Istoki etnosa by Pavel M. DolukhanovReview by: Peter D. JordanSlavic Review, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Summer, 2002), pp. 368-369Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2697126 .

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BOOK REVIEWS .

Istoki etnosa. By Pavel M. Dolukhanov. St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii Dom, 2000. vi, 220 pp. Bibliography. Illustrations. Figures. Maps. Paper.

In Istoki etnosa, Pavel Dolukhanov leads us through a monumental narrative on the long- term development of European ethnic origins. Dolukhanov denies that all forms of eth- nicity are the product of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century romantic nationalism and asks at what point in human history we can be justified in identifying the emergence of true ethnic groups. Setting out into the past in search of the answer, he opens with a dis- cussion of the earliest human origins and then traces a meticulous and lengthy path through successive stages of prehistory: the emergence of Slavic ethnicity forms but a short postscript to this grand tour. His basic thesis is that while evidence from earlier periods may suggest the presence of closed cultural entities-with language and other material symbols signaling group affiliation-it is only much later that true ethnicities emerge. In short, it is periods of socioecological turmoil that trigger the transformation of earlier groupings into a true etnos.

Eastern Europe's later iron age formed exactly this kind of crisis-ridden backdrop: earlier forms of Slavic language had played a role as a medium of intergroup communi- cation between smaller units tightly bound by trade and marriage contacts. One spin-off of this scenario was the dissemination of general cultural norms and symbols, especially visible in common house types and ceramic production styles. By chance, it was early Slavic that became the language of the social elite of a new sociocultural formation based on ex- panding agricultural populations. In addition to Slavs, this union included diverse ele- ments: Balts, Iranian-speaking groups, and descendants of Celts and Germans were all "Slavicized" extremely rapidly, losing their old and adopting new norms and material sym- bols in the process. Tak rozhdalsia slavianskii etnos.

Dolukhanov's book draws heavily on the analytical concept of the "archaeological cul- ture" and in so doing diverges strongly from recent developments in Anglophone archae- ological theory. Prehistorians continue to struggle to construct robust linkages between the surviving material remains of the past and the complexity of prehistoric cultural iden- tity. Beyond debate is the acceptance that prehistoric individuals and communities have always done things differently in different places and at different times. This behavioral variability produces data patternings-distributions of similar tools, ceramics, burial styles, and so on-in the archaeological record, which researchers then analyze to recon- struct the past. Linking these patterns to ethnicity-or any other form of cultural iden- tity-presents huge, and, as yet, unresolved interpretative challenges. Archaeologists have traditionally classified these spatial and temporal patterns on an arbitrary and subjective basis into archaeological "cultures," thereby creating animate entities, which have fre- quently been awarded the role of empowered actors on the prehistoric stage. Often -and problematically-these "cultures" have also been linked to particular ethnic groups (Stephen Shennan, Archaeological Approaches to Cultural Identity, 1989).

Recent years have witnessed Anglophone academics stressing the need for both a careful, subjective decoding of the past's material culture and the acceptance of the con- ditional, fleeting, or opportunistic nature of all forms of social identity. In addition, there has been a drive for greater self-reflexivity on behalf of researchers, which has stemmed from the acknowledgment that all accounts of "the past" are politically and personally mal- leable. Across these debates the "archaeological culture" has, to a large extent, been soundly rejected as an "unsatisfactory explanatory edifice" (Shennan, 1989, 5). Con- versely, among Russian-speaking academics, "archaeological culture" remains "universally recognized in Russia as the basic archaeological concept" (Dolukhanov, "Archaeology in Russia and Its Impact on Archaeological Theory," in P. J. Ucko, ed., Theory in Archaeology: A World Perspective, 1995, 338). Instead, critical debate has explored the presentation of "ar- chaeological culture" as either taxonomic or cultural-ethnic units.

Istoki etnosa sharply illuminates these divergent research traditions, and-when read from a western perspective-herein lie its potential weaknesses. The book exudes a slightly dated atmosphere, with laborious descriptions of how the characteristics of typical burials or of housing or pottery styles are produced by the carriers of different archaeo-

Slavic Review 61, no. 2 (Summer 2002)

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Book Reviews 369

logical cultures. Dolukhanov also stresses that he is, at heart, a geographer: the mono- graph treats us to long paleoecological subplots that, at times, threaten to overwhelm the main story. The choice of grand scale also tends to obscure the current darlings of west- ern research: the role of human agency in generating social change and the historical con- tingency of all forms of social identity.

Despite-or because of-Dolukhanov's long sojourn in Britain Istoki etnosa remains much more the staple diet of Russian academia and the author has clearly targeted the tastes of this community. For readers of Slavic Review the book is of greatest interest in revealing the products of limited culture contact between the residual ethnic groupings present in Russian and Anglophone academia: a fleeting exchange of ideas across a set of prevailing intellectual differences.

PETER D. JORDAN Institute of Archaeology, University College London

Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansingin Twentieth-Century Europe. By Norman M. Naimark. Cam- bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001. iv, 248 pp. Notes. Index. $24.95, hard bound.

The wars of Yugoslavia's dissolution introduced the fearful phrase "ethnic cleansing" first to public and then to scholarly discourse. But the flood of publication elicited by the wars and the phrase has rarely ventured away from a concentration on the former Yugoslavia. How useful then that a senior American historian of eastern Europe and Russia places the forced migration of ethnic groups across that wider region in twentieth-century perspec- tive. Norman Naimark explicitly draws on comparative history, "Clio's own modest form of social science" (5). He culls a wide, well-chosen range of secondary sources to take us through five major cases of cleansing since World War I. Separate chapters treat the Ar- menian and Greek expulsions from Anatolia (1915-23), the initial Nazi assault on east Eu- ropeanJews (1939- 41), the Soviet deportations of the Chechen-Ingush and Crimean Tar- tars (1944), the postwar Czech and Polish expulsions of ethnic Germans, and only then the depredations in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo since 1991.

His introduction makes it clear that ethnic cleansing is not a synonym for "genocide," the term most attractive to victimized groups around the world since the Holocaust. Rather than the biological elimination of an entire group, cleansing seeks "to remove a people and often all traces from a concrete territory" (3). Those traces have included monuments and graves as well as personal property. Naimark is quick to add that the ef- fect of forced expulsion can be genocidal, even if the intent is not. Death figures range across his five cases from less than 20 to more than 50 percent. They also include enough attendant violence to leave the survivors with memories of having faced genocide.

Naimark begins with what he admits is the most contentious of these cases, the Turk- ish deportation of Armenians from Anatolia in 1915. Armenian sources put the total ex- pelled at over one million, with more than one-half perishing; Turkish sources place the total at 800,000 with a lower death toll. Although admitting the ambiguity of evidence over numbers and Turkish intentions, Naimark speaks of a genocidal result that "originated in ethnic cleansing" (82-83). More confidently, he identifies two hallmarks characteristic of subsequent cleansings. One is political motivation from a nation-state in the face of mod- ern racial nationalism and total war. Together they validate state-sponsored cleansing for securing the support of the national majority and justify it strategically for expelling mi- norities presumed to favor the enemy. The other hallmark is violence, particularly by para- military forces, against unarmed civilians, the majority of whom are women and children.

The subsequent Kemalist expulsion of 1.4 million Greeks from Anatolia and the counterexpulsion of Turks from Greece, ratified by the Lausanne Agreement between the two governments in 1923, fits both Naimark's definition and the majority of his further cleansings better. Only Adolf Hitler would refer back to the Armenian experience as an appropriate precedent. Urged on by Stalin, the post-1945 governments of Poland and Czechoslovakia cited the Lausanne Agreement as justification for their share of the "trans-

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