Elections and Democratization in Ukraine by Sarah BirchReview by: Peter J. PotichnyjSlavic Review, Vol. 60, No. 4 (Winter, 2001), pp. 847-848Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2697517 .

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Book Reviews 847

it was a factor inJabotinsky's uncharacteristic reticence to take a public stand in the polit- ical furor surrounding the Paris trial of Petliura's assassin, Simon Schwartzbard, in 1927.) Kleiner argues that the much-reviled Slavinsky accord was a characteristic act of political courage on Jabotinsky's part. It reflected his theory of the "anti-Semitism of circum- stances," whereby specific and concrete phenomena-the consequence of Jewish life in the diaspora- rather than ideology, underlay hostility to theJews. Thus, anti-Semitism was best combated by recognizing its objective causes and approaching them in a realistic way. Thus, Jabotinsky was also happy to negotiate with the anti-Semitic prewar Polish govern- ment, if that meant the removal of a large part of Polish Jewry to Palestine, to the mutual satisfaction ofJews and Poles.

Perhaps the most interesting-because less-known-part of Kleiner's study is his ex- amination of the debate betweenJabotinsky and Russian liberals over the true significance of the centennial celebrations to mark the birth of Taras Shevchenko in 1911. As Kleiner demonstrates, Jabotinsky used the occasion for a press campaign against two enemies, the "Great Russian chauvinist" tendencies of Russian liberalism (exemplified by Petr Struve), andJewish assimilationists in Ukraine.

Jabotinsky castigated the Jewish assimilationists for their "infatuation with Russian culture," which led them to dismiss or ignore the emergent Ukrainian national movement. Jabotinsky presciently foresaw, argues Kleiner, that this neglect would complicate Jewish- Ukrainian relations in the future. Kleiner's summary of the debate, and his analysis of Jabotinsky's writings, is valuable, but it hardly tells the whole story. Jabotinsky was neither the first Ukrainian nor the firstJew to address this problem: Ukrainian intellectuals had been complaining about the Russifying tendencies of the Jews as early as the Osnova/Zion polemic of 1861-62. In the aftermath of the pogroms of 1881-82, Mykhailo Drahomanov explored this aspect of Ukrainian-Jewish relations at length in his journal Volnoe slovo and attractedJewish responses.

In general, Kleiner's efforts to place Jabotinsky's thought in context is marred by his neglect of contemporary research onJews in the Russian empire. For bothJabotinsky and Kleiner, "assimilationist" functions merely as a term of abuse and obscures the wider pic- ture. ForJews moving into the non-Jewish, secular culture, Russian was the sole language of education and upward-mobility. Moreover, "culture wars" were very much an elite prob- lem. The thoroughly RussifiedJabotinsky ignored the de facto acculturation that existed between Ukrainian Jews and peasants in the countryside. Unsatisfactory too is Kleiner's treatment of Russian anti-Semitism, which he describes as growing out of "the mystical and messianic psychology peculiar to Russians," perhaps to differentiate it from the Ukraini- ans' "anti-Semitism of circumstances" (21).

Ironically, the Jewish culture thatJabotinsky was intent on protecting was itself a new creation, the Hebrew-based culture of Zionism, yet Kleiner never mentions this. It is significant that the word Yiddish is virtually absent from a book devoted to the cultural problems of east European Jewry. Finally, as demonstrated by Henry Abramson's recent publications, the author's claim that "the absolute majority of Jewish political forces in Ukraine ... supported the Ukrainian national government during the revolution and civil war between 1917 and 1920" (44) in untenable.

Despite these many caveats, Kleiner's study is a useful introduction to the problemat- ical relationship of Ukrainians andJews in the last years of the Russian empire.

JOHN D. KLIER University College London

Elections and Democratization in Ukraine. By Sarah Birch. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. xii, 212 pp. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliogrpahy. Index. Figures. Tables. $65.00, hard bound.

This volume has five chapters devoted to electoral contests in Ukraine that span the last years of the USSR and seven years of independence. These contests are: the elections to the Congress of People's Deputies of 1989, the parliamentary elections of 1990, the refer-

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848 Slavic Review

enda and presidential election of 1991, the parliamentary and presidential elections of 1994, and the parliamentary elections of 1998. The other chapters provide an introduc- tion, a theoretical basis for the study, the effect of electoral behavior on party development and their impact on the democratization of the country, and general conclusions. In ad- dition, appendix 1 contains aggregate population data from the Soviet census of 1989, ag- gregate electoral data that have been brought into accord with the population data and the individual-level data on candidates, and the ways "in which [these data] were used to construct variables" (145). Appendix 2 provides sources of census data by oblast, and ap- pendix 3 gives the sources of 1989-91 electoral data and 1994 presidential electoral data by oblast. The book has an excellent selected bibliography and a comprehensive index; in addition, some thirty-seven tables and three figures highlight and sustain the author's findings and conclusions.

The major findings are that the pre-Soviet and Soviet periods both left their mark on society and that the social structure that had evolved prior to independence has mani- fested itself in elections and continues to shape political identities in the political process. This structure is not conducive to providing support for the emerging party system and be- cause of the slow pace of economic reform and the attendant social restructuring, it will continue to shape electoral behavior for the foreseeable future. Eventually, however, the party system will develop based on the new or latent socioeconomic cleavages that will be superimposed on the existing ethnic structure (primarily Ukrainian-Russian), regional variations (west, right bank, left bank, south, east), ideological divide (left-right), as well as economic resources.

The volume is a valuable contribution to electoral studies in general and to Ukrain- ian electoral studies in particular. As the bibliography clearly shows, Sarah Birch has plenty of experience dealing with Ukrainian issues and with transitions in the post-Soviet space, and her analysis is devoid of significant errors in the interpretation of data. It seems, how- ever, that irrespective of the regional, linguistic, and religious cleavages that are indeed well documented in the study, one should not lose sight of the similarity of the popula- tion's prevailing attitudes on a majority of socioeconomic issues. In this respect, the Ukrainian population appears much less divided than the data presented here would sug- gest. The conventional placing of political parties on a left-right continuum at a stage when they lack developed forms and ideologies can also be considerably enhanced. The schematic representation of the structure of the political elite and of the ideological posi- tions of presidential candidates in the 1991 and 1994 elections could easily be adopted with good results for the political parties as well. The book is also very-technical in places, which will limit its use to a circle of specialists.

These are but minor criticisms, however. Birch is to be commended for this excellent study, which brings a comparative perspective to the Ukrainian electoral process.

PETERJ. POTICHNYJ McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario

Peter the Great through British Eyes: Perceptions and Representations of the Tsar since 1698. By Anthony Cross. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xii, 172 pp. Notes. Index. Illustrations. $54.95, hard bound.

This slim volume is perhaps best viewed as a coda to Anthony (A. G.) Cross's two finely de- tailed, extensively researched volumes, By the Banks of the Thames: Russians in Eighteenth- Century Britain (1980) and By the Banks of the Neva: Chapters from the Lives and Careers of the British in Eighteenth- Century Russia (1997), works that themselves variously combined and augmented a host of lesser publications on aspects of eighteenth-century Anglo-Russian relations and together made their author preeminent in the field.

The present work, Cross tells us in its preface, was prompted by the tercentenary of Peter I's visit to England in 1698 and intends to "explore British reactions to Peter and his Russia over three centuries [in a] wide-ranging survey that embraces all forms of written

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