future Dilettanti

embarked on the Grand Tour and surveyed the physical remains of a world with

which they had had mostly a virtual familiarity. This experience was so formative

that it became theraison detre for the establishment of the Society of Dilettanti,

Horace Walpole famously describing the group in 1743 as a club, for which the

nominal qualification is having been in Italy, and the real one being drunk.

The facetiousness of this remark aside, the first-hand experience of antiquity on

the Grand Tour may not only have catalysed the interest of members of the society

in classical archaeology, but also inspired some of them to travel to the easternMediterranean or sponsor expeditions there.

The last section of the book takes up the work of the society from 1786 to 1816,

when it continued with traditional activities, such as the funding of books, and,

ultimately abandoning a plan to build its own museum, lent two fragments from

the Parthenon frieze to the Royal Academy and donated its inscription collection

to the British Museum. During this period, one of the societys well known mem-

bers, the connoisseur and scholar Richard Payne Knight, prompted scandal on two

fronts, first by the publication of his book on the Worship of Priapus, which

threatened to revive the reputation of the Dilettanti as libertines, and then bydenouncing the Elgin marbles as second-rate. Through its resiliency and deter-

mined sponsorship of scholarly projects, however, the Society was able to weather

such storms.

In addition to its other virtues, Kellys book is meticulously researched, gener-

ously illustrated, and handsomely produced. Full of nuanced ideas but historic-

ally grounded, it makes an important contribution to the study of culture and

sociability and the ways in which they were related in eighteenth-century

Europe.

Carole Paul, University of California at Santa Barbara

Lars T. Lih, Lenin, Reaktion Books: London, 2011; 235 pp., 62 illus.; 9781861897930, 10.95 (pbk)

In this short biography of Lenin, Lih argues against what he terms the textbook

interpretation of Lenins work. This holds that Lenin was worried about the

workers, that he was pessimistic about their revolutionary inclinations, and con-

sequently was inclined to give up on a genuinely mass movement. He therefore

aimed instead at an elite, conspiratorial underground party staffed mainly withrevolutionaries from the intelligentsia. According to Lih, however, this was far

from the case; Lenin was highly optimistic about the revolutionary potential of

the workers. He argues that inWhat Is To Be Done?(WITBD) Lenin took his cue

from Karl Kautskys Erfurt Programme of the German Social Democratic Party

706 European History Quarterly 42(4)


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which propounded the idea that Social Democracy was the merger of socialism

with the workers movement.

Lih believes that Lenins entire outlook is to be explained not in terms of worry

about the workers, but of a heroic scenario based on an enthusiastic confidence

that the workers would respond to the call of the Social Democrats. His heroic

scenario was that the party activists would inspire the proletariat, which would

carry out its historical mission by standing at the head of the entire people, leading

a revolution that would overthrow the tsar and institute political freedom, thus

preparing the ground for an eventual proletarian government that would bring

about socialism.

These are ideas that Lih expounded in his extensive commentary of Lenins

WITBD, Lenin Rediscovered (2006). In the present book the author attempts to

apply the concept of the heroic scenario to other major landmarks in Leninspolitical career. Lihs interpretation gives a mainly positive picture of Lenin, of

someone who was driven by high motives and who had a deep concern for the

interests of the people at large. This is an original way to look at Lenins biography

and the author presents it in a fresh and highly readable fashion. Lih has unearthed

a number of overlooked contemporary sources, such as William WallingsRussias

Message (1908) and Gregor Alexinskys Modern Russia (1913) which he uses to

good effect in placing Lenins views and activities in their historical context.

The striking feature of Lihs interpretation is that it is gained at the cost of

eliminating or down-playing those aspects of Lenins activities that cannot beexplained in terms of the heroic scenario. Thus, although Lih mentions the fact

that Lenin was involved in polemics throughout his entire political career, very

little space is devoted to the feuds and in-fighting which took up so much of Lenins

time and energies. In this connection Lih points out that Lenin was raised above

the day-to-day squabbles by the heroic scenario through which he interpreted

events (103). Because there is no detailed account of how Lenin conducted himself

in these squabbles there is no chance that the reader might get the impression that

Lenin could be devious, petty or treacherous qualities that might be taken to

define his character rather than his devotion to lofty ideals.Nor does the heroic scenario interpretation fit particularly well any of the

episodes in Lenins life with which Lih deals. An obvious example of this is

when the author in mentioning Lenins writing ofThe Development of Capitalism

in Russiain 1899 states that: In this book, filled with statistics on everything from

flax-growing to the hemp-and-rope trades, he provided his heroic scenario with as

strong a factual foundation as he could manage (63). Lih does not venture to

demonstrate the necessary connection between Lenins statistics and the heroic

scenario, and clearly it is possible to put other constructions on Lenins work.

But even the existence of Lenins heroic scenario is not established by Lih,despite the length to which it had been argued inLenin Rediscovered. One cannot

say that it is a matter ofeither worry about the workersor the heroic scenario;

the possibilities for other interpretations are by no means exhausted. For example,

a reader of WITBD might well come to the conclusion that what Lenin was

Book Reviews 707


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worried about was not the workers but the intelligentsia. If the workers were so

imbued with the revolutionary spirit, what would there be left for the radical

intelligentsia to do? WITBD can be regarded as providing the answer to this ques-

tion and giving the intelligentsia a key role in the workers movement.

Lihs book is a stimulating and challenging interpretation of Lenin as a person

and a politician. It is well worth reading, especially by those who are familiar with

existing works on the subject and who will be able to evaluate Lihs ideas. But if

one had to recommend a biography of Lenin to someone completely unacquainted

with the subject, Lihs book would not be the first choice.

James D. White, University of Glasgow

Martyn Lyons, A History of Reading and Writing in the Western World, Palgrave Macmillan,

Basingstoke, 2009; 280 pp., 11 illus.; 9780230001619, 55.00 (hbk); 9780230001626, 19.99 (pbk)

Martyn Lyons brings decades of expertise to this elegant synthesis of scholarship

on the cultural history of readers, books and reading practices. By historicizing the

encounter between reader and text, while also tracing the democratization of writ-

ing practices, Lyons brilliantly connects the seemingly arcane results of book his-

tory to contemporary technological changes. He argues that the computer

revolution has proved far more profound than Gutenbergs invention, in that it

completely changed the material form of the codex which had been dominant for atleast 1500 years. It has also invited an unprecedented involvement of the reader in

the text, changing the way we write as well as the way we read (11). Twelve tightly

argued chapters follow this introduction, addressing fundamental questions about

the relationship between readers and texts since the codex replaced the scroll

between the second and fourth centuries CE.

One of the books many strengths lies in the authors ability to summarize

cogently the major interpretations concerning, for example, the existence of a

printing revolution, the revolutionary potential of print within early modern popu-

lar culture, the relationship of literacy to schooling, the change from intensive toextensive reading, or the characteristics of a mass reading public. Readers are

introduced to the arguments of such scholars as Elizabeth Eisenstein, Robert

Darnton, Roger Chartier or Rolf Engelsing, and footnotes allow one to pursue

the outlined debates in more detail (a useful index offers another sort of reading).

At the same time Lyonss volume makes a strong case for the theses he has

defended in his previous scholarship on nineteenth-century France: the history of

reading should not be reduced to a history of technological changes. Readers are

influenced by the format of what they read (large in-folios or mass paperbacks), its

availability (within monastic libraries or public lending libraries), and the contextin which they read (in private or in readings clubs), but such contingent factors are

not sufficient. The cultural history of reading that Lyons presents pays special

attention to the reader as an active agent in the interpretive process, following

de Certeaus famous depiction of the reader as poacher. As a result, the book

708 European History Quarterly 42(4)

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European History Quarterly 2012 White 706 8