this reviewer's opinion, neither volume explicates at the length that is re- quired the complexity of historical or cultural variables that have interacted to produce the diversity that exists in these systems. This concern is espe- cially relevant to instructors at small liberal arts colleges where history, economics, and political science departments are rarely large enough to of- fer individual courses on any aspect of Eastern Europe, much less some of the countries that Holmes undertakes to incorporate into his analytical framework. A recent excellent text which does strive to address these con- cerns as applied to one region is Ivan Volgyes' Politics in Eastern Europe (1986), in which the historical and cultural determinants of politics are given more extensive coverage, while the fundamental categories of stan- dard comparative analysis are preserved. Apart from this one caveat, generated by the specific needs of a profes- sor at a small liberal arts college, both of these books can be recommended to the general academic community as solid texts on communist politics. Although it is unlikely that they will be competitors in the marketplace, they certainly do overlap in many areas of concern to instructors of the broad topic of comparative communism. The authors should be congratulated on their efforts to come to terms with the problems of comparative analysis as applied to communist systems and to apply a rigorous comparative analyt- ical framework to the study of Eastern Europe. For those who eschew country-by-country analysis in the study of communism, these texts offer a weil-conceived alternative.

Vladimir Wozniuk Lafayette College

Thomas M. Prymak. Mykhailo Hrushevsky: The Politics of National Culture. (University of Toronto Ukrainian Studies, No. 3). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987. xi, 323 pp. $40.00.

It is a truism that the historiographical heritage, life and multifaceted ac- tivity of Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1866-1934) are not sufficiently known in Western, especially American, historical literature. In his fundamental A History off Historical Writing (vol. II, 1967, p. 627), James Westfall Thomson correctly stated that Hrushevsky was the greatest historian of , and "his nine-volume history, written in Ukrainian, is a moment of erudition, a veritable encyclopedia of the researches of whole generations of Ukrainian, Russian, German, and Polish scholars. With this work Hrushevsky, who presided over the parliament which declared the Ukraine independent (for a time) in 1917, has given his people the scientific basis for its national ideology." Similar assessments of Hrushevsky's histo- ^°graphical heritage were expressed by George Vernadsky, Oscar Halecky and other leading historians. It should be pointed out that in addi- tion to his monumental Rus (9 vols.) and History of Ukrdinian Literature (5 vols.), Hrushevsky published over 1,200 works on Ukrainian and East European history, culture and other fields. At the same time he was a major leader of Ukrainian National Rebirth in the 1900s which resulted in the establishing and his heading of an independent Ukrainian National Republic in 1917-18, the first Ukrainian democratic state in the twentieth century. For this achievement he was called "batko Hrushevskyi" ("father Hrushevsky") which reflected his profound popular- ity among all strata of the Ukrainian population prior to 1918. In his biographical study, Thomas Prymak attempts to present the first comprehensive study in English on Hrushevsky's political activities, be- ginning with his student years and ending with his mysterious death in 1934. The monograph consists of eleven chapters arranged chronologically according to Hrushevsky's activity, a section with photographs, and the Appendices which include three sections: "The Fate of Hrushevsky's Family," "The Fate of Hrushevsky's School and of his Colleagues from the Ukrainian Academy," and "Hrushevsky's Legend in the 1934 to Present." A bibliographical chapter and a comprehensive index com- pletes this interesting and valuable treatise. In general, one can conclude that Prymak achieved his objectives; this work contributes to a much broader understanding of Hrushevsky's major political and ideological concepts, and his political activity. At the same time it should be mentioned that Prymak was unable to uti- lize in this study new archival sources which are now accessible in Ukrainian archival collections in Kiev as a result ofglasnost�, as well as new archival materials from Western archives in Ukrainian Historian, the offi- cial publication of the Ukrainian Historical Association, which has a sepa- rate section on Hrushevsky studies. Thus, Prymak's monograph reflects the state of Hruslzeuskoznaustuo in the early 1980s; however, from today's perspective it is slightly dated. It should be updated in the near future. However, until this revision, Prymak's work constitutes an excellent, well documented introduction to Hrushevsky's political activities, both his polit- ical achievements and his blunders. One may question Prymak's conclusion that Hrushevsky was "generally indifferent to the advantages of the legal concept of national sovereignty" (p. 265). Since he was a true nation-state builder in 1917-18, Hrushevsky, in our view, had a thorough comprehension of independence and Ukrainian sovereignty in 1918. His political writings of his period, especially the arti- cles published in Na porozi Nouoi Ukrainy (M. Hrushevsky, On the Threshold of New Ukraine [ 1918]) reflect his precise knowledge of various political conceptions, including his promotion of the idea of an East European federation of free nations-states as well as the national sovereignty of a Ukrainian nation in 1917-18. Regardless of the rather limited archival source base of his monograph, Prymak should be congratulated for his diligent analysis of Hrushevsky's