Russia and the United States by Nikolai V. Sivachev; Nikolai N. Yakovlev; Olga Adler TitelbaumReview by: H. HanakThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Oct., 1981), pp. 610-612Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4208404 .

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6io THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

soldiers' children. It was obviously more difficult for peasants on the land to attend schools, but the peasant class as such was not banned, and, in this case, even counting chinovniki as nobles, non-nobles made up more than half the pupils. Finally, finance. The noted expert on Russian education, S. Rozhdestvensky, remarked in i 9 I 0 that he had been unable to find materials enabling him to establish a complete and accurate budget for the maintenance of the eighteenth-century national schools. But we do know that the Boards of Social Welfare were granted a capital sum of 15,000 roubles to start off with, and that the government laid down the shtaty for the schools at 2,500 roubles per annum for the high schools, and 500 roubles per annum for the junior schools. This last figure seems accurate enough, since we know that St Catherine's School in St Petersburg cost 499 roubles in 1780. But the income of the Boards of Social Welfare was supposed to be supplemented by sums raised locally, or by charges on the revenues of the ports. By 1803, the Moscow Board had an annual income of 74,763 roubles, of whichI 2,598 was spent on schools, while Tver' spent 5,040 on schools out of an annual income of 17,217 roubles. Before passing judgement on this aspect of Catherine's educational programme, far more information is required on actual, as distinct from theoretical, expenditure.

To sum up, the general conclusion of Professor Black's work is that Peter I, Catherine II, and indeed Alexander I, were only interested in education in so far as it served to sustain the principles of autocracy and the status quo. The proof of this statement, if I understand the author correctly, is that Pobedonostsev was the dominant figure in Russian education at the end of the nineteenth century. While the usefulness of this work is therefore limited, the translation of The Book of the Duties of a Man and Citizen (unfortunately without the Biblical references) is a valuable addition to the documents on the reign of Catherine available in English. But for a deeper understanding of Russian education, the reader will still have to turn to the work of Peter Polz and Max Okenfuss.

London ISABEL DE MADARIAGA

Sivachev, Nikolai V. and Yakovlev, Nikolai N. Russia and the United States. Translated by Olga Adler Titelbaum. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, London, I979. xv + 30I pp. Notes. Index. $5.95.

IN the only flash of humour in this history of Russo-American relations, the joint authors, Professors Sivachev and Yakovlev, write, that, having received an unusual proposal from the University of Chicago to write a history of Russo-American relations, they sent back an equally unusual reply: 'We agreed to write this book.' Professor Sivachev covered the period from 1776 to 1939 and Professor Yakovlev the period since then. Both are leading Soviet experts on the United States.

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REVIEWS 6ii

This history can be criticized on a number of levels. First of all, the documentary basis. It relies on published American and Russian primary and secondary sources. In the case of the most recent period, that is the period dealt with by Professor Yakovlev, it is also based on 'conversa- tions with a number of American statesmen; with officials of many government and private institutions in the United States' (p. xv). No explanation is given as to why Soviet officials were not also approached.

Secondly, and as one would expect, the book is written from a Marxist point of view, or what passes for Marxism in the Soviet Union today. It is thus stated that the differences between the Russian and American political systems before 1917 played no serious role in determining their foreign relations, because both Russia and America were exploitative class societies. It is admitted that there was a turn for the worse at the start of the twentieth century and that this was caused by the clash of American and Russian economic expansion. The real reason is given on pages 22-23: 'At the beginning of the twentieth century the Jewish community in the United States already represented an impressive force, having become one of the most important centers of world Zionism. Following the logic that whatever is good for Jewry must also be good for the country of their sojourn, the Zionists, seeking to strengthen their positions in the United States and in Europe, mounted a campaign against Russian-American trade. Superficially this gave the appearance of a struggle against czarist despotism, to which it was easy to attract broad segments of the population.'

Thirdly, statements are made which are acceptable as the staple of political propaganda, but not of historical enquiry. Thus, it is not true to say that the Entente powers were 'permitted' to enter the negotiations of Brest-Litovsk in I9I8. Although it is true that there was no serious German threat to either Arkhangelsk or Murmansk in I9I8, it was certainly believed in London that such a threat existed. There is no evidence to show that in the years I9I8 to I919 'the division of Russia was a cherished dream . .. of the British' (p. 55). Churchill in particular, wanted the restoration of a strong and unified Russia. It is true that some of the peripheral areas of Russia (in the Baltic area, but not in the Caucasus) were eventually and reluctantly given British support. This was the result of the weakness of Russian power in the Civil War. Whatever the Far Eastern Republic may have been it was certainly never 'a buffer state friendly to the U.S.S.R.' (p. 7I). The statement that the Soviet government had no responsibility for the Comintern has been frequently denied in Soviet publications. The negotiations between the British, the French and the Soviets for a defence alliance in I 939 failed for a series of complex reasons, but not because the British and French had a 'secret desire to encourage Hitler towards a policy of eastward expansion' (p. 122). There was no 'striking similarity in the policy' (p. I50) of the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. in the two years of the phoney war I939 to 1941. While the U.S.A. became the 'arsenal of democracy', Stalin pursued a policy of appeasement towards Hitler. The material support given to Germany by the Soviet Union up to June 1941 made communist Russia 'the arsenal of Nazism'.

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6I2 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

There is no evidence to show that the United States did not want a second front. It is the British who were reluctant to launch an invasion before I944.

Fourthly, what historical objectivity there is in the bulk of the book is abandoned completely in the 'conclusion' and in the 'epilogue'. The former reads like a Pravda editorial, and does indeed, include two long Pravda extracts. It abounds with Soviet cliches such as 'life itself has forced us . . .' (pp. 260-62). The epilogue is an attack on Solzhenitsyn's views on Russia with lengthy quotations from the I977 Constitution.

This book deserves to be widely read, but readers should know that not all Soviet historical writing is of this level. London H. HANAK

Lincoln, W. Bruce. Petr Petrovich Semenov- Tian-Shanskii: the Life of a Russian Geographer. Oriental Research Partners, Newtonville, Mass., I980. x + i i8 pp. Notes. Appendixes. Bibliography. Index. $Ii.oo.

SEMYONOV-TYAN-SHANSKY was one of the outstanding persons in the development of modern geography in the nineteenth century, a follower of Humboldt, a friend and pupil of Ritter, a recipient of honours, honorary fellowships and medals from learned societies all over Europe, including the Royal Geographical Society. His early exploration of the then un- known Tyan-Shan Mountains earned the Imperial accolade of the hereditary honorary title 'Tyan-Shansky'. In Russian geographical studies, he was a towering father-figure, who for forty-two years was vice-president, the de facto head, of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. The regional description of Russia, of which he was general editor and contributor with his son Venyamin as editor, only achieved eleven of the planned twenty-five volumes, but those volumes have never been qualitatively surpassed in the Russian lands.

Yet Semyonov today is far less well known to geographers in western countries than either of his German colleagues. Professor Lincoln has taken a first step towards dispelling this ignorance in his useful little biography. It is, however, extremely brief, a mere eighty pages of basic text. One cannot but think this cursory indeed for a man of such a long, full and many-faceted life. Semyonov was also a government employee, who had major roles to play in drafting the statute for the emancipation of serfs and in establishing proper statistical studies for state purposes. These two very important aspects of his life's work bulk more largely in this account than his strictly geographical achievements and one could have wished for a fuller and deeper assessment of Semyonov as a geographer and of his position in the development of the subject on a world-wide scale. Indeed, every page of the book makes one hungry for more information and more evaluation of this man of many parts - explorer, geographer, statistician, official, memorialist, art collector, who donated over 4,000 works to the Hermitage Gallery. Some of Semyonov's activities are dealt with here in little more than a couple

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