Russian Social Democracy: The Menshevik Movement, a Bibliography by Anna BourguinaReview by: Richard WortmanThe Library Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Jul., 1970), pp. 353-354Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4309952 .

Accessed: 18/06/2014 10:11

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.

.

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheLibrary Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 10:11:20 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVIEWS 353

hand, it seems likely that his collector's bias toward books as contrasted with serial publica- tions, and his decision to omit newspaper stories not available in books or magazine reprints, has resulted in the omission of many items of sig- nificant value to an understanding of the south- ern California deserts. The listing of these, and of scientific and technical works on the desert, remains as a worthy enterprise for another bib- liographer.

The descriptive comments on each title re- flect the fact that Edwards is a reader of his books as well as a collector of them, and that he knows the deserts, their history, and the books about them. They frequently show his personal interests but are no less useful be- cause of this, and often more interesting than a bare description would be.

The entries are arranged alphabetically by author, but the index lists all entries by title and also provides an approach by subject and by place name.

This is a most useful guide to the white man's encounter with the deserts of southern California, and to the beauties and fascinations of a landscape that many think of only as harsh, forbidding, and dangerous. It ought with- out question to be in every library from the Rockies west, and in every major library to the east.

GORDON WILLIAMS

Center for Research Libraries Chicago

Russian Social Democracy: The Menshevik Movement, a Bibliography. By ANNA BOUR- GUINA. Hoover Institution Bibliographical Series, no. 36. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover In- stitution on War, Revolution, and Peace, 1968. Pp. 391. $7.50.

History has always been unkind to the losers of great political struggles, and the Mensheviks are prototypal losers. Bound by scruples and a strict sense of the role history accorded to them, they were left helpless in a brutal his- torical situation where ruthless action was the key to success. The destiny of the leaders, men of extraordinary intellectual ability, was to watch from abroad as many of their premoni- tions of the future under Bolshevik rule were realized. History focused on the victors while, in the light of the inexorable course of events, their own role was overshadowed and seen only as an aspect of the grim accession to power of

their nrvals. Only in 1959, under the direction of the Inter-University Project on the History of the Menshevik Movement, was work begun assembling materials for a scholarly account of the evolution of Menshevism. Since there had been no previous research of this type, the task had to begin with the basic gathering and or- ganization of primary source materials, both writings from the past and oral accounts of the surviving Mensheviks. From this primary work, the first monographs have been written on the history of the movement.

Madame Bourguina's invaluable bibliography is part of this effort to reconstruct Menshe- vism's past. It is a superb scholarly tool for students of Menshevism and Russian Marxism, covering the period from the inception of social democracy in Russia through the Mensheviks' life abroad. It is actually a bibliography of sources for the history of Menshevism, for sec- ondary treatments-which to be sure are scant -are not included. The work is divided into two sections. The first and principal part index- es books, pamphlets, and articles by leading Mensheviks. Works are listed alphabetically by author according to specific periods (for ex- ample, 1903-7, 1914-17). Nearly all the works are in Russian, and many of them are exceed- ingly rare. Madame Bourguina's execution of this difficult task has been meticulous and ex- haustive. She cites multiple editions of works, including articles which are reprinted in books. In many cases she notes the content of an ar- ticle or connects it with a specific polemic.

The second section is a chronological index of the Menshevik periodical press, including collections of articles. The work here is equally thorough, indicating the period of publication, the editors, and the chief contributors. It would have been helpful had the contents of the col- lections of articles been included as well. Equal- ly valuable information is contained in the Ap- pendices, which list the publications of the illegal press, the periodicals of Trotskii and Plekhanov, and the periodicals of the Bund and the trade unions. Alphabetical indexes are provided for names, periodicals, and pseudo- nyms. The table of contents, as in most Russian books, is in the rear.

This volume will introduce the specialist in Russia and social democracy to a vast number of works by Mensheviks published in Russia and the West. It is to be regretted only that, having expanded the specialist's bibliographical horizons, Madame Bourguina did not indicate where he might find some of the rarer works, such as brochures by Martov from the late

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 10:11:20 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

354 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

nineteenth century. Since many of the works included exist in only a few collections, this might spare specialists considerable trouble. Nonetheless, this bibliography is an admirable piece of work and a must for all libraries serv- ing serious research on Russia and the Soviet Union.

University of Chicago RICHARD WORTMAN

The Christmas Story in Medieval and Renais- sance Manuscripts from the Spencer Collec- tion. By KARL Kup. New York: New York Public Library, 1969. Unpaginated. 55 plates. $7.50 (cloth); $5.00 (paper).

It is encouraging to find this book identifying itself as Spencer Publication number 1. If sub- sequent publications are on a similar scale and exhibit the same skill in reproduction and taste in text, the series will be worth following close- ly. This volume is at once a picture book guar- anteed sale at the Christmas season and a sound advertisement for the New York Public Li- brary's Spencer Collection.

As a Christmas book, it is interesting in its exploration of Old Testament sources, proph- ecies, and prefigurations. It is not a collection of Nativity scenes but an examination of a promise of hope. The book is divided into three parts: the Prophecies, the Life of the Virgin, and the Nativity. There are fifty-five illustra- tions from thirty-seven different manuscripts. The manuscripts range in date and origin from twelfth-century Bavaria to eighteenth-century Ethiopia. The variety in manuscript text is im- pressive, offering Rudolf von Ems's Weltchro- nik in German, 1402; the Gospels in Church Slavonic, also early fifteenth century; a Greek psalter, circa 1300; a Hebrew Bible dated 1294; a 1489 service book in Armenian; a Speculum humanae salvationis in Latin, circa 1410. There are pages from a 1577 Persian manuscript of Ishaq ibn Ibrahim's "Tales of the Prophets" and a seventeenth-century Cop- tic Synaxarion in Arabic. The most frequently represented-five reproductions on different scales-is a Bible historiie et vies des saints, France, circa 1300. Anyone familiar with the Spencer Collection manuscripts will look for the Tickhill Psalter; the page reproduced is the Tree of Jesse. From another extraordinary English manuscript, the Wingfield Horae et psalterium, circa 1450, come pages for the Vis- itation, the Shepherds, and the Garden En- closed.

Reproductions are in black and white. Color

would have priced the book out of ordinary range and probably could not have done justice to any of these manuscript pages. There is still some reason to see the originals, while the de- tails of composition, the elements of style, and the value of such a carefully selected group of manuscripts are clear from the black and white reproductions.

The page of text facing each reproduction comprises a passage from the Bible, the liturgy, or some other early source, an elaboration on the subject, and description of the manuscript itself. This material is a pleasure to select and reproduce, and there is good rapport between Karl Kup and his scribes and illuminators. Jo- nah emerging from the whale in the Hebrew Bible is described as "joyfully grasping at leaves and plants," which is exactly what he is doing according to his thirteenth-century inter- preter. Such an unpromising subject as Malachi is surprisingly effective when found seated in a letter 0, "stiff-necked and cramped in posture of wild intensity," in a Prophetae minores et acta sanctorum from the monastery of Wein- garten, circa 1225. From a fifteenth-century Netherlands Horae beatae Mariae virginis, the choice is not one of the historiated initials but a quite beautiful border of flowers and butter- flies, with the reminder that these are not mere- ly decorative but highly symbolic. There are well-chosen examples of the formidable beasts that inhabit manuscript initials and borders, from the twelfth-century Psalterium and from a Dominicale et missale, Ferrara, 1463. In the midst of such wealth of ornamentation and illu- mination, a small Latin Bible of thirteenth- century France is opened to show four closely written columns-the words of Jeremiah.

A library has a responsibility to produce a reference book, however disguised as a gift book. The manuscripts are listed at the end with their shelf numbers. Karl Kup's notes, while intended to charm the general reader, do give the more serious student the information necessary to identify a manuscript as relevant to his research.

RUTH MORTIMER Harvard University

Systematic Analysis of University Libraries: An Application of Cost-Benefit Analysis to the M.I.T. Libraries. By JEFFREY A. RAFFEL and ROBERT SHISKO. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1969. Pp. xvi+ 107. $6.95. Another in the series of important works

emanating from the Massachusetts Institute of

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 10:11:20 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions