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553 Ab Imperio, 1/2004 Only some of these topics can be confined within the research interests of the scholar to whom they are ostensibly dedicated. For example, Christine Worobec’s excellent essay on East Slavic fertility rituals at the summer solstice is only tangentially related to Keep’s work on the politicization of the peasantry during the Russian revolutions. Similarly, Paul Dukes’ careful study of the diplomatic wrangling surrounding the 1922 Russo-Japanese Conference of Changchun contributes more to the memory of their mutual friend, George B. Tolmakoff, than to the discussion of the larger social and political issues confronted in Keep’s work on the Russian military. And it is surely mostly for reasons of chronology that a collection on Russian history begins with an essay on state-building and land-reform in seventeenth-century Sweden (Antti Kujala), an essay, furthermore, that makes no explicit mention of its undoubted significance to the historiographical issues surrounding the reforms of Peter the Great. That task is left to the editors of the festschrift and although their introduction does a good job of tying all of these varied pieces together and of drawing out their possible implications for scholars of Russia, it appears that the editorial choices that went into this collection reflect the overall goal of international inclusiveness rather than of topical relevance. Ernest A. ZITSER Российская историческая мо- заика. Сборник научных статей в честь Джона Кипа / Отв. ред. А. Л. Литвин. Казань, 2003. 294 с. (на рус. и англ. яз.). Библиография работ Дж. Кипа. ISBN 5-81850023 -3. The “mosaic” in the title of this festschrift honoring John L. H. Keep refers both to the diversity of that scholar’s interests in Russian history and to the eclecticism of the essays solicited by the editors of this collection . Like the multicolored and seemingly haphazard pieces of a mosaic, which can only be appreciated from a proper distance, the variegated individual contributions form a pattern that gives the reader an overall impression of the British historian, his scholarly work, and his professional contacts in the broader academic world. Indeed, under the capable editorship ofAlter Litvin, the book is as much a tribute to growing cooperation within the international community of historians of Russia as it is a monument to Keep’s collegiality and scholarly achievements. The contributors are as diverse as the topics of the essays collected, representing Keep’s colleagues, coworkers , and friends from Canada, the United States, Scotland, Israel, Switzerland, Finland, and Russia. 554 Рецензии/Reviews strength of local and religious solidarities and the relative weakness of ethnic identity should be of particular interest to the readers of this journal. The rest of the essays in this collection deal with the other great theme of Keep’s scholarly work: the rise, evolution, and decline of Russian social democracy. Israel Getzler ’s study of Georgii Plekhanov can very profitably be read together with I. Kh. Urilov’s survey of recent Russian historiography on the origins of Menshevism. Similarly, A. Sal’nikova’s essay on children’s reactions to the Sturm und Drang of 1917 offers a nice antipode to Alter Litvin’s piece on the politics of their grandchildren who are now debating whether or not to re-instate monuments to Feliks Dzerzhinskii toppled in 1991. This section is capped off by Carter Elwood’s re-assessment of newly released archival evidence about Inessa Armand’s illicit love affair with Lenin. Besides its indisputable scholarly interest, the essay by the prize-winning author of a biography of Armand constitutes a model of historical scholarship and careful reading, and is alone worth the trouble of ordering this volume for your local library. But the most interesting piece in this historical and historiographical mosaic is not the essay about Lenin’s sex life, but rather Keep’s autobiographical introduction, entitled “Notes on John.” Although The essays that deal with historical subjects close to Keep’s heart are perhaps the brightest spots of this pastiche. Besides the previously discussed essay on Swedish absolutism, the only piece to pay tribute to Keep’s studies on early modern Muscovy is that of Philip Longworth, whose short article offers a gloss on N. Novombergskii’s monumental study of lese-majeste (slovo i delo) cases in pre-Petrine Russia. Keep’s interest in Soviet historiography is represented by two essays, one of which deals...

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