Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe by Nancy M. Wingfield; Maria BucurReview by: Andrea PetőSlavic Review, Vol. 66, No. 4 (Winter, 2007), pp. 731-732Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20060386 .

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BOOK REVIEWS

Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe. Ed. Nancy M. Wingfield and Maria Bu

cur. Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian and East European Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. xii, 251 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations.

Photographs. Tables. $65.00, hard bound. $24.95, paper.

Twenty years have passed since the publication of Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World

Wars (1987, edited by Margaret Randolph Higonnet), so it is high time to summarize the

recent scholarship in this quickly developing field, since the fall of the Berlin Wall both

opened up archival research possibilities in the countries of eastern Europe that had been

so devastated by the two world wars and substantially altered the institutional framework

for history writing in these countries. Behind the Lines also brought theoretical innovation

to history writing about wars: the addition of gender as an

analytical category into a field

of history that had for centuries been dominated by political history. Thus the expecta tions for this new volume run high: to represent how history writing on

gender and war

has been transformed over the past twenty years. To start with the analytical category of gender, the contributors are interested in gen

dered forms of violence, reinforcing the logic that women are the victims of war. In the in

troduction there is even a step away from Joan Scott's definition of gender: "By using gen der as a category of analysis, we can arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the

subjective nature of wartime experience and representations" (9). Analysis of masculini

ties is painfully missing from the volume, despite the fact that this field has seen perhaps

the most spectacular growth in the last decade, transforming our

understanding of wars

(see, for example, Stefan Dudik, Karen Hagemann, and John Tosh, eds., Masculinities in

Politics and War, 2004). This book is based on a conference organized by the University of Indiana in 2001 ; at that

time, the contributors were all PhD students. The editors have done their best to make the col

orful and very diverse conference presentations fit into a scholarly volume. It is not their fault

that the geographical definition of eastern Europe follows the traditional Cold War logic: eastern Europe

means countries previously under Soviet occupation. The book omits Ger

many, although there are convincing arguments that it has a legitimate place in a book

on gender and war, among them the simple fact that Germany was a major force behind

the wars in eastern Europe. Since this work makes only sporadic references to Germany, it gives the false impression that it was only the Soviet Union, the "country of evil," that

caused all that misery in the region. This approach not only leaves the role that the United

States played in World War II unquestioned but also reinforces the logic and divisions of

traditional Cold War history writing. The book consists of ten national case studies. If there is one historical phenomenon

that is truly transnational, it is war. Unfortunately, the contributors did not take advantage of this analytical possibility, and the articles remain within the framework of national his

tories. But there is another epistemological problem: what audience did the contributors

have in mind as they wrote their chapters? None of the authors come from eastern Europe; all received their PhDs from universities in the United States. The book aims at an audi

ence of American undergraduates, but the politics can backfire. For example, the work im

plicitly suggests that you can write an article about a country without knowing its language. Eliza Ablovatski's chapter

on Hungary, "Between Red Army and White Guard: Women in

Budapest, 1919," does not use any original sources in Hungarian and is limited to sources

available in English and an illustration taken from a web site in Argentina. The other side

of the coin is that countries usually considered unimportant by historians of World War II, such as

Bulgaria, Belarus, Moldova, and Albania, remain unmentioned in the volume. Ser

bia is represented but not Croatia; the Czechs are discussed but not the Slovaks. So the ed

itorial decision reinforces the statist logic, giving space to "strong" nations and ignoring small nations or countries.

The main characteristic of the general historiography of war is the fascination with in

dividuals as historical agents of history without regard for their role in collaboration, ac

commodation, and resistance or an understanding of how remembering is constructed.

Slavic Review 66, no. 4 (Winter 2007)

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732 Slavic Review

The theoretical question of what kind of memories we have about war or how different

forms of violence determine how a war is remembered were not asked. That said, some of

the case studies are first-rate, like Katherine R. Jolluck's article on how heroism and en

durance have been constructed as the only frame for narrating Polish women's experi ences of the gender-based violence connected with the Soviet "invasion" or Lisa A.

Kirschenbaum 's piece on the siege of Leningrad, which analyzes Russian revenge as a force

that can only be narrated as a rhetoric of heroism.

Yet the most painful aspect of the book is its relativism toward the Holocaust. In the

introduction, only one footnote refers to the fact that World War II in eastern Europe also

meant genocide. The editors' view that the 'Jewish experience of World War II" has a "sep

arate historiography" (18) basically ghettoizes the Holocaust and ignores the racism that

was a constitutive force of the war. We can only hope that other historians will heed the ed

itors' wish: "we hope our discussion here will in fact generate interest in the gender aspects

of that experience" (18). (For one work from the rich bibliography on gender and the

Holocaust, see Dalia Ofer and Leonore J. Weitzman, eds., Women in the Holocaust, 1998.) Since the original conference, the editors and contributors have turned from PhD stu

dents into tenured professors, and we will have to wait, although hopefully not another

twenty years, for the next volume that will truly aim for a rethinking of the history of

gender and war in eastern Europe.

Andrea Pet?

Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post-Reformation Era. By

Magda Teter. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xix, 272 pp. Notes. Bibli

ography. Glossary. Index. Illustrations. Maps. $65.00, hard bound.

With bold argument and scrupulous primary-source research, Magda Teter takes on the

sensitive topic of the manifestations of antisemitism within the Polish Catholic Church. Fo

cusing on the post-Reformation period, Teter assesses how anti-Jewish rhetoric and im

agery came to be so firmly embedded within the consciousness of the Polish Catholic

Church. In so doing, she has produced a book that should be read by all who study not

only the Jewish community in Poland but the society and culture of the Polish-Lithuanian

Commonwealth and, indeed, the history of the church in Europe. Teter deflates the dominant historical perspective that the Counter-Reformation "tri

umphed" in Poland and argues instead that the Catholic Church in the Commonwealth

(she does not address the eastern church) continued to feel threatened and "under siege"

by the opposing forces of its non-Catholic enemies?namely "heretic" Protestants and

Jews (2-3). According to Teter, this was the essential context for the continued and even

intensified anti-Jewish rhetoric and actions of the Catholic bishops, clergy, and laity at the

time when Catholicism came to be associated with being Polish. In Poland, the Catholic

Church could not achieve its social ideal of segregating and subordinating the Jews and

eradicating heresy, and the failure to do so resulted in persistent insecurities and anxieties.

The Jews were never as great a threat as heresy, and, Teter admits, not frequently discussed

in Polish church publications. Yet the Polish Catholic rhetoric against its perceived ene

mies often referred back to the Jews, so that they were a conscious element and an essen

tial aspect of the church's stance against its "other."

Supporting this argument, Teter has made a thorough study of the church sources?

including sermons, catechisms, papal bulls, canon law, and trial and inquisition docu

ments?gleaned primarily from numerous archives and libraries in Poland and Rome,

some that were difficult to access. Her use of Polish, Latin, and Hebrew sources impresses. From this research, she details the daily interactions between the Christian and Jewish communities: the prominent position of Jews on Polish estates (chapter 5), women serving as wet nurses between the communities, the shared feasts and celebrations of Catholic and

Jewish higher classes, and consequential conversions to both sides (chapter 4). She notes

not only the church's anxieties in these matters but also the reciprocal uneasiness of the

rabbis. Teter's most powerful observations concern the church's manipulation of rhetoric

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