Reviewed by NIGEL CLIVE in International Relations, Volume XIII, No 2, August 1996 -

Neil Melvin's valuable study of the role of the Russian-speaking communities in the development of national identity in six former Soviet republics grew out of a project organized by the Royal Institute of International Affairs. In each case, Melvin has provided the historical background to the contemporary problems. Within the Russian Federation, the Russian national question is of fundamental importance, because in certain areas, of which Chechenia is the best known, Russians constitute a minority. The disintegration of the USSR created a situation in which some 25 million Russian settlers found themselves living in newly independent states. The consequent notion of a Russian diaspora was integrated into the definition of the Russian nation. It was only with the Gorbachev reforms of the 1980s and the rise of nationalist politics that Russian identity began to undergo significant change. After the collapse of the USSR, the leading members of the democratic bloc, led by Yeltsin and his Foreign Minister Kozyrev, claimed that interference in the internal affairs of neighbours belonged to the imperial and Soviet past. But by the winter of 1992, the democratic defence of the settler communities had become a basic tenet of Russia's external and domestic policies. In his 1994 New Year address, Yeltsin described the diaspora as 'inseparable from us', but by the early summer this line was being toned down.
In the Baltic states, each republic has followed different approaches to the settler communities. In Estonia, the official line has shown willingness to support the cultural and political development of the non-Estonian community, while Latvia has been the most extreme case of Sovietization. However, from 1989 to 1991, the Russian-speaking populations in both states demonstrated increasing support for Baltic independence. The defeat of the August 1991 coup in Moscow caused many leading Latvian politicians to encourage non-Latvians to leave, and in the June 1993 elections the nationalist parties were easy winners while most of the Russian-speaking population were unable to vote. In Estonia, the Russian settlers developed as a far more integrated community, notably in the north-east. Indeed, the integration of non-Estonians was further accelerated by the parliamentary elections in early 1995. In contrast to Latvia where a requirement to work in the bureaucracy is fluency in Latvian, Estonians have built important bridges with their Russian speakers. The final military withdrawal in August 1994 signalled Moscow's commitment to independent Baltic states.
Romania and the Russian Federation have had territorial and diaspora claims on Moldova. Six days after the Moldovan declaration of independence on 27 August 1991, the five districts on the left bank of the Dniester declared a separate independence in the Moldovan Transdniestrian Republic (the PMR). The PMR then formed the economic core of the Moldovan political economy. Industry on the left bank was closely tied to the Soviet military industrial complex. The proposed absorption into Romania constituted a central challenge to this position. From the bloody Dniester conflict in 1992, which finally halted Romanianization, emerged Moldovan nationalism personified in the Agrarian Democratic Party, which triumphed in the 1994 elections. On the right bank, the Socialist unity alliance and the Russian Centre in Chisinau guarded the position of the Russian-speaking community. The engagement of Chisinau with the IMF and the World Bank meant that the right bank was becoming more vital economically than the unreformed PMR and has been helped to do so by pro-Moldovan settler organizations backed by the Russian government.
Large-scale Russian settlement of the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine has led many Russians to conclude that a distinct Ukrainian nationality is a fiction. Ukrainian nationalism dates primarily from the post-war years when Ukraine became a member of the United Nations; but in the 1970s and 1980s nationalist and anti-Soviet forces were kept in check. In 1989, the leading independent movement, Rukh, was formed which provoked anxiety in the Russified East, where the new business class supported privatization, reforging links to industry in Russia and protecting the Russian language. From early 1994, Crimea's leading economic actors began to distance themselves from the more radical pro-Moscow line of Russian nationalist groups. Indeed, since October 1993 the Russian government has generally supported the Ukrainian position on the Crimean issue, fearing that its secession would establish a dangerous precedent for areas such as Chechenia. There is a strong sense among Russians in the west that they are Central Europeans rather than Russians of the Russian Federation. Overall, by mid-1995, despite continuing chronic economic problems, Ukraine seemed unlikely to disintegrate.
A distinct Kazakh national identity has been steadily developing since the late 1950s. Kunaev became First Secretary in 1960 and was the first Kazakh to rise to membership of the Politburo. The perestroika years did much to accelerate the development of a Kazakh national identity and transform the nationalist movement into a political force. In December 1986, there were riots in Almaty when Kolbin, a Russian from Ulyanovsk, replaced Kunaev. But during the debate on sovereignty in October 1990, a bill was passed acknowledging that the Kazakh language should have a special place in Kazakhstan, leaving a diminished role for Russian language and culture. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kazakhstan became a single ethno-political unity and the Russian community in the north and east was left without an organization to speak on its behalf. President Nazarbaev's party, which has always strongly opposed dual citizenship, has profited from the immigration of some one million ethnic Kazakhs living in and beyond the former USSR and the exodus of some 200,000 Russians. With the settlers demanding unification with Russia, Russified Kazakhs calling for a confederation and Kazakh nationalists demanding even greater independence, Nazarbaev is confronted by a complex problem of balancing the promotion of links between the north-east and Russia and the retention of crucial elements of national sovereignty that will allow him to keep support in the key southern areas. Kazakhstan is the area in which the settler issue continues to pose the greatest challenge to peace and stability.
The central finding of Neil Melvin's study is that because of the poorly articulated character of Russian ethnicity, widespread conflict did not develop, as might have been expected, over the issue of Russian settler communities. There was no common understanding of what it meant to be Russian among the 25 million Russians living outside the Russian Federation. Moreover, the fact that many of the post-Soviet elite in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Moldova (after the war in 1992) were drawn from the former communist system, ensured that ethno-nationalism was often moderated by the stress which national communism placed on inter-ethnic accord. If, however, after the presidential elections in June 1996, Russia enters an expansionist or nationalist trajectory, the issue of the diaspora might well play a central role in reviving Russia as a 'Great Power' which needs to protect its diaspora by possible territorial annexations.
NIGEL CLIVE

I'm sure most of you have heard of the book by Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Scarlet Letter". Hawthorne weaves a tale of hardship, struggle, and victory as we follow the life of Hester Prynne, a woman who has had a child out of wedlock, whom she names Pearl. She is shunned from the community, refuses to confess the identity of Pearl's father, and is forced to wear a letter "A" on her dress, the symbol for adultery. Fighting against the stifling and hypocritical ways of Puritan life, Hester rebels in her own way, first by embellishing her letter with fine embroidery. This book gives us a look at what it is like to live in Puritan America from not just a woman's point of view, but a so-called "sinner's" point of view as well. As we read this book, we come to see how the letter becomes a symbol of strength and freedom for Hester, in a fight against facades of piety and hypocrisy. A very good novel, and Hawthorne does a wonderful job in the portrayal of his characters. Another little known fact, Hawthorne's grandfather was a judge at the Salem witch trials and Nathaniel was so embarassed by the affiliation, that he changed the spelling of his last name to distance himself from his grandfather and what he stood for. A very good novel, definitely something that everyone should read. Besides, don't you want to know the identity of Hester's lover? Go and read this book!

i originally ordered this book as a mistake, but I am glad that I decided to read it anyway. It presents all Political perspectives, analyzing each in an organized, yet intresting manner. She also presents ideas on Liberty, freedom and justice in America. Read this book, if you are trying to figure out who you are politically.

A nicely detailed account of the Napoleonic Wars. This book details the strategies of different Admirals used to attain victory. It discusses some of the different vessels used during the war. Almost every page at least has one picture on it. The book covers several battles fought during the war. It also gives details on the life of some the men (Officers mostly) who fought in the war. Presents a view of the politics of the nations involved. While most of the book discussed the Bristish, French and Spanish, the final chapters covered other nations not directly involved in the war.

This book was very helpful for doing research on Vietnam's economy. This book was very easy to understand and gave both overviews and in depth information on the economic and political situation before Doi Moi, how the transition took place and its results. This is a great book for non-economics majors to get research or information.

"Wayward Balloon" is a hard to find short story book about a young boy who gets carried in away in a helium balloon during a carnival in Bladen County North Carolina. I found it to be a cherished collectible as it is so hard to find, as well as, my interests are in Bladen County genealogy and folklore.

I thought I happened onto a real "find" when I spotted this book. Seemingly, some type of ignored, Rimbaud youth staring out plaintively from the cover... maybe this would be something new & different... an author with a real story. I was expecting to find a wealth of feeling and passion. I found a lot of boredom & wanting to get through the book just because I bought it. Some sort of desire, (except that the reader should suffer,) may have brought out some true meaning in the book instead of the excessive whining. The author put himself in all of his miserably poverty & we're expected to read the book & feel sorry for him. The only good thing about the experience is I won't ever waste my money on his "pity parade," again. Someone who writes a book about their own self-impsoed suffering as "true suffering" imaging himself to be such a "deep artist" is sicker than anything this author can impose on himself & his audience.

Due to an almost overwhelming hyper-valor indicative of a pure creative artist's soul, one that most certainly wouldn't have been shared with us had the author experienced a relatively stable upbringing, this novel has to rank among the dozen most
courageous and paradoxically depressing works of the 20th Century. No doubt whatsoever: Mr. Childish has been attacked by some hideous spirit-killing insect, the result of which has been the rotting away of that which shielded his innards from hordes of those tire-kicking readers among us. No doubt this was an exceptionally difficult and painful book for him to
birth. And as necessary for him to get out of himself as was D-DAY so painful and critically needed more than a half century back.

More than anything, Mr. Childish displays with this work a quite possibly terminal case of the sad sads. It's up to readers not to shirk, not to shy away from exceedingly depressing books which are in every other sense magnificent triumphs of a delicate, sensitive, and very alive artist. Presently, Knut Hamsun Billy Childish is not. But he's on the way. Hamsun had to write for Nazis. There is a rightist tendency in some of Mr. Childish's finger pointing prose. May he grow out of this, manage his burning anger better in future volumes.
He's a fierce talent who needs to guard against rash judgments of others and their own works. Dig a little deeper before hating so fast and full. He'll discover the golden rule not so simple-minded after all.

Billy Childish an "underground" legend, has emerged as one of the true renaissance men of his, or any other, generation. His dedication to poetry, music, and painting has been astounding, and now he has managed to produce two novels, of which this one is the second. Childish's prose style, while contemporary, also will remind the reader of Knut Hamsun, the great Norwegian writer, and Dostoyevski's Notes from the Underground. This novel enters the pain of youth, taking you right into the middle of an anguished young misfit. However, there is sly subtle humor which constantly runs through the undertones of the book, sometimes inducing out and out laughter. And, as with all of Childish's work, Notebooks of a Naked Youth leaves one with a sense of, despite bitterness, a search for something more than the mundane, something perhaps beautiful.

This book is scarey. I read it to find out what they are teaching our kids. It was assigned reading. It advocates the abandondment of our constitutional system of checks and balances that has made us the greatest nation on earth. "Our eighteen-century Constitution has become a major obstacle to achieving democratic government in the twenty-first century" (pg34) - really? The author would prefer a socialist state. The radical left, running our schools, love it and teach this garbage. Why is it one is considered a right wing extremist to want to defend our constitution and have it taught to our kids? He makes broad accusations with no data to back up his statements: "During this period, most Americans were clearly dissatisfied......" (pg47) This is a two star only because it is well written and a window for us all to see the ultimate liberal agenda.

William E. Hudson has written an eloquent, insightful, and well-thought critique of the United States system of representative democracy. Hudson confronts the challenges to American democracy raised by campaign finance, the media, radical individualism, and the national security state. Hudson does not shy away from full fledged confrontation with the complacent stereotypes of American politics; instead, he utilizes his sharp wit and insight to cut through the layers of tacit consent which usually shield and protect our system of government to write a book about government as it really is. In an era when understandings about government are shrouded in assumptions and soporifisms, Hudson peels back the layers to expose the American political system and the central problems it carries with it.

The prospective buyer of "Battlecruisers" by John Roberts should be warned not to expect too much from this book. First, it's only about the British battlecruisers. All other navies are ignored. Secondly, it's a design history. The text is a synopsis of the Admiralty's meetings dealing with the design of these controversial vessels. Little of that controversy, or of that surrounding its source, Admiral Jackie Fisher, sparks this prose. I found it dry and quite uninteresting. Once the story of the blueprints is told, Roberts' interest wanes. None of the elan of these unique vessels shines through this book. Those who manned their fragile hulls are forgotten; this is not their story. Indeed, in its design tables and rough sketches this book deals more with ships that weren't built, rather than those that were.

Most disturbing is the lack of scale line drawings to illustrate the vessels' appearance. Yes, Roberts has drawn a wonderful 1:200 scale plan of Lion-class Queen Mary provided as a separate double-sided sheet, a couple of nice detail drawings, and sketches of armor layout. But there are no other drawings to show the appearance of the other six classes of British battlecruisers. This is an unforgivable omission in a book of this price and this pretentious title. What this book does offer is 80 large, nicely reproduced b/w photographs, 47 of which are credited to the author's collection. These 47 are not the usual collection of Imperial War Museum photos and were new to my eye.

Aside from the backroom discussions leading to their design, there is little here for the historian. Aside for the photos and the large-scale drawing of Queen Mary there is nothing here for the modeler.

_Battlecruisers_ is, first and foremost, a design history of the British battlecruisers developed immediately before and after the First World War. As any student of naval history knows, battelcruisers combined large guns with high speed (and, consequently, light armor) in a package which some felt would eventually replace the battleship. This, of course, did not happen, and even 80 years later there is a considerable disagreement over these "greyhounds of the sea."

As somone who likes getting into the gritty details of ship designs, I found _Battlecruisers_ to be an interesting book. Unfortunately, though, it's also a short book, a mere 128 pages (plus fold-out blueprints). This is a shame, as while the book of necessity mentrions some of the controversy surrounding these ships, it does not delve nearly deeply enough into the basic rationale for the ships as expressed by their creator, Lord Fisher. On the other hand, one could make the argument that such details are out of place in a design history, and furthermore that Fisher himself was never able to clearly articulate their rationale in anything other than pithy phrases such as "speed is armor."

If you are a familiar with the battlecruiser controversy, then I recommend this book. If you are not familair with it, I would suggest reading the section on the Battle of Jutland in John Keegan's _The Price of Admiralty_, and then reading _Battlecruisers_ concurrently with the relevant chapters in Robert Massie's _Dreadnought_.

When I was small I inherited my Father's WONDER BOOK OF THE NAVY. Written probably in the mid 1930's THE WONDER BOOK gave me a comprehensive overlook at a vanished fleet: lots of pictures, clear, comprehensive text covering every class of Royal Navy warship & all aspects of service life. I get the feeling that Brown may have tried to do a WONDER BOOK for grown-ups, and if so he has failed. What we have here is a nice "coffee-table book" with lots of black and white photos of a broad range of ships, but there is little in-depth coverage of anything (the two title warships are particularly slighted -NELSON gets one shot-from-a distance and two partial photos, VANGUARD maybe three or four) Battleships as a whole get only 15 pages of text and photos, destroyers by contrast get 20. While it can certainly be argued that neither NELSON nor VANGUARD had particularly stellar service records, they did represent important (and at least in the case of NELSON, peculiar) examples of warship design, and it would have been nice to hera a good deal more about them. Also missing from the text is any real discussion of the effectiveness and/or limitations of deign in action -we would have benefitted from hearing more about the fates of given warships. While there is a chapter on "battle damage" it tends to focus exclusively on physical damage to structures with little attention to crew or performance. Nowhere do I find much discussion of the human element, and, especially given the RN's remarkable ability to stay at sea for long periods under often hideous conditions it would have been very interesting to hear more about how the nature of the ships made this possible if not exactly "fun". The chapter on inter-war modification of existing ships is a real teaser -there are various coy references to what might or might not have been learned from WWI or post-war tests, but I felt that I would have to go elsewhere for any real understanding. Again, more detailed discussion of the fates of specific ships would have been most instructive. In summary: Interesting? yes. Comprehensive? by no means.

It's always a pleasure to see Brown's insider perspective on British design. In this book, he takes the opportunity to heap praise on some of his predecessors and nose about in their memoirs for hints of their thoughts on nascent designs. There is little effort here to provide a systematic survey of post-WWI designs--which I would like to have seen--but there is a sufficiency of substance and a liberal sprinkling of anecdotes. This is not a great book, but it is informative and enjoyable. My main complaint is that it tends toward the pricey.