Culture, Nation and Identity: The Ukrainian-Russian Encounter, 1600-1945 by A. Kappeler; Z.E. Kohut; F. E. Sysyn; M. von HagenReview by: Andrew WilsonThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 82, No. 2 (Apr., 2004), pp. 354-355Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4213910 .

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354 SEER, 82, 2, 2004

of such fine quality dedicated to the history of a European people that even until now largely remains an 'unexpected nation' to the West.

Lucy Cavendish College L. V. CHARIPOVA University of Cambridge

Kappeler, A., Kohut, Z. E., Sysyn, F. E. and von Hagen, M. (eds). Culture, Nation and Identity: The Ukrainian-Russian Encounter, I600-I945. Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, Edmonton and Toronto, 2003. xiv + 382 pp. Notes. $24.95 (paperback).

THE above volume collects together the papers from three conferences organized in New York and Cologne in 1994-95. Most show evidence of more recent revision and readers can be assured of a high quality throughout. The vast majority of contributors also stick closely to the general theme.

There are sixteen contributions in all. In the first section ('The Early Modern Period'), Viktor Zhivov, David Frick, Zenon Kohut, Hans-Joachim Torke and Frank Sysyn address the complicated interaction of Ruthenian, East Slavic and 'Commonwealth' identities in the two centuries either side of I 654. All provide a rich discussion of rapidly changing identities, pronouns and place names; and are appropriately counterfactual rather than teleolo- gical. The reader is not subjected to the assumption of an existing or eventual Ukrainian identity as manifest destiny. Most also feed off David Frick's apt comment that 'at least for some of the Ruthenian elite, mental geographies changed more slowly than, and at times in directions somewhat different from, political realities' (p. 20).

In part two ('The Imperial Period'), Olga Andriewsky's essay on the 'Failure of the "Little Russian Solution"' provides an intriguing foretaste of her forthcoming book. Andreas Kappeler discusses ethnic hierarchies; Christine Worobec looks at the Russian and Ukrainian peasantries. Serhy Yekelchyk provides another of his stimulating essays in cultural studies by looking at school history texts in the nineteenth century. Paul Bushkovitch widens the context: answering the question 'What is Russia?' by arguing that the empire's state-centred identity politics meant that even the East Slavic 'ethnic' identity was relatively underdeveloped. George Grabowicz argues that the Kotliar- evshchyna embodied more than the burlesque. Its characteristic Ukrainian strategy combining subtle imperial subversion and Aesopic self-assertion can also be found in writers as seemingly 'imperial' (i.e. Soviet) as Pavlo Tychyna.

In the third section ('The Twentieth Century'), Oleh Ilnytzkyj gives a provocative analysis of the crucial contest between Russian and Ukrainian 'high cultures' at the turn of the century, and asserts that 'among Ukrainians, the death of the all-Russian idea, as an idea, occurred long before i99I' (p. 304) as early as the I9IOS in fact. Although Ilnytzkyj cites many Ukrainian Modernists writing convincingly to this effect, this remains an untested proposition at the level of mass social consciousness. Yuri Shapoval writes on 'The GPU-NKVD as an Instrument of Counter-Ukrainization in the I920S and I930s': that is, on the institutional pluralism which allowed one section of the Bolshevik elite to oppose the Ukrainization policy from its

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REVIEWS 355

inception. Shapoval's Ukrainian colleague Stanislav Kulchytsky discusses the debates surrounding the establishment of the Ukrainian SSR. Dieter Pohl discusses the differential impact German occupation had on Ukrainians and Russians in I941-43; and Mark von Hagen argues the case that the First World War decisively accelerated the maturation of the ethnic question in the Romanov empire.

How well does all of this fit together? The declared general theme of the volume is the study of 'the construction, destruction, and reformulation of identities among Russians and Ukrainians of all social origins'; not just as 'Ukrainians' and 'Russians', but as actual or potential bearers of other selves, including past ' "all-Russian" and East Slavic identities' (p. ix). A related aim is therefore to demonstrate how the Ukrainian idea has shaped Russian identity just as much as that of its own target audience. As such, the collection succeeds admirably. This is an unusually coherent and always interesting volume, of great value to historians and students of national identity alike.

School of Slavonic and East European Studies ANDREW WILSON

University College London

Kokkonen, Jukka. Rajaseutu liikkeessd. Kainuun ja Pielisen Kadalan asukkaiden kontaktit, Venajan Kagalaan kreivin ajasta sarkasotaan (I650-I7 I2). Bibliotheca Historica, 79. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Helsinki, 2002. 439 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography. Index. Price unknown.

THE border country between Sweden-Finland and Russia in the early modern period was a thinly populated area, only loosely supervised by central governments on both sides. There were sporadic border markers but the actual frontier was vague and virtually uncontrolled. People and goods moved freely in both directions, sometimes legally, sometimes not, and a considerable trade built up, especially since the English and Dutch traders had opened the northern sea route into Russia during the sixteenth century. On the one hand, the Swedish monarchs aspired to get control of this trade: that was the rationalization for the endemic warfare aimed at pushing the border eastwards that culminated in the treaty of Stolbova in I 6I 7. After that, except for the brief hostilities of the war of I 656-58, the border was at peace until the Great Northern war began in I 700, and even then truces prevailed until I 712. On the other hand, both governments and the local inhabitants valued the maintenance of peaceful intercourse which greatly improved the living standards of the inhabitants, and enabled them to pay rents and taxes on their farms and on the goods passing through, while relieving both governments of any need to maintain a military establishment in such a remote and difficult terrain.

Jukka Kokkonen has produced a substantial piece of archive based research, made possible by a considerable survival of administrative records and accounts, combined with evidence drawn from the extensive court records from the Finnish side of the border. It is aimed at exploring four areas of interest: the intercourse between the inhabitants of the two sides of the border,

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