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East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages by Florin Curta Review by: Jean W. Sedlar Slavic Review, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Winter, 2006), pp. 795-796 Published by: Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4148457 . Accessed: 12/06/2014 21:51 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Slavic Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.44.77.89 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:51:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Agesby Florin Curta

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Page 1: East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Agesby Florin Curta

East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages by Florin CurtaReview by: Jean W. SedlarSlavic Review, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Winter, 2006), pp. 795-796Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4148457 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 21:51

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserveand extend access to Slavic Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.89 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:51:03 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Agesby Florin Curta

BOOK REVIEWS

East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages. Ed. Florin Curta. Ann Arbor: Uni- versity of Michigan Press, 2005. viii, 391 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Figures. Maps. $75.00, hard bound.

This collection of articles by eleven medieval specialists examines various aspects of the history of east central and eastern Europe between A.D. 500 and circa 1000. The authors present recent research and reconsider previous interpretations, particularly the Marxist views that dominated the historiography of the region after World War II. The aim of the book is "to open up an interdisciplinary and comparative dialogue" (vi).

Among the interesting pieces of evidence in this volume, Paul M. Barford points out that the dominant type of stronghold found in most of Polabia (the Elbe basin) and west- ern Great Poland before the tenth century cannot have served a primarily military pur- pose. Most of these structures are low-lying and rarely contain finds of military equipment, suggesting that they may have served as centers for the redistribution of goods. The lack of coins from the period indicates a natural economy of barter.

Alexandru Madgearu describes the importance of the salt trade for medieval Tran- sylvania, shown by the fact that cemeteries and gold coins from the sixth and seventh cen- turies cluster around major salt mines. Archaeological finds from Transylvania seldom in- clude Byzantine coins or artifacts from the tenth century, indicating that the salt trade at that period was directed westward, not eastward.

Przemyslaw Urbaiiczyk assigns a major role in state formation to political elites and ideology, thus de-emphasizing the older Marxist notion of the historical evolution of states. He explains the well-attested cultural uniformity of the area between the Dnieper, Alps, Baltic, and Adriatic in the late sixth century as a consequence of the Avar invasion. The semi-nomadic Avars provided a military framework for the settlement of Slavic agri- culturalists, since the warriors required the support of a sedentary population to supply them with food and military recruits. Archaeological finds indicate that this warrior caste gradually became Slavicized. After Charlemagne's decisive defeat of the Avars in 803, new Slavic political formations gradually rose to dominate the region.

An especially interesting chapter is Tsvetelin Stepanov's comparison of two contem- porary forms of Pax Nomadica existing at the western and eastern extremities of the Eurasian steppe-early medieval Bulgaria and the Uighur khaganate. Both states were semi-nomadic and on occasion offered military assistance to their traditional enemies, the Chinese and Byzantine empires. After 756 T'ang China in particular relied on the Uighur horsemen to crush internal opposition. Despite the military preeminence of the Bulgars and Uighurs, their leaders avidly sought political recognition and legitimacy from their Byzantine and Chinese neighbors. Both empires regularly provided gifts and bribes for distribution among the nomadic warriors, thus demonstrating that these steppe societies and their more civilized neighbors existed in a kind of symbiosis.

Andrzej Buko proposes a five-stage process in the formation of the medieval Polish state centered on Gniezno in Great Poland. Space for this state to develop was created by the fact that the neighboring German empire was absorbed with internal problems and focused its ambitions on Italy. Florin Curta inquires into the surprising absence of major monastic sites in the Balkans before 680, a phenomenon he links to Emperor Justinian's program of building fortifications rather than facilitating alliances with the barbarians through their conversion. Roman K. Kovalev demonstrates the ideological function of coinage as a form of propaganda in premodern societies, showing that the official state coins issued by Kievan Rus', the Volga Bulgar emirate, and the Khazar khaganate all car- ried religious and political messages.

A welcome feature of this book is its extensive offering of maps of archaeological sites and drawings of some of the objects found at these locations, showing the types of evidence on which historians of the period must rely. All the chapters contain extensive scholarly apparatus; and as a final offering Florin Curta has compiled an exhaustive 83-page bibli- ography of historical sources. This book therefore serves a dual purpose, as a sampling of

Slavic Review 65, no. 4 (Winter 2006)

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Page 3: East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Agesby Florin Curta

796 Slavic Review

recent research on the history of eastern and east central Europe in the early Middle Ages and as an invaluable scholarly resource.

JEAN W. SEDLAR University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown

Ethnic Politics after Communism. Ed. Zoltan Barany and Robert G. Moser. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. xi, 282 pp. Notes. Index. Figures. Tables. $55.00, hard bound. $19.95, paper.

This volume originated from a symposium organized at the University of Texas at Austin in 2003. The editors describe the participants as their "first choice line-up" (xi), and in- deed, they all belong to the first echelon of American experts on ethnicity and nationality politics.

The weakness of many edited volumes of this kind is a lack of focus. What holds this book together is ostensibly a common time frame-after the fall of the Berlin Wall-and a common geography-the former Soviet Union and its former satellite states. Most au- thors devote rather long sections of their chapters to developments under and prior to communism, however, and some venture outside eastern Europe in their search for in- teresting comparisons. Daniel Chirot, for instance, devotes much of his chapter to ethnic politics in the Ivory Coast. So the most important common denominator for these chap- ters is their authors' interest in and application of theory. No author limits himself to sim- ply chronicling the events he describes, they all try to answer some important whys and hows by drawing upon a general theory. This is the major strength of this volume. Several authors have previously done extensive research on nationalism and ethnicity in other parts of the world and have turned to postcommunist studies rather late in life. With this background, they tend to emphasize the normalcy of ethnopolitical processes in the post- communist world. And, as Roger D. Petersen points out, the chapters "do not present much evidence that today's political actors are greatly constrained by the legacy of Com- munism" (227).

Some authors have chosen to return to an issue they have explored previously to re- fine or update a theoretical point. Thus, David D. Laitin discusses whether his earlier pre- dictions about the assimilation of Russians in Estonia have stood the test of time, despite some evidence to the contrary (he thinks they do). In an interesting chapter, Mark R. Beissinger probes into the processes through which a multinational state comes to be rec- ognized as an empire and an empire comes to be recognized as a state. This is a discussion he has engaged in earlier but he is able to add new dimensions to it. Others have chosen to take up a new field of inquiry: Charles King charts new waters by expanding his previ- ous study of migration and diaspora politics to include the dimension of trafficking.

While theoretical and comparative perspectives are foregrounded in all chapters, the authors do not always agree among themselves on key assumptions and concepts. Several contributors adopt a constructivist approach whereas others, as Petersen points out, im- plicitly or explicitly challenge this position. Comparing the successful mobilization of Al- banians in Macedonia with weak Gypsy mobilization in eastern Europe, Zoltan Barany, for instance, makes the claim that the "real" number of Gypsies in Slovakia may be five times as high as the number of people who declared themselves Gypsies in the last census. Barany does not elaborate on his criterion for inclusion in the Gypsy category, but it seems to be closer to blood-line than to self-identity. I also note that while Barany deplores Gypsy assimilation, Laitin sees no reason to bemoan a similar identity development among non- titulars in Estonia, where most Russians, according to his expectations, will gradually shed or de-emphasize their Russian identity.

Like Barany, Robert G. Moser, in his analysis of the ethnic aspects of electoral politics in Russia, tends toward a nonconstructivist concept of ethnicity. Basing himself on official statistics on Duma composition, he discusses how the various non-Russian groups have fared in their attempts to get their representatives elected. He has come across what ap- pears to be a striking paradox: a highly mobilized group like the Tatars are clearly under-

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