Canadian Slavonic Papers

Soviet Politics and Society in the 1970's by HENRY W. MORTON; RUDOLF L. TÖKÉSReview by: Paul A. Smith, Jr.Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 18, No. 2 (June 1976), pp. 199-200Published by: Canadian Association of SlavistsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40867226 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 22:04

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.

.

Canadian Association of Slavists and Canadian Slavonic Papers are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.143 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 22:04:29 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BOOK REVIEWS

Soviet Politics and Society in the 197 O's. Edited by henry w. morton and Rudolf L. TOKÉS. Don Mills, Ont.: Collier-MacMillan, 1975. $14.25.

This Festschrift by a group of John Hazard's former students at Columbia University is admirable as a tribute to Hazard and his generation of scholars, noteworthy as evidence of the development of the field of Soviet studies, and useful as a model for the kinds of conceptual approaches and methodologies which contemporary practitioners in this field should be applying today. If the generation of scholars here represented will be as diligent in training disciples as was their mentor, John Hazard, they, too, will be rewarded by having a future reviewer point out the improvements which their students' work represents over their own. If not, they will suffer an even worse iate - that of being forgotten. John Hazard, whatever his faults, will not be forgotten.

The authors' purpose, in the editors' words, is to "produce a work that not only frees Soviet studies from the dangerously static and overly impres- sionistic interpretations of the past, but also to provide a fresh analysis of the field by bringing it in touch with new realities and suggesting ways of understanding them." This purpose has been accomplished, despite some of the unevenness that is inevitable in any work authored by a collective.

Three general themes are addressed: 1) the dynamics of Soviet political institutions, with emphasis on elements of conflict and change (Tokés on dissent; Grey Hodnett on the politics of cotton-growing in Central Asia; and Barbara Wolfe Janear on women and Soviet politics); 2) the relation- ship between politics, society, and welfare, with particular attention to shift- ing patterns of stability and reform (Morton on Soviet housing policies; Peter Juviler on crime; David Cattell on consumer welfare; and Ted Friedgut on "Who Governs Kutaisi?"); and 3) the international develop- ment and ideological impact of the Soviet model (David Albright on the Third World and Paul Shoup on Eastern Europe; with a review and critique, by William Taubman, of traditional and contemporary approaches to the problem of conceptualizing the Soviet system).

All of the contributions are soundly conceived, well researched, and (mostly) well written. The Taubman piece is a model of its kind. For beginner and expert alike, it offers a precise and insightful guide to the current state of the art and science of Sovietology at a high level of abstrac- tion. At the other, more specific end of the spectrum, Grey Hodnett's piece on the politics of cotton production in Central Asia demonstrates admirably the uses of a detailed case study as a method of reaching a larger under- standing of the problems of politics, economics, centralization, and regional autonomy, as well as of Russian and Central Asian nationalism, which char- acterize the present stage of Soviet development.

Compared to the work of their teacher, John Hazard, the work of the Morton and Tokés team is noteworthy on two counts: first, the younger

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.143 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 22:04:29 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

200 I Revue Canadienne des Slavistes

scholars' commitment to Hazard's tradition of careful scholarship based on respect for empirical evidence; and second, their refusal to be bound by the essentially static and, to this reviewer's mind, overly legalistic approach to Soviet reality evident in Hazard's work. In short, Hazard's disciples have done what Hazard would have done in his time had he had the benefit of the newer conceptual tools available today and had he been describing the Soviet reality of today rather than that of Stalin's day. A scholar like John Hazard, who in Chaucer's phrase "will gladly teach and gladly learn," can ask for no better reward.

[Paul A. Smith, Jr., Washington, D.C.]

Soviet-Middle East Relations. Vol. I, Soviet-Third World Relations, charles b. molane. London: Central Asian Research Centre, 1973. 126 pp. $15.00.

Soviet-Asian Relations. Vol. II, Soviet-Third World Relations, charles b. mclane. London: Central Asian Research Centre, 1973. 126 pp.

Soviet-African Relations. Vol. Ill, Soviet-Third World Relations, charles b. mclane. London: Central Asian Research Centre, 1974. 190 pp. $15.00.

These three volumes present an impressive body of information on Soviet political, military, economic, and cultural dealings with some three score African, Asian, and Middle Eastern countries since Stalin's death. Soviet- Middle Eastern Relations covers Soviet relations with sixteen nations in the Middle East and North Africa for the period 1954-70. Soviet-Asian Rela- tions embraces fourteen countries from Afghanistan to the Philippines up to 1971, and Soviet-African Relations includes thirty-six sub-Saharan states to 1972.

Each volume begins with a brief survey of Soviet policies in the region concerned and then proceeds on a country-by-country basis to list chrono- logically a variety of events in bilateral relations. These chronologies are in each case introduced by a sketch of relations between the Soviet Union and the country concerned. (The Laos entry, for instance, is introduced by five large double-columned pages of text which survey Soviet moves in the period examined and provide some perspective on the choronological list that follows - much of it blank space, because there is very little to record under the economic relations and only slightly more under the cultural.) The chronologies are followed by notes which refer to points made in the introductory sketch but not to events presented in the chronology. Each volume also offers a set of tables displaying annual developments in the political, military, trade, and aid relations of the USSR with the regional states. A bibliography for each emphasizes western source material.

Specialist and beginner alike should definitely benefit from Professor McLane's work. The specialist needing a quick picture of Soviet relations with Dahomey, or the undergraduate writing an essay on the Middle East, for example, has only to turn the page to secure much useful data. Similarly,

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.143 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 22:04:29 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions