Soviet Sport: Mirror of Soviet Society. by Henry W. MortonReview by: Robert A. FeldmesserSlavic Review, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Jun., 1965), pp. 362-363Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2492363 .

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362 Slavic Review

specialties (Uchebnye plany po spetsial'nostiam trysshikh tekhnicheskikh i sel'skokhoziaistvennykh uchebnykh zavedenii [Moscow: "Sovetskaia Nauka," 1956]). The volume under review is a cover-to-cover translation of this reference book supplemented by a brief note on Soviet education (Ap- pendix 1) and four university curricula: applied mathematics, physics, pure mathematics, and chemistry (Appendix 2)-for which neither the source nor the effective year (1955?) is given.

Several of the curricula from the original of this translation have pre- viously appeared in American studies or compilations of documients on Soviet education. In no case known to this reviewer, however, were the heretofore available reproductions of uchebnye plany given verbatimi, as they are in the present translation. In comparison with any similar collec- tions published in English, Soviet Technological Curricula is therefore the largest, most complete, and most nearly accurate.

It is, nevertheless, not entirely free of errors. Nearly all of the numierous recorded errata of the original Russian publication have been eliminated in this translation, but it appears that those which were not among the listed errata in the original have not in all cases been corrected. Fortunately the few minor oversights can in most cases be readily spotted in the course of a detailed examination of a particular uchebnyi plan.

A regrettable feature of this otherwise carefully prepared and valuable document is the absence of a glossary. By following a glossary the translator could have avoided using one single English term for definitely distinct Russian terms (for example, "prospecting" for poiski and also for razvedka). A glossary would also have told the reader that, for example, "health sci- ence" was chosen by the translator for the Russian term santekhnika (sanitary engineering) or "light energy" for luchistaia energiia (radiant energy).

The user of this prime source now made available in English will of course note that it is wholly applicable only to the mid-1950s. Many changes have taken place following the 1958 school reform both in the subject content and in the nomenclature of "specialties." For example, the latest (1965) published list of the industrial and agricultural specialties names 219 titles, many of them introduced since 1955, instead of the 164 included in the 1955 publication. Furthermore it should be remembered that beginning with 1964-65 the terms of instruction for the specialties listed in the book have been materially reduced.

Center for International Studies ALEXANDER G. KOROL

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

HENRY W. MORTON, Soviet Sport: Mirror of Soviet Society. New York: Collier Books; London: Collier-Macmillan, 1963. Pages 221. 95 cents, paper. "Russian Civilization Series."

Though it is presented here in a somewhat jumbled fashion, the history of Soviet sport plainly enough reflects the vicissitudes of Soviet society as a whole: the enthusiastic programs of the early postrevolutionary years, the sordid struggle for organizational control during the NEP, centralization

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Reviews 363

and purge under Stalin, and Khrushchev's transfer of control over sports activities to "voluntary public organizations" (which the author interprets to be-so far as sports are concerned-simply a new name for the Party), all complicated by the course of Soviet foreign policy. Moreover, the official "theory" of Soviet sport (which Morton for some reason calls its "sociology") is based on the expected doctrinal sources and emphasizes the value of sport as preparation for military and labor service and as training in Communist joyousness.

But other forces are at work as well, particularly with respect to two problems to which much attention is devoted in this book: the professional- ization of sports activities and the "mania" for records and victories. Morton seems unable to decide how far and in which respects these patterns can be explained by reference to mass culture, industrial society, and cold-war com- petition or are distinctively Soviet phenomena. These are intriguing ques- tions; the reader who is interested in them will not find a profound analysis in this book, but he will be provided with some of the information necessary in the search for answers.

Dartmouth College ROBERT A. FELDMESSER

Books on Communism: A Bibliography. 2d ed. Edited by Walter Kolarz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. Pages viii, 568. $4.80.

This book is the second edition, updated and enlarged, of a bibliography which was published in 1959 under the same title and edited by the late R. N. Carew Hunt. The first edition covered the years 1945-57, the present volume the years 1945-62. The Carew Hunt edition included about 1900 items. In the new edition, the late Walter Kolarz eliminated about 100 but added some 700 new items published during the years 1958-63. Thus this new edition lists about 2500 items.

It is to be regretted that the Foreword of the Carew Hunt edition (as well as the name of the first editor) was not included in the new edition. This inclusion would have called attention to the fact that the Carew Hunt bibliography was actually a continuation of Philip Grierson's Books on Soviet Russia, which appeared in 1943. This is important, as the title Books on Communism is somewhat misleading. The Carew Hunt edition and the present Kolarz edition cover both communism and the Soviet Union, with ample additions of titles on the Communist-dominated areas of Europe and Asia. Hence, this volume deserves to be brought to the attention not only of scholars and students interested in communism but of a large part of the academic community in general.

The contents of this useful bibliography are divided into 52 "subject and country sections," of which the first 5 deal with communism and the world Communist movement, the next 20 with the Soviet Union, the next 25.with communism and related questions in other countries, and the last 2 with official publications on communism and relations with the Soviet Union and the Communist bloc which have appeared in the United King- dom, the British Commonwealth, and the United States.

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