Sicz Zaporoska by Leszek Podhorodecki; Zarys dziejów Ukrainy by Leszek PodhorodeckiReview by: John-Paul HimkaThe American Historical Review, Vol. 83, No. 3 (Jun., 1978), pp. 768-769Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1861955 .

Accessed: 28/06/2014 16:55

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Oxford University Press and American Historical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to The American Historical Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 193.105.245.130 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 16:55:15 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

768 Reviews of Books

the Compromise that had been made, only so that barely a generation later, they might take the Hungarian nation as a whole to task for having made such a 'choice' " (p. 167).

As is customary for him, Szabad has again pro- duced an excellent work. Unfortunately, one can hardly do justice to it in a short review of this type. His study is supplemented by a very good bibliog- raphy; but, like most Hungarian publications of this nature, it lacks an index.

S. B. VARDY

Duquesne University

JOSEPH A. MIKUS. Slovakia and the Slovaks. Washing- ton: Three Continents Press. 1977. Pp. XiV, 224.

The "Roots" phenomenon, which has accelerated the already growing interest in ethnicity in this country, in many ways reflects the romantic na- tionalism given inspiration by Herder early in the nineteenth century. One of its by-products, most noticeable where smaller nationalities are con- cerned, has been the re-emergence of volumes such as this one devoted to the glorified presentation of national histories and literatures. Joseph A. Mikus, trained as a lawyer, focuses his attention on the Slovak nation, one of two nations which make up the country of Czechoslovakia. He con- centrates on Slovak history (including an essay on historiography) and literature, with shorter sec- tions on language and "personality."

The book is a statement of belief, not a scholarly work. Mikus is sketching his conception of the soul of Slovakia for a popular audience, presumably one made up of Slovak-Americans. He accords to the Slovaks only one belief system, and denies the character Slovak to anyone not holding precisely those beliefs, including persons who favor greater cooperation with the Czechs than he. This is his- tory and culture with a romantic hangover. As did many nationalists of the nineteenth century, he discards the unpleasant aspects, or skips nimbly by them. He observes, for instance, that the war- time Slovak State (which he incorrectly calls a republic) was "not entirely successful in protecting the human rights of some of its individuals or some groups of its citizens" because of foreign pressures (p. 44). In such fashion he skirts the awkward subject of the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews.

In fact, most of Mikus' history is typical Central European journalistic partisanship. The same ar- guments, making the same misuse of the same figures, have changed little since the political de- bates of long ago. The sources from which he draws are eclectic-a World War II survey on eye and hair color, a dictionary, a propaganda tract, etc. He gives each the same weight. Even the sta-

tistics usually come second hand. He lumps to- gether nearly all Marxist historiography, finding the same shade of red in a 1954 attack on Daniel Rapant as in the provocative essays by L'ubomir Liptak and Samo Falt'an in the middle 196os.

The value of the book lies not in the factual material it presents, because that cannot be trusted, but as a statement of the political world view of the Slovak Right. As with his own previous volumes, and those by Joseph Kirschbaum, Gil- bert Oddo, and others, many libraries will add this book to their collections because there is "nothing else available" in English. This is a shame, but until Marxist scholars in Czechoslovakia have pro- duced a synthesis of Slovak history in English translation or an English-speaking scholar writes a professional treatment of the subject, there is no alternative.

OWEN V. JOHNSON

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

LESZEK PODHORODECKI. SicZ Zaporoska [The Zapo- rozhian Sich]. 2d ed., rev. Warsaw: Ksia2ka i Wiedza. 1970. 10 ZI.

LESZEK PODHORODECKI. Zarys dziejow Ukrainy [Out- line of the History of the Ukraine]. In two volumes. Warsaw: Ksia2ka i Wiedza. 1976. Pp. 310, 357. 50 ZI the set.

Some of the best work in Ukrainian history is currently done in the Polish People's Republic. Even Poland's president, Henryk Jablon'ski, has written a useful book on Polish national autonomy in the Ukraine, 1917-18. Quite naturally, Polish historiography on the Ukraine has concentrated on those aspects of Ukrainian history that have a direct connection with Polish history. Polish histo- rians have therefore paid particular attention to the Cossack period (Horn, W6jcik, Serczyk), to Galicia (Kozik, Hornowa, Najdus, Zaks) and to Poland's Ukrainian minority in the 192Os-40s (Radziejowski, Holzer, Torzecki, Szczqgniak, Szota). Studies of Kievan Rus', the Ukraine in the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Ukraine have been less popular with Polish historians.

What Polish scholars have done in Ukrainian history, they have done, on the whole, well. For one thing, they have better access to sources than do their Western counterparts. Polish libraries and archives teem with Ucrainica, especially with ma- terial relating to the Ukrainians in the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth, Austrian Galicia, and the interwar Polish Republic. Then, too, thanks to Poland's special relationship with the Soviet Union, the archives and libraries of the Soviet Ukraine are much more accessible to histo-

This content downloaded from 193.105.245.130 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 16:55:15 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Modern Europe 769

rians from Poland than to historians from the West.

In addition to certain advantages over their Western colleagues, Polish historians also enjoy some advantages over their Soviet Ukrainian col- leagues. Perhaps the most important of these ad- vantages is a more sophisticated historiographical tradition, one continually enriched by intercourse with French and American historical scholarship. This makes Polish historiography, including that on the Ukraine, far more interesting to Western scholars (irrespective of ideological persuasion) than the formulaic output of Soviet Ukrainian his- torians. Furthermore, Polish censors are a good deal more tolerant than those in the Soviet Union.

The last point, concerning the tolerance of Pol- ish censors, requires qualification. There is no question that Polish historians have a freer hand than Soviet historians. In the books under review, for instance, the author recommends to the reader the works of Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi, whom he calls "the most outstanding Ukrainian historian." This would be unthinkable in the Soviet Ukraine, where Hrushevs'kyi is anathema. The liberality of the Polish censors, however, is only relative. Books are still occasionally suppressed (notably, in 1973, Szczqsniak and Szota's monograph, Droga do nikqd, on the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army), and all books on Ukrainian topics are carefully edited to avoid un- toward offense to the Soviet Union.

The activity of the censor, of course, puts the reviewer in a quandary. Can the reviewer take Podhorodecki to task for all the shortcomings of his popular outline of Ukrainian history? Is the censor's hand visible in the orthodox anti-Nor- manism and in the absence of any reference to the pogroms of 1881? Are we to complain to Podhoro- decki or the censor that this account of Ukrainian history includes no mention of Stalin, nor of the purges, nor of the 1933 famine, nor of the leftward evolution of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, nor of the dissidents of our time? Small matter who is to blame, if the end product is so marred. Especially for the Soviet period, then, Podhorodecki's volume is unsatisfactory.

The remainder of the outline history is uneven. Podhorodecki's treatment of the archeological pe- riod is dry and lacks synthesis. The account of the Kievan and Mongol epochs are long on colorful excerpts from chronicles, but short on stimulating treatment of historical problems. Much better are his sections on Cossack Ukraine and the Ukrainian national revival of the nineteenth century. Fortu- nately these portions make up half of the work and to a large extent redeem the failings elsewhere.

Podhorodecki's survey is popular history, based on secondary literature rather than primary

sources. Popular history is Podhorodecki's spe- cialty and he has written no less than six other books in this genre. All of these deal at least in- directly with the Ukrainian Cossacks, including his Sicz Z4aporoska, also under review. The latter work has been almost completely incorporated into the outline history, with only minor changes. Sicz Zaporoska, for example, made frequent refer- ence to Sienkiewicz's trilogy, while the outline his- tory does not. The outline history also mercifully deletes such exclamatory sentences as "How dif- ferent life was then! "

As a popular historian, Podhorodecki is read- able, if not profound, and his survey is certainly useful. Lecturers in Russian and East European history will find the section on Cossacks, where Podhorodecki is at his best, a balanced and inter- esting account of a complex period. The bibliogra- phy, which lists recent Polish monographs on Uk- rainian history, a chronology, and a modest biographical dictionary contribute to the survey's utility.

JOHN-PAUL HIMKA

University of Alberta

GREGORY L. FREEZE. The Russian Levites: Parish Clergy in the Elghteenth Century. (Russian Research Center Studies, number 78.) Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1977. Pp. xi, 325. $15.00.

Of all the social groups in prerevolutionary Rus- sia, the clergy has probably suffered the most ne- glect from Western and Soviet historians now doing pioneering work on prerevolutionary society. Western historians have preferred to con- centrate on more exciting groups such as the nobil- ity, or officialdom, or army officers, while the So- viets have ignored the church and its personnel for obvious reasons. Now Gregory Freeze has rescued the parish or white clergy from ignominy and in so doing has written a monograph that goes well beyond the narrow subject suggested by the title. It is no exaggeration to say that this volume will be essential reading for all historians interested in the broader questions of church-state relations, the pattern of centralization and state-building in Russia, and perhaps most importantly, the proc- esses of bureaucratization and social change within Russian society as a whole. In my opinion Freeze's book goes a long way toward explaining a crucial feature of prerevolutionary Russian society-its incohesiveness and its capacity for in- tra- as well as inter-class struggle and animosity, continually fostered by the policies of the central government.

The volume is one of remarkable synthesis tem- pered by memorable detail. Freeze wisely uses a

This content downloaded from 193.105.245.130 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 16:55:15 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions