A History of Russian Economic Thought: Ninth Through Eighteenth Centuries. by John M.Letiche; Basil Dmytryshyn; Richard A. PierceReview by: Benjamin UroffSlavic Review, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), pp. 125-127Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2493045 .

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Reviews 125

p. 52; kumiri, p. 77; Polky, p. 80; yazika, p. 117). No mention has been made of the voluminous scholarly literature on the subject that has appeared since 1946.2

In rereading this book with the purpose of singling out, for the student and nonspecialist, some of its positive features, one does encounter some useful observa- tions: the considerable information contained in the sagas about Scandinavian exploits in Russia (Garthariki), particularly in the fur-producing areas north of the Volga-Kama region (Bjarmaland); the stress on multiple penetrations, prob- ably by Swedes and Norwegians, in different places and at different times; the interesting observation that the Scandinavian names in the (probably spurious) "treaty" of "Oleg" with the Greeks seem confined elsewhere to heroic tradition rather than historical documents. But all of these ideas are presented in other works, which are not so encumbered with antiquarian speculation and philological prestidigitation.

There is a distinct need for a careful and dispassionate synthesis of the infor- mation concerning the Normans in Russia and their role in the formation of the Kievan state, and it is possible that it should come from the English-speaking community, given the record to date of Scandinavian and Slavic scholars, who, for all their energy and erudition, have provided so little balance. Such a person will have to bring to the subject a first-rate knowledge of Russian historical and philo- logical scholarship and Scandinavian archaeology, a thorough acquaintance with certain aspects of orientalistics, and a gift for highly disciplined conceptual innova- tion. Miss Chadwick displays none of these.

Two decades ago, this book was a curious anachronism. Today it is an antique.

EDWARD KEENAN

Harvard University

A HISTORY OF RUSSIAN ECONOMIC THOUGHT: NINTH THROUGH EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. Edited and with a Foreword by John M. Letiche. Translated with the collaboration of Basil Dmytryshyn and Richard A. Pierce. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964. xvi, 690 pp. $12.50.

To begin with, I am not sure that this book was worth translating. It was published in Moscow in 1955 as the first part of a still unfinished multivolume collaborative work entitled Istorita russkoi ekonomnicheskoi mysli. All the characteristic features of Soviet historical writing in the Stalin era are here: the obsessive denial of Western influence on Russian thought, the attacks on "bourgeois cosmopolitan" historians, the simple division of humanity into reactionaries and progressives, the turgid and repetitious style. A third of the volume is on pre-Petrine Russia; since there was no economic thought to speak of then, we are given an analysis of the relationship between class interest and economic policy. The chapters on the

2. For the Normanist and anti-Normanist views respectively, see, for example, A. Stender-Petersen, Varaisgica (Aarhus, 1953) and Henryk Lowmianski, Zagadnienlie roli normiann6w w genezie pan'stzw slowiaiiskich (Warsaw, 1957). A thorough, militantly anti-Normanist review of the literature has been provided by Igor Shaskolsky, Norman- skaia teortia v sovremennzoi burzhuaznoi nauke (Moscow and Leningrad, 1965). As a corrective to the philological hocus-pocus in chapter 5, one might consult the germinal Slavinskie iaykovye modeliruiushchie semioticheskie sistemy by V. V. Ivanov and V. N. Toporov (Moscow, 1965).

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126 Slavic Review

eighteenth century are more worthwhile, though a narrowly biographical approach is not the most coherent way of discussing the controversial issues of the period: servile versus hired labor, protectionism versus free trade, industrial versus agri- cultural development. Still, there is good material here on familiar figures such as Pososhkov and Radishchev, as well as less known but hardly less interesting men such as Chuprov, Desnitsky, and A. D. Golitsyn, which has not been available in Eiiglish.

It is now available; but let the reader beware. The translation is extraordi- narily bad. On page 9 there are fourteen sentences; in ten of them the meaning of the original is distorted, sometimes beyond recognition. This proportion of error is admittedly above the average, but there is hardly a page without its share. Only some of the major categories can be illustrated here.

1. FALSE DERIVATIVES: Dolgovye zapisi are not "long inventories" (p. 56) but promissory notes; pishchal'nye dengi are not "food money" (p. 172) but taxes for the purchase of firearms (pishchali) ; genial'nye trudy are not "ingenious works" (p. 371) but works of genius (shades of the "genial Stalin"). The "Zakon o kaznekh" is not a "Law of the Exchequer" (p. 74) but a "Law on Punishments"; on the other hand, kaznennye starshiny are not "crown officials" (p. 243) but executed elders.

2. HISTORICAL TERMS, MEANINGLESS TRANSLATION: It does not help to render belye slobody as white settlements; or zakladniki as mortgagees; or ekonomicheskie derevni as economic villages; or bol'shaia sokha as large land; or posadskie liidi variously as settlers, suburban inhabitants, settlement people, or urban population. And what is the monstrosity identified only as the "black city young person" (p. 171) ?

3. HISTORICAL TERMS, ANACHRONISTIC TRANSLATION: In Muscovite times poshliny were often not taxes but customs, traditions; vino was usually not wine but vodka; nalogi were not taxes but abuses, extortion; vorovstvo was not thievery but crime in general.

4. HISTORICAL TERMS, INACCURATE TRANSLATION: Even the inadequate glos- sary has at least two wrong definitions: izgoi and mesiachina. The zhivaia chetvert' is neither a "square field" (p. 205) nor "living quarters" (p. 270), but a unit of taxation. Ispomeshchenie is not "removal" (of what?) (p. 147, n. 7) but the grant- ing of a pomest'e estate. My favorite in this category (running ahead of "the friendly boyar," p. 213, n. 4, and "the thoughtful clerk," p. 206, for the ranks of blizhnii boiarin and dumnyi d'iak) is "the venerable Sratsinskii" (p. 51) for stareishina Sratsin'skii (Saracen chieftain).

5. TOTAL CONFUSION: Over and over again, sentences are simply turned around. Thus, "Plekhanov saw [read: overlooked] the other side" (p. 15); "God prohibited [read: commanded] selling estates" (p. 110); "Is freedom necessary to the general good of the serfs ?" (read: Is the freedom of the serfs necessary for the general welfare?) (p. 425); "Regulation, beyond the collection of customs duties, was weak" (read: Supervision over the collection of customs duties was poorly organized) (p. 216). The phrase i iaz po tomuzh ("and I likewise") inexplicably becomes "and it is dangerous" (p. 78). These examples have been chosen for their brevity. More complicated sentences go wrong in more complicated ways.

6. CARELESSNESS: Sometimes a word will be correctly translated a number of times-and suddenly the Kievan zakupy become "purchases" (p. 36), the officials called volosteli become "peasants" (p. 59), and the uezd (district) becomes a "village" (p. 451). Presumably "domestic system" for "pomest'e system" (p. 98)

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Reviews 127

began its life as a typographical error. There is no attempt at accuracy in retrans- literating Western names: thus we have "l'Abbe de Bearde" on page 486 and "Bearde de l'Abbe" on page 500; neither is right. On occasion, phrases and sentences are omitted; page 13 leaves out ten lines of the Russian text. Most remarkable is the fate of a five-line footnote on page 127 of the original. It is first incorporated into the body of the English text (pp. 116-17), where it is immediately followed by a footnote that proceeds to translate the passage over again. Each version is different; each is wrong.

A melancholy performance. BENJAMIN UROFF

University of Illinois

THE LAND AND GOVERNMENT OF MUSCOVY: A SIXTEENTH- CENTURY ACCOUNT. By Heinrich von Staden. Translated and Edited by Thomas Esper. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967. xxvi, 142 pp. $5.50.

OF THE RUSSE COMMONWEALTH (1591). Facsimile Edition with Vari- ants. By Giles Fletcher. Edited by John V. A. Fine, Jr., and Richard Pipes, with an Introduction by Richard Pipes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966. xii, 98, 8, 116 pp. $7.50.

OF THE RUS COMMONWEALTH. By Giles Fletcher. Edited by Albert J. Schmidt. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966. xliv, 176 pp. $6.00.

THE TRAVELS OF OLEARIUS IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RUSSIA. By Adam Olearius. Translated and edited by Samuel H. Baron. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967. xviii, 349 pp. $8.95.

The publication of new editions of eye-witness accounts of Muscovy is a welcome announcement for readers of early Russian history and indicates the deepening interest of historians in pre-Petrine Russia. Two of the books under review deal with Giles Fletcher, the Elizabethan diplomat and writer. The others concern the experiences in Russia of two Germans: Heinrich von Staden, an adventurer who served Ivan Grozny, and Adam Olearius, a diplomat who participated in a success- ful trade mission to Moscow.

Heinrich von Staden's account, as edited by Thomas Esper, is a translation of four sixteenth-century German manuscripts first published in Russian in 1925 and then skillfully edited in German by Fritz Epstein in 1930. The purpose of the English edition is to make the work available to readers who may find the sixteenth- century German text "too difficult."

Staden spent several years in Russia during the 1560s and 1570s, and during that time he gathered information for a report on the land and government, which he used in planning a German invasion of Muscovy. Although his invasion proposal was poorly conceived, Staden's discussion of other topics-especially of the Oprich- nina, in which he served for two years-is invaluable. He showed clearly that Ivan's use of terror against the nobility was selective and designed to settle scores with individuals and factions, not with an entire class. Esper has provided a careful, readable translation of Staden, although his translation of some phrases suggests Americanisms more than sixteenth-century colloquialisms.

Giles Fletcher's Russe Commonwealth has long been regarded as the best of several Elizabethan accounts of Russia. Before 1964 copies of the book were scarce.

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