Lawrence Schofer. The Formation of a Modern Labor Force: Upper Silesia, 1865-1914. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1975. x, 213 pp. $12.00 U.S.

Detailed studies of regional economic and social development are still few and far between in German history, in spite of the publication of a number of important works in recent years. A book on Silesia, a particularly fascinating region, during a period of significant change, is therefore most welcome. This book, although it contains much use- ful information, is rather disappointing. The particular problems of Silesian industry in this period, the poor quality of local coal that was unsuitable for cooking, the exhaus- tion of the iron ore deposits in the 1880s, the inadequate transportation links to other parts of Germany, the shortage of freight cars, the severe technological lag and the short- age of labor which all served to make Silesia unable to compete with the Ruhr and Bri- tain, are outlined, but the author soon comes up against the irritating lack of reliable statistical data. Having already dismissed L. P. Thompson's masterly study of the makings of the English working class on the grounds of its obsession with workers' or- ganizations and the formation of class consciousness, and having set up straw men (wrongly attributed to Marx) that technology forms the labor force and that managerial organizational powers create the factory system, he is left with little but a few Weberian notions and an expressed desire to analyze the problems of change to mechanized indus- trial production and the creation of a free labor market. The resulting book is bloodless, contradictory and maddeningly repetitive. The labor force never comes to life as a vital and complex association of human beings with its own history, traditions, culture and struggles, no doubt because had it done so the author might be dragged dangerously close to the Thompson camp. High rates of unemploy- ment in 1893 are blamed in one place on the Caprivi tariffs and conflict with Russia, in another to the effects of a cyclical depression. Marx's notion of the "reserve army" is disproved by the fact that there was a shortage of labor in conditions which appeared to be ideal, and then we are told that the lack of labor mobility was due to the over-abun- dance of small-holding peasants, the shortage of outside labor (unlike the Ruhr), and the closing of the border in 1885. At times it seems that the author's frustrations with his material leads him to say the obvious in a pompous manner ("The more rural the area, the greater the percentage of industrial workers with ties to agriculture") or to lapse into jargon ("different preferences" become "different indifference curves"). At the begin- ning of the book he warns against the "withering away of the worker in the face of des- criptive and ascriptive norms, function-specificity, the 'logic' of industrialization, and the like." Unfortunately Mr. Schofer's workers never take on flesh and blood. We read of the high percentage of women and children in the Silesian labor force, of pay deductions for the privilege of using the company store, of far longer hours and lower wages than on the Ruhr, of a low turnover rate and little absenteeism, and yet we find nothing of the human effects of these grim facts. The author is uncertain where necessary rules and disci- pline needed for modem industry end and exploitation begins, and is contemptuous of those who suggest an answer. Without a clear conceptual framework and lacking critical bite we are left with a piece of social historicism, adorned with some of those "useful embarassed abstractions" which do little to illuminate the complex of interactions be- tween the economic and the social which serve to form a labor force.

Martin Kitchen Simon Fraser University BOOKS RECEIVED/LIVRES RECUS

Andri�, Ivo. The Bridge on the Drina. Translated by Lovett F. Edwards. Introduction by William H. McNeill. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977. 314 pp. $4.95 (paper). Borowiec, Andrew. Yugoslavia After Tito. New York and London: Praeger Publishers, 1977. ix, 122 pp. Brock, Peter. Polish Revolutionary Populism: A Study in Agrarian Socialist Thought from the 1830s to the 1850s. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1977. viii, 125 pp. California Slavic Studies. Volume X. Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of Cal- ifornia Press, 1977. 240 pp. $10.50. Carpatho-Ruthenica at Harvard: A Catalog of Holdings. Compiled by Paul R. Magocsi and Olga K. Mayo. Englewood, N.J.: Transworld Publishers, 1977. 149 pp. (paper). Cochrane, Stephen T. The Collaboration of Necaev, Ogarev and Bakunin in 1869: Necaev's Early Years. Giessen: Wilhelm Schmitz Verlag, 1977. xx, 365 pp. (paper). Dallin, Alexander, editor. The Twenty-Fifth Congress of the CPSU: Assessment and Context. Stanford, Calif.: The Hoover Institution Press, 1977. xii, 129 pp. $5.95 (paper). Documenta romaniae historica. A. Moldova. Vol. I (1384-1448). Edited by C. Cihodaru, I. Caprosu and L. Simanschi. Bucure�ti: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste Romania, 1975. lv, 605 pp. Lei 46. Dordevic, Mihailo. Serbian Poetry and Milutin Boji�. Boulder, Colo.: East European Quarterly, 1977. vi, 113 pp. $10.00. (Distributed by Columbia University Press). Dudko, Fr. Dmitrii. Our Hope. Translated by Paul D. Garrett. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1977. 292 pp. paper. Durkovi�-Jakši�, Ljubomir. Z dziejów stosunków jugos�owia�sko-polskich 1772-1840. Translated by Halina Kalita. Wroc�aw-Warszawa-Kraków-Gda�sk' Ossolineum, 1977. 280 pp. z� 80. Freeze, Gregory L. The Russian Levites: Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century. Cam- bridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1977. xiv, 325 pp. $15.00. Grant, Steven A. Scholars' Guide to Washington, D.C. for Russian/Soviet Studies (Ken- nan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1977. xii, 403 pp. $19.95 cloth; $5.95 paper. Hardy, Deborah. Petr Tkachev: The Critic As Jacobin. Seattle and Washington: The University of Washington Press, 1977. xiii, 339 pp. $12.50. Hennessy, Richard. The Agrarian Question in Russia 1905-1907: The Inception of the Stolypin Reform. Giessen: Wilhelm Schmitz Verlag, 1977. 203 pp. (paper). An Introduction to Russian Language and Literature. Edited by Robert Auty and Dimitri Obolensky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. xiii, 300 pp. $24.50. Jelavich, Charles and Barbara. The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804- 1920. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1977. xv, 358 pp. $18.95. Johnston, Robert H. Tradition Versus Revolution: Russia and the Balkans in 1917. Boulder, Colo.: East European Quarterly, 1977. vii, 240 pp. $14.00. (Distributed by Columbia University Press). Kaplan, Frank L. Winter into Spring: The Czechoslovak Press and the Reform Movement, 1963-1968. Boulder, Col.: East European Quarterly, 1977. viii, 208 pp. $14.00. (Distributed by Columbia University Press).