While this splendid study, a times, rather than a life, is extremely detailed, and printed in small type, it is rare that the discussion does not bring some modification to previous accounts of a great many issues. This is in large measure because of the care and attention with which the author read the voluminous materials in the Czartoryski Library in Krakow (less accessible a few years ago than now), as well as manuscripts in several British archives and at the Quai d'Orsay. In addition he seems to have read every relevant publication of primary sources, par- tacuiariy Russian ones, as well as secondary accounts in seven languages. The central position of Czartoryski in European politics of the first third of the nineteenth century is firmly established by this book which will come to rank with Marc Raeffs study of Speranskii and Patricia Grimsted's of Alexander's foreign ministers as outstanding. This masterly study is a model of authoritative scholarship and will be absolutely indispensable to all future students of the period it covers whether their focus be Polish, Russian or European. An afford- able edition would probably increase readership.

J.M.P. McErlean York University

Zwischen Reform und Revolution: Die Deutschen an der Wolga, 1860-1917. Edited by Dittmar Dahlmann and Ralph Tuchtenhagen. Düsseldorf: Klartext Verlag, 1994. 408 pp. DM 48 paper.

This volume of papers presented at a 1992 conference in Freiburg (Breisgau), is more valuable for a wide range of scholars than the title suggests. For readers of this journal, the principal interest will be the way in which the small but economically significant German minority (about one-half million in 1914) interacted with the Slavic majority of the during its last half-century. it is not merely a ques tion, important as that is, of imperial policies increasingly influenced by Russian nationalism and subsequent reaction by non- Russians. The experience of the Volga German society also illuminates the extent to which the ponderous imperial bureau-cracy could "penetrate" isolated ethnic groupings, i.e., could effectively influence their social and political development. Close observation of the interaction of Russian and German cultures tells us much about the strengths and weaknesses of each, notably in the closing chapters on language and literature. The emergence of a Russian-German literary corpus, including works by such an eminent author as Boris Wogau ("Pil'niak") and the reflection of the Volga experience in the distorting mirror of Reich German literature, especially under the Nazis, will in terest many Slavicists. For social scientists (that is, the diminishing contingent that reads German fluently) the merit of the symposium lies in its close analysis of an isolated, patriarchal society confronted by modernization in an alien, authoritarian polity. Here the chapter on "Language and Language Community" will be especially appreciated by scholars grappling with language cleavages and language policies in modernizing societies. The authors (Harold Weydt and Peter Rosenberg) provide a sophisticated analysis of the misleading influence of nineteenth-century assumptions concerning the territorial stability of dialect boundries while demonstrating the superiority of more recent linguistic theory. Concern for identity criteria is manifest not only in this chapter but in five earlier chapters that focus on religion as an integral component, initially far stronger than "Germanness" among Volga , Not only was the centuries-old Catholic-Lutheran division transplanted to the Volga; later the Protestant element was deeply influenced by revivalists like the Seventh-Day Adventists and the . Related articles comparing the position of the to in , discussing the role of Volga Germans in German Imperial policy toward Russia, and analyzing large-scale migration from the Volga to during the last decades of the nineteenth century help clarify the complex identity factor. At the beginning of the book, the outstanding German historian of the Russian Empire, Andreas Kappeler, provides a succinct conceptual framework. He notes that the Volga Germans, although a diaspora of the German national community in Europe, were (in contrast to the much smaller Baltic German element) not a "mobilized diaspora" in terms of education, status attainments, or urbanization. Moreover, the Volga German farmers, although approximately equal in numbers to the Black Sea German agriculturalists, were not only more isolated but somewhat less open to technological modernization and change in family structure. Four subsequent chapters on economics, law, and democracy substantiate Kappeler's interpretation. Additional theoretical interpretations, most notable in the Weydt- Rosenberg chapter but also apparent in chapters on religion, education, and architecture, suggest how well current German historiography has adapted social science concepts for monographic analysis. Of the twenty-one authors represented in the volume, fourteen live in Germany, three in contemporary Russia, and one each in , the United States, and South Africa. Their footnotes, and the selected bibliography, also demonstrate the authors' thoroughness in using earlier publications (rather uneven in quality) in English, French, and Russian, as well as German. Probably the largest audience for the volume will consist of persons of Volga German ancestry interested in genealogy. Although the chapters do not attempt to provide detailed information on family lines, treatments of specific villages in demographic and religious contexts provide a comprehensive background that many genealogists lack. Especially useful in this regard is the Weydt-Rosenberg chapter. The linguists circumstantially refute the widespread assumption that families can be traced to their origins in specific German districts by establishing persistence on the Volga of distinctive West . Because (apart from religious segregation) the original colonists (although not later Mennonite settlers) were assigned settlement areas indiscriminately, they developed local Volga dialects combining diverse elements (mainly based on central Hessian and Rhine- usages) that, after a century, made it impossible to trace specific West German origins of speakers. Consequently, researchers tracing lineages will have to rely on more direct evidence. The volume reviewed does not purport to provide detailed information on the 1760s migration, although several chapters refer to this protracted, painful episode. Nor is there as much information as one would wish on the early, near-catastrophic years of settlement. One would like to know about techniques used by the newcomers (most had not been experienced farmers in Germany) to plough the resistant steppe and to erect temporary sod habitations. Among numerous maps of village locations, a diagram of a typical village and farmyard layout would have been helpful. Such layouts were designed to resist devastating raids by steppe nomads; but (except in some Nazi discussions quoted) little information on the impact of the raids or settlers' defensive tactics is provided. More generally, deeper analysis of Volga agriculture would have been welcome. Opinions (derived from Russian archives) on the quality of early German farming vary, though all agree it was superior to neighboring Russian agriculture, and by World War I provided an indispensable source of food for Russia. Types of transportation and the role of middlemen (German and