Book Reviews 511

The Russian Revolutionary Movement iu the 188Os, Derek Offord(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), xvii + 213 pp., E22.50.

In The Ru~~~~~ Reva~~tio~ary pavement in the 188&, Derek Offord chronicles the history of Russian radicalism during what is generally considered to be the dark age in the evolution of the radical intelligentsia. Contrary to conventional Western views, Offord argues that the revolutionary tradition remained vital in the 1880s. According to Offord, this decade served as a bridge between the Populist traditions of the 1870s and the Social Democratic movement of the 1890s. Despite tsarist repression, epigonies of Narodovol- chestvo and Chernoperedelchestvo, student and working class kruzhki, and incipient, yet still ideologically amorphous, Social Democratic groupings dotted the landscape of underground Russia in the capitals and in many provincial cities. During this decade, ideological distinctions between the various strains of Populism and emerging Russian Social Democracy, outside of the remaining groups of adherents of Naro~voichestvo, tended to be blurred as radicals came to grips with the failures of the 187Os, the harsh realities of the 188Os, and changing socio-economic conditions in city and countryside. By the end of the decade, radicals had shifted their attention from the peasant to the working class and tended to accept the necessity of political struggle as an essential item on the agenda of radical action. Offord views this period as one of great continuity with the previous and subsequent decades and thus concludes that the distinction between the Populist and Social Democratic traditions should not be exaggerated.

The intention of the author is to fill a lacuna in the existing Western literature on the Russian radical tradition. While the history of Populism and Social Democracy has received ample attention in the West in the now classic studies of Martin Malia, France Venturi, Leopold Haimson, J.L.H. Keep and other representatives of that first, pioneering generation of Western scholars of Russian history, the history of Russian radicalism in the 1880s has remained largely uncharted territory. An exploration of Russian radicalism in the I88Os, therefore, is a welcome contribution to the field.

Unfortunately, Offord somehow managed to overlook an earlier work on the same topic: Norman Naimark’s Terrorists and Social Democrats: The Russian Revolutionary Movement Under Alexander ZZZ(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983). As a consequence, Offord’s otherwise tine study largely retells the story told by Naimark. Offord does explore several aspects of the story deliberately neglected by Naimark, such as the evolution of Social Democracy in emigration and Lenin’s first steps as a revoiutionary, but these parts of the story are rather familiar by now from the works of Samuel Baron, Abraham Ascher, N. Valentinov, and other students of early Russian Social Democracy. However, Offord does succeed in presenting a slightly more balanced view of Lenin’s early years by refusing to categorise Lenin as either a Jacobin in the supposed tradition of Chemyshevsky or a precocious Marxist. Instead, he views the early Lenin as representative of the somewhat blurred and transitional amalgam of Populist and Social Democratic thinking so characteristic of the times.

Offord’s most important conctusions echo those of Naimark. Like Naimark, Offord takes issue with Richard Pipes’ earlier conclusions concerning relations between workers’ kruzhki and representatives of the intelligentsia. Both Naimark and Offord agree that there was a good deal of cooperation, rather than distrust and hostility, between workers and members of the intelligentsia and that the motivations of workers and members ofthe intelligentsia in the krwzhki were not nearly as divided between basic education and revolutionary doctrine as Pipes once suggested. This conclusion is important because it sheds new light upon the origins of the workers’ kruzhki and the kruzhki phase of Social Democracy in the 1890s. Offord also follows Naimark in detailing the shift among 1880s radicals from propaganda among peasants to propaganda among workers and from classical Populist anti-statist sentiment to new concerns (linked to Tkachev and

512 Book Reviews

~arD~v~~chestvu) with political struggle and political rights. Where Offord departs from Naimark is in his much less sangine analysis of the mindset of Russian radicals in the 1880s. While Naimark concludes that a consensus had arisen among revolutionary groups by the end of the 1880s that it was time to create a democratic, parliamentary Russia representative of all of Russia, Offord, in a perhaps more realistic fashion, concludes that the revolutionary tradition of the radical intelligentsia was kept alive throughout the course of this most difficult decade.

Despite his unfortunate neglect and consequent retracing of Naimark’s earlier work, Derek Offord has compiled a well-written and highly erudite history of the Russsian revolutionary movement in the 1880s. Offord’s study is extremely well-documented and somewhat more balanced in treatment of controversial issues than many of the standard Western and Soviet accounts. This study is a contribution to the history of the Russian radical tradition and will prove a useful addition to the seminar curriculum.

Lynne Viola State University of New York at Binghamton

Higher Education in the Federal Republic of Germany: Developments and Recent Issues, Ulrich Teichler (Center for European Studies, Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York/ Wissenschaftliches Zentrum fur Berufs- und Hochschulforschung der Gesamthochschule Kassel, Werkstattsberichte Bd 16, KasseV New York 19861, 174 pp.

Professor Ulrich Teichler has collected some of his articles concerning recent trends pertaining to the policy and organization of higher education in the Federal Republic of Germany. Being a well-known specialist in this field, his papers are highly informative.

In the first and most comprehensive article, Teichler deals with an important topic: How have German politicians and authorities tried to cope with structural problems caused by the dramatic increase in the number of students in the post-World War II era? Evidently, the problems have been similar to those in many other European and North American countries, and the same sorts of solutions have been in fashion everywhere. A common saying in the 1960’s had it that the number of highly qualified professionals and scientists had to increase very substantially if Germany were not to lag behind other nations. In the 70’s the opposite fear, namely over-production of academics and the lowering of higher education at standards, dominated policy discussions and reform activity. To-day, once again, we have a predominance of the idea that professional skill and scientific research are the first prerequisites for industrial and social development, even if support to higher education has become much more selective, favouring various areas of high techology, especially informatics.

Teichler demonstrates how two types ofsolution have been tried in different periods. At face value they seem to be mutually incompatible. The first aims at a comprehensive, the second at a diversified system of higher education. Both strategies have been propagated with a series of good arguments. The comprehensive or integrated model, which was very popular during the later sixties, rests on a claim of promoting equality, whereas the value of the diversified model, according to its proponents lies in the way it matches the existing diversity of talents and promotes a variety of skills. Both models claim advantages in terms of utilization of resources.

The discussion alluded to here can be found in every industrialized country; everywhere one finds similar shifts and splits in ideotogy relating to higher education. Everywhere too, there have been some discussions about advantages and disadvantages of Numerus Clausus. A key issue that has been debated in the alleged lowering of standards in modern