The okapi was discovered in 1901 and is sometimes called the forest giraffe. Little was known about it until recently; it lives in the rainforest of the Democratic Republic of Congo (previously known as Zaire). The okapi is very unique and only about 200 are found in captivity; wild populations are threatened. This is the first book in English about this endangered species. The book brings together all that is known about the okapi in a very readable format and is illustrated with lovely drawings by one of the authors. The book is introduced by renowned scientist Dr. Jane Goodall; ALL royalties are used in the country of Congo-Zaire to preserve the rainforest, the okapi and all the other plants and animals which call this place home.

If you are a young conservative and looking for a justification for Francoism and the uprising of 1936, this is the book for you. That being said, this book is a good counterpoint to moderate leftist treatments of the period, such as those by Gabriel Jackson and Paul Preston. Robinson did thorough research, knows his subject, and tells a good tale.

The Republic itself was eventually completely polarized between far-left and -right, and the books on the period reflect those divisions. If you really want to know about the period, read this book--but only accompanied by some Jackson or Preston!

For anyone interested in the history of the tabacco industry in the dominican republic this is the book for you. For many years this dominican industry was ignored by all, but with the surge in popularity of hand-rolled cigars it has leaped to the forefront.

Mr Baud gives a detailed and intuitive account of the development of this industry.

Hopefully the next edition will have a foreword on the current state of the industry and the effect that its early development had.

A highly detailed book, using pottery, to present the
history of this area. Lots to read, but sometimes boring.
It was an okay book, but try another one before you get
this one. Unless you are looking for something very
specific.

Crossman's book was written in the nineteenthirties but is still
thought provoking. He analyses Plato's influence on today's institutions.

Particularly revealing is the chapter "Plato looks at British Democracy" which calls into doubt that we live in a
true democracy. After all, in which sense can the people be said to rule? Only in the most abstract one when we compare representative democracy with direct democracy in Athens.
Rather, today we have elite rule, justified by the occasional election.

This is an important book for any person intersted in western civilization and it's ideologies.

This book is now out of print and hard to find. After I went to Georgia, I started tracking down all the books I could find on the country, and managed to get hold of a copy. If you can find one, it's worth reading.

Mary Russel's book is somewhat bizarrely written-- it's part travelogue (her stories of dealing with bureaucracy will resonate well with ANYONE who's been to the former soviet republics), part historiography (her research on Georgian and Soviet history is solid, but not presented in any logical or chronological format), and part cultural biography (with heavy delving into Georgian and classical mythology-- Jason and the Argonauts and whatnot).

The book is somewhat annoying in that it doesn't seem to follow chronological order of any kind; the organization is radial, based around the cities she visited, with topics coming off of each place. But she's got a great eye for description, and her overall view of Georgia, as well as her descriptions of Georgians and their customs, was pretty much on point.

Reading this book made me want to go back to Georgia.

I couldn't decide if I'd have liked the book as much if I hadn't been to Georgia, and didn't already have a fairly substantial background in Soviet politics and history. But my final conclusion was that it was worth reading one way or the other: it's light, a quick read, and fairly much packed with information, albeit poorly organized.

Kitschelt et al. produced an impressive comparative analysis of postsocialist party systems in four Eastern European countries (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Bulgaria). The book specifically focuses on such problems as political representation, programmatic competition, etc., and provides the necessary theoretical framework as well as abundant data. Ultimately, the authors try to assess the impact of different political configurations on the quality of democracy. What requires a special commendation, is the great number of diagrams and tables, thoroughly commented in the text but still providing the reader with the freedom of his own interpretation. The employed methodology includes political elite and electorate surveys, factor analytical and regression techniques, as well as a few indexes whose meaning sometimes is not very obvious. Although all analyses are based on people's opinions and perception, the authors contrast this data with a number of objective economic indicators. Most data is of 1993-1998, but the recent political changes are also mentioned. Overall, this book is an interesting, thought-provoking reading and a must for students of political and social transformation in the Central and Eastern Europe.

Nazpary's remarkable book surveys the appalling effects of a real counter-revolution. Since 1990, Kazakh workers' rights to jobs, wages, welfare, free education, pensions and savings, have all been ripped away. Their access to cheap housing, electricity, gas, phones, transport, health care, childcare, sport, arts, libraries, have all gone. In the 1980s and 1990s, active NATO and IMF interventions enforced capitalism in Kazakhstan, grabbing oil, gas and metals for firms like Shell and British Gas. 15% of foreign investment is British, 23% South Korean, 29% US. Theft of public property through privatisation has closed factories and destroyed jobs: engineering and agricultural outputs both halved between 1995 and 1998.

This is what happens when the working class lets go of its controls over society, its party and trade unions.

As a young Kazakh woman said, "Before, in the Soviet time, there were moral limits and the authorities looked after them. There were high moral standards ... People were truthful. They were brought up in a good way. But today people have become like savage animals. They behave according to the law of the jungle."

Now violent and corrupt mafiosi, newly freed, traffic in drugs and sex, and become the new rich, while for the workers, there is only loss, insecurity, growing ethnic and gender tensions and huge growths in poverty and migration. Capital goes global; workers are ghettoised. The workers rightly see all these evils as resulting from the infliction of capitalism. Nazpary notes the very strong 'Soviet patriotism' among the mass of the people, while the new rich view the Soviet era only as tyranny. He details the networking of family and friends in the scrabble for scarce goods, but as he notes, "tragically and paradoxically, networking as a response to the chaos perpetuates it."

In the FSU as whole, an estimated 4.7 million more people have died since 1990 as a direct result of the counter-revolution. As world capitalism, unrestrained by the USSR's existence, grows more brutal and corrupt, Kazakhstan is just one instance of problems common to workers across the world.

Kazakhstan's workers need to make a new revolution.

Reviewed by VICTOR B. KIRILLOV in International Relations, Volume XIII, No 1, April 1996. This is a transitional volume consisting as it does of two realities, one that was and one that is about to be. It is the result of a research project headed by A. J. Motyl under the auspices of Columbia University's W. Averell Harriman Institute for the Advanced Study of the Soviet Union. The book's aim is to throw some light on the processes of change in the USSR through a systematic analysis of the main thematic determinants of the national factor within the Soviet Union.
The authors pay a great deal of attention to the modern stage of Sovietology and perspectives of its development. In their view, a thorough study of the post-Soviet nations and their new states is needed, since their role in the dramatic collapse and drastic changes of the USSR is important. With the help of historical and analytical research methods, these twelve well-known political scientists attempt to illuminate certain lacunae of the national question in the former USSR.
G. Gleason devotes his chapter to an analysis of the national factor in connection with the development of Soviet studies. He notes that the Soviet experiment would not only fail to eliminate national enmity in terms of class-based brotherhood but would also itself become the victim of ethnic discord. Gleason believes that the collapse of the economic policy based on total centralism and the denial of private property was one of the main reasons for the reorganizing process in the USSR. The natural disappearance of class values was another reason. Under those conditions, nationalism was the only means of mass mobilization. As a rule, in such cases, any process develops in the following way: multiformity - nationalism - national self-determination - democracy - freedom for the people. However, the author thinks that all processes within the former Soviet Union developed in a much more complicated manner. It would, therefore, be wrong to use this scheme for post-Soviet nations. He also gives a short sketch of the main periods in the development of Soviet studies. The author criticizes some of its drawbacks, in particular, the absence of interest in the concerns of local and national groups.
Walker Connor analyses the ideological, economic, social and cultural aspects of Soviet policy toward non-Russian peoples, from Lenin to Gorbachev. Examining the evolution of the multinational state, the author notes that there was a wide discrepancy between the theory of official declarations on complete national equality within the Soviet Union and practice. Strategic considerations were given the highest priority when allocating investment goods. Although living standards improved substantially in the Asian sector as a result of the policy of economic equality of all nations and people, there were huge discrepancies between the European and Asian sectors. Since the 1930s cultural policy actively encouraged the spread of the Russian language. In order to increase the penetration of Russian into the national republics, the authorities approved internal migration. Through the cadre policy, the Soviet leadership opposed any nationalization of authorities; the upper echelon of the military and the KGB, for example, were invariably of Slavic background.
Ronald J. Hill examines the combination of Marxist ideology and the national question from Marx to Gorbachev. The author notes the complexity of Marxist doctrine in relation to the national question. Marxism was unable to answer such questions as when to support the right of nations to self-determination or what to do with growing national movements. Lenin's national policy was also contradictory. On the one hand it imposed the Russian language and culture on other peoples (the social Darwinism of Marxist thinking), while on the other, through the encouragement of the development of national languages and cultures, it was strongly against Russian chauvinism. The subordination of national interests to class interests and the common development of material wealth for all enabled ethnically-based antagonisms to be overcome. The leading part in this process was taken by the Slavs. It promoted notions of their superiority leading to a feeling of inferiority in terms of other ethnic groups. The effects of the failure of the nationality policy and the collapse of the state led to a build-up of grievances against the migrants which has been reflected in new discriminatory regulations.
Neil Harding is sure that the former Soviet Union is at the point of transition from its old mode of legitimacy to a new one. The crisis lies in the fracturing of the deep structure of ideology and the real power relations of society. The economic mode of legitimacy was based on domination and subordination, with the nomenklatura in charge of state control at all economic levels. It aroused discord between nations in terms of economic problems leading to corruption and a breakdown in the social contract which Gorbachev failed to remedy.
The chapter by John N. Hazard is a historic sketch of the integration of the non-Russian territories within the former Empire. The author examines the peculiarities of their status and Lenin's attitude towards their integration in terms of the amalgamation of the ethnic republics into the RSFSR. Stalin's heir, Khrushchev, gave priority to economic unity over nationalistic diversity, while Brezhnev raised the problem of creating a united Soviet people. Gorbachev's attempts to improve national relations led to the reorganization of the USSR and the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which became the best form of alliance.
The most interesting chapter in the book is that by Mark R. Bessinger on elites and ethnic identities in Soviet and post-Soviet politics. It is highly analytical, original and deep. The author discusses the peculiarities of the multiethnic structure of the Soviet elite, its development and the interaction of national elites with the centre. He recognizes the role of better education, new generations and the changes in the structures of national elites (in favour of a titular nation) which helped to destabilize the Soviet system under Gorbachev. At the same time local elites became autonomous and broke with the centre. Gorbachev's attack against the bureaucracy was supported in distant regions as a result of anti-Russian sentiment. 'Ethnic mobilization' grew. New elites took power in republics and were able to keep it as a result of their ability to mobilize public opinion. The author predicts a struggle among the new populist politicians and representatives of big business.
Amy Knight studies the influence of the political police in the management of the national question. She singles out a few periods, such as the period of coercion, i.e. from the October revolution till Stalin's death. After 1953 the political police, while not eschewing coercion, embarked on a policy of persuasion, a process which was improved under Gorbachev. The author also gives a thorough analysis of the national structure of the KGB and its central apparatus.
Zvi Gitelman describes development, or modernization, which can help in an understanding of Communism, since authentic Communist revolutions took place in the least developed countries - Russia, Yugoslavia, Albania and China. Development, in this context, meant improving capitalism into socialism and communism, at which stage nations would vanish. Communists believed in the possibility of controlling these processes but life itself refuted such ideas.
Richard E. Ericson emphasizes the fact that the Soviet economic structure did not lend itself to the amelioration of ethnic tensions. Furthermore, since the 1930s it systematically distorted inter-ethnic relations, aggravating old animosities and creating new grievances. The author examines the main economic periods in the Soviet Union, the reforms and counter-reforms and their influence on the national question, culminating in Gorbachev's attempt to change the eco