Maria Langleben on the rhythmic composition of Doctor Zhivago, Ireneusz Szarycz's comparison of Siniavskii and Vonnegut, Agata Krzychylkiewicz on the clash of genera- tions in recent Russian literature, Elena Krasnostchekova on Vladimir Makanin's artistic evolution, Harold D. Baker on Bitov's Pushkin House, Ryan on Sasha Sokolov's Pali- sandriya, Eugene Zeb Kozlowski on multiple comic coding in the Strugatskiis' Monday Begins on Saturday, Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy on Tatyana Tolstaia's "The Heavenly Flame," Valentina Polukhina on doubles in Joseph Brodsky's poetry, and Hen- rietta Mondry on nationalism in recent Russian literary criticism. While all are well- supported and worthy scholarly contributions, and in some cases fascinating reading as well, I would particularly like to draw attention to three outstanding pieces on Russian post-modernism. Nina Kolesnikoft's "Metafictional Strategies of Russian Post-modem Prose" outlines tactics for foregrounding story elements "through four possible tech- niques: over-abundance and exaggeration, absence or reduction, eccentric execution, or overt self-consciousness" (p. 281 ), citing numerous examples of each from a wide variety of writers. Alexander Genis's "Borders and Metamorphoses: Viktor Pelevin in the Con- text of Post-Soviet Literature" offers cogent and suggestive characteristics of several other writers, then returning to its focus on Pelevin's works and style. Mark Lipovetsky's "On the Nature of Russian Post-modernism" gives a broadly informed survey of critical and creative writings from and about post-modernism, with reference to its antecedents in Russian or Soviet art and literary history and to Latin American authors. Genis's article is translated with only occasional infelicities by Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover, while Lipovet- sky's is rendered into supple and idiomatic English by Eliot Borenstein; in both cases, the aesthetic pleasures of the text balance the intellectual value of the authors' work. This collection should be in any research library, and many of its articles can be rec- ommended with profit to undergraduate students and non-specialists as well. Sibelan Forrester Swarthmore College Lynn Mally. Revolutionary Acts: Amateur Theater and the Soviet State, 1917-1938. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2000. x, 250 pp. $45.00. Over the last several years, we have seen theater assuming "center stage" in the histo- riography of Russian culture in the late imperial and early Soviet periods, replacing cin- ema as the "most important of the arts" for historical investigation. Among important re- cent works investigating theater and the theatricalization of Russian life are Gary Thurston's The Popular Theatre Movement in Russia, 1862-19f (1998), Julie A. Cassi- day's The Enemy on Trial: Early Soviet Courts on Stage and Screen (2000), and Aren Petrone's Life Has Beconze More Joyous Comrades Celebrations in the Time of Stalin (2000). Lynn Mally's Revolutionary Acts is a worthy addition to this corpus, one that burnishes her reputation as a leading social historian of Soviet culture. Like Mally's first book, Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia (1990), Revolutionary Acts is a model of historical scholarship - superbly researched, carefully argued, and beautifully written. Because all performance is ephemeral by its very nature, recreating it requires diligent and imaginative research. Mally has mined a wide variety of published and archival primary sources to bring her mined a wide variety of published and archival primary sources to.bring her story alive. (Her mastery of the secondary material is also exemplary.) The book details the transformation of a grassroots institution - amateur theater - into yet another carefully controlled organ of state and party. The progressive limits the Party placed on free and spontaneous cultural expression from the mid-twenties through the thirties are well known, but Mally exposes stunning new levels of irony in the process as it relates to the staging of amateur theatricals. The absence of professional influences or state interference is, after all, at the very heart of amateurism. "Do-it-yourself theater" flourished in the heady early days of the revolution. Many productions were agitational, encouraged by revolutionary enthusiasts in clubs and, more formally, sponsored by early cultural organizations like the Proletkult. But the debate over cultural hierarchies - high and low, old and new - that had long been a feature of Russian cultural politics continued with renewed energy. As Mally demonstrates, in the absence of effective political controls over repertory, many amateur groups were drawn to adaptations of the classics, folk tales, or - horrors! - boulevard romances and melodra- mas. It was clear to Bolshevik activists that the "people" could not be trusted to act in their own best interests without outside assistance. As much as the Party might have wanted to co-opt the amateurs at the end of the Civil War; economic conditions during the New Economic Policy period did not allow for state control. The hope was that amateur theater circles could be persuaded to adopt a more consistently (and correctly) politicized repertory. During these years of "small forms" amateur theatrical performance was less constrained by old models of "the stage" than at any other time. Sketches drawn from daily life or connected to Bolshevik political festi- vals or public campaigns were common - the less "professionalized," the better. Particu- larly popular with performers and audiences alike were the mock trials (a subject Julie Cassiday covers in much greater detail in The Revolution on Trial). By the late twenties, Mally argues, a number of problems had arisen for amateur theat- ricals. "Small forms" had exhausted their sources and lost novelty as entertainment for working class audiences (the competition from the cinema was strong). Furthermore, the spontaneity of the amateur circles, which frequently led to "incorrect" interpretations of current events and the changing Party line, concerned many officials. Theater profession- als sought to revive the status of the legitimate stage at the expense of the upstart ama- teurs, arguing that the state's cultural goals were at odds with the low standards of ama- teurism. The most interesting and artistically successful effort to bridge all these contradictions was the Theater of Working-Class Youth in Leningrad, known by its acronym, TRAM. TRAM exemplified the spirit of youthful rebellion and revolutionary idealism. Its autono- mous radicalism defied the authority of state and party; and, like other proletarian organi- zations, TRAM was consumed by the Cultural Revolution to reemerge a blandly profes- sionalized version of its former self when the dust had settled. It could take small comfort in the fact that its chief enemy during this period, the agit-brigades, likewise receded into the background of the theater front. ' Mally's final chapters illustrate the sad decline of amateur theater in the thirties, as club and circle work became just another facet of the "spectacle state." Yet as Karen Petrone has also found with respect to parades and festivals, Mally shows that total sub- .