Russian Imperialism: Development and Crisis by Ariel CohenReview by: A. UmlandThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 76, No. 3 (Jul., 1998), pp. 572-574Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4212712 .

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572 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

wherein the pattern has alternated between bouts of co-operation and confrontation.

Herspring in fact doubts whether there is a model capable of handling the current fluid and changeable relationship on anything other than an ephemeral level. In this he rightly casts doubt on the value of much of the modelling which has gone on within the study of Soviet politics. Indeed, it has to be said that far too many such models have been too bound up with the more general personal ideologies and assumptions of their authors ever to be able to offer predictive value in relation to such minor issues as the failure of communism as actually practised or the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, Herspring still feels that such simplifying generalization can and could serve a purpose in portraying and organizing our knowledge of complex real patterns - albeit not those prevailing in Russia at the present time!

The book is well documented, mainly from Soviet and Russian sources which have themselves improved immeasurably over the last decade. Little indeed remains secretive about the Russian military these days, especially now that the likes of Generals Lebed' and Rokhlin have entered the political fray determined to expose the military's dire state of readiness and its shortcomings in the field of equipment. How far the politicians actually know their military was made a matter of doubt when the Chairman of the Defence Council recently claimed that non-payment of wages was partly the result of not knowing how many troops there were.

The switch in the book's case studies from the 1920S to the I98os and I990S is rather abrupt, though perhaps inevitable, given the desire to test the models against appropriate scenarios. Equally, a number of the book's initial propositions, put forward in I996, already seem questionable, ranging from the importance of General Lebed' to the possibility of a turnaround in the military's fortunes despite a fall in expenditure on it (according to official statistics) from a quarter of GDP to less than four per cent. Many would wish El'tsin well in his divide and rule tactics if this is the outcome. Mendeloff has already pointed out the truly remarkable patience and quiescence of the military in resisting the lure of staging a coup to rectify the perceived wrongs of the system, and Herspring has here provided a useful outline of the traditions upon which this is built.

Department of Politics J. BIRCH University of Sheffield

Cohen, Ariel. Russian Imperialism: Development and Crisis. Praeger, Westport, CT and London, I996. xiv + i8o pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?43.95: $55.00.

THE USSR's collapse provides a proper historical occasion to review the development of Russian imperialist thought, to compare the Soviet empire's rise and fall with the emergence and decline of previous empires, and to test hypothetical generalizations developed by theorists of imperialism. Ariel Cohen's book breaks important new ground by introducing into post-Soviet studies various competing theoretical frameworks of explanations of imperial

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REVIEWS 573

ascendance and breakdown. The book stands out as being the only compre- hensive attempt hitherto to put the Russian empire's development into a broad comparative-theoretical perspective.

The most important, first chapter is a well-structured summary of the central arguments of the major competing schools of interpreting the emergence, persistence and fall of various types of empires. The fifth, concluding chapter briefly reviews the value of these various theories and approaches when used to clarify and understand the Russian case. Especially pertinent is Cohen's detailed introduction of the concept of universal empire, and the pseudo-egalitarian and -pacifist aspects of the ideologies which had legitimized rulers of such empires already long before the creation of the Soviet Union (pp. 5-9, 154-55). By classing the Soviet Union with this, in Soviet studies unduly ignored, yet, in the comparative study of empires, well- established generic ideal sub-type of a multi-national state, Cohen introduces a new, important paradigm to the conceptualization of the Soviet experience which may one day rival such concepts as 'totalitarianism' or 'socialism'.

Whereas these considerations constitute an important contribution, Cohen fails in three crucial ways to connect effectively the theories and generic concepts he introduces with his empirical case.

First and foremost, Cohen's book is too short. Milan Hauner made the criticism that 'the reader has the impression of being confronted with two books in which the theoretical section is superimposing itself on Russian and Soviet history' (Slavic Review, Fall 1997, p. 583). Though the study is indeed unfortunately strongly divided, this criticism misses the point. Cohen's. major omission is, instead, that he does not merge sufficiently his nomothetic consideration with his idiographic observations, and does not test in enough detail the theories he outlines against the empirical evidence. Although his final chapter does provide some rival, theoretically substantiated interpreta- tions of the peculiarities of the Russian case, a far more extensive confrontation of general explanations and predictions, with the course of actual events in and around Russia would have been welcome.

Secondly, Cohen fails to locate imperialist ideology in the political spectrum, to set imperialist goals and slogans in the context of a domestic political struggle between Right and Left, and to define clearly his usage of these and related generic concepts. Although he, in contrast to other writers on the Russian case, such as Alexander Motyl, seems to acknowledge a close link between the nationalism of a state's dominant nation and this state's imperialism, Cohen does not resolve the conundrum of why the inter- or even anti-nationalist ideology of Marxism-Leninism constituted 'the [Soviet] empire's ideology' (p. I63). As in the case of other writers on Russian nationalism, some of Cohen's classifications thus remain cryptic. For instance, he writes that, in I990, the 'Ukrainian Communist party faced the real possibility of a split between a nationalist (left) and and internationalist (right) wing' (p- I32).

The latter omission seems to be connected to Cohen's third failure: to explain adequately why the Soviet Union -in distinction to other empires broke up relatively peacefully. Cohen himself points to a further important idiosyncrasy and speaks even of a 'sui generis situation' when mentioning that,

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574 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

in distinction to other cases of national liberation, the anti-Soviet liberation movements 'did not adopt the oppressors' organization and strategy' (p. I 59). Cohen profoundly misinterprets Gorbachev's intentions and policies as an attempt 'to rationalize imperial control' (p. I63), and fails to see that it was exactly Gorbachev's skilful dismantling of the imperial structure from above which explains the peacefulness of the transition. What made the Soviet empire different from other empires was that one aspect of its legitimizing ideology namely a liberal interpretation of classical Marxism - provided the discursive space for a more sincerely egalitarian understanding of the character and purpose of the 'Union of Soviet Socialist Republics'.

Cohen has taken an important first step in bringing together theoretical perspectives on empires with the Russian case. However, truly comprehensive explanatory and taxonomic schemes for the interpretation of the Soviet period in particular are still missing.

Department of Histoy A. UMLAND Free University of Berlin

Jones, Clive. Soviet Jewish Al?yah, I989-92: Impact and Implications for Israel and the Middle East. Frank Cass, London, I 996. ix + 244 pp. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?30.00.

THIS is a useful book with a wealth of detail about the impact of Soviet Jewish migration (aliyah) to the state of Israel. Like the Soviet olim (immigrants) themselves, however, it occasionally suffers from a clear sense of identity.

Jones asserts the utility of a transnational model to explain the aliyah phenomenon. This model rejects the singular role of states as the dominant actors in world affairs. Asserting that society is autonomous from the state, the model emphasizes the impact on state behaviour of individuals, companies, and special interest groups. Migration from the USSR is just such a transnational phenomenon, born of the vagaries of Israeli internal politics, with its variegated pressures, and the intricacies of international relations.

The international context of Soviet aloyah was the determination of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to secure a benign international environment for his efforts at perestroika. This goal was pursued by permitting the departure of virtually all Soviet Jews and their families who wished to leave. Due to changing political circumstances, the preferred destination, the United States, was closed to most emigrants. The bedrock operational principle of Israel as the Jewish national state, the so-called Law of Return, ensured that any person with Jewish origins (one female Jewish grandparent) could claim Israeli citizenship, along with all family members. Internal Israeli politics determined how stringently this principle was enforced.

The core of Jones's book is a narrative history of the process of emigration which brought over 400,000 former Soviet citizens into the Jewish state in the period I989-92. The nature of the emigrants, most of whom had little sense of Jewish identity, little knowledge of Judaism or Jewish tradition, and who often lacked even the requisite Jewish grandparent, necessitates a sociological examination of their sense of identification once in Israel. Jones compares and

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