Russian Culture by M. Mead; G. Gorer; J. RickmanReview by: B. S. WeichertThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 81, No. 2 (Apr., 2003), pp. 346-347Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4213710 .

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346 SEER, 8i, 2, 2003

Mead, M.; Gorer, G., and Rickman, J. Russian Culture. The Study of Contemporary Western Cultures, 3. Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford, 200I. xx + 324 pp. Notes. Appendices. Index. Ci7.o0 (paperback).

TALES of crawling infestations of cockroaches, musings on how the pleasure a Russian derives from an orgiastic feast is like that of an infant being unswaddled, nursed and loved, and reflections on the psychology of a tyrant are all to be encountered in Russian Culture. Few people will connect Margaret Mead's name with Russia, some may remember Geoffrey Gorer's much criticized swaddling hypotheses, others might have read John Rickman's account of his time as a doctor in Russia just before the Revolution. The three authors have now been united and re-printed in the present volume.

In his introduction, Sergei Arutiunov, although unable on account of constrictions of space to provide a thorough historical and political back- ground, nevertheless usefully puts the topics treated here into a wider context. He maintains that the facts presented by the authors may not be as reliable and the analyses not as correct as one might hope; yet their conclusions are evocative.

Rickman's Sketches of Russian Peasant Life (I9I6-I9I8) are an utterly engaging and pleasurable read. The beautifully worded accounts of his experiences in Russia transport the reader into a world, glimpses of which he or she might have caught only from the Russian novel before. We are told astonishing, marvellous and at times horrific stories, calmly described by a doctor, who never seems to have lost his composure.

While Rickman's writings are based on first-hand experience, Gorer's was to be an interpretation and analysis of 'the experience and observation of others, immigrants, refugees and those temporarily resident in the U.S.A.' (p. 8), which grew out of his participation in the Columbia University Research Project on Contemporary Cultures. Less lyrical than Rickman and perhaps less sober than Mead, Gorer's 7he Psychology of the Great Russians, first published in I 949, is an attempt to establish how society preserves its identity and consistency through time. The underlying thread for almost everything Gorer covers here are his swaddling hypotheses. Muscular restraint by tightly wrapping an infant in bandages (swaddling) may provide 'a clue [...] to Russian behaviour' (p. I 36), without which he doubts he could have reached the conclusions he has. While psychoanalysis attaches great importance to the fact that an adult's character is strongly determined by his upbringing, it is questionable how far nurture really determines an entire nation's character, as Gorer suggests. His subjective approach does, indeed, leave us wanting, for what we are presented with are assumptions and observations rather than heavily backed-up arguments, and Gorer himself admits that some of his deductions are 'unverified hypotheses' (p. 89). It is with this in mind that the present work has to be read.

Mead's account of Soviet Attitudes Towards Authority was first published in I95I. In her second chapter ('Methods and Materials') she outlines that hers is a study of a culture from a distance, 'using individual informants and written and visual materials where field work is impossible' (p. i66). She headed a

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REVIEWS 347

team of nine researchers and two consultants, out of whom only two (her included) were not familiar with the Russian language or Russian culture. Nevertheless, the author competently develops existing Western interpreta- tions of the Soviet Union and its system. This is a sober account and insightful interpretation of state documents, political pamphlets, fiction and interviews with recent emigres. By way of interpreting state doctrine, Mead deduces the mind-set of the leadership and manages to convey their frailty and insecurity as well as the inconsistencies and contradictions in implementing and maintaining rigid control and order. It is from these shortcomings of the system that she in turn aptly illuminates the behaviour of the masses deviancy as a simple means to survive. Indeed, Mead derives from these overt inequalities that the Soviet Union embodies a 'regime [...] trapped in an abuse of its own value system' (p. 275).

Arutiunov poignantly observes that those who have read 'I984 could read Mead's work as a commentary and collection of factual sources for Orwell's novel' (p. xiv). Undeniably, the texts she quotes and especially her chapter on the political police, whom she likens to wolves who prey on the rest of society in their constant search for food to avoid starvation, have a very Orwellian ring to them. It is remarkable, given the relative lack of resources and impossibility of fieldwork, that Mead managed to produce such an astute report on the unpredictability of the system and the incongruities that lie within.

Despite the times of writing of the works included in the present volume, this is a perceptive book. The informed reader will notice holes in the story, but will simply have to be aware that the authors, Gorer first and foremost, were 'employing anthropological and psychological concepts' (p. I5) to extricate and interpret the value system of Soviet society and its leaders. Indeed, Gorer never set out to 'describe all the phenomena of a nation's life', thus knowingly excluding the influence of'history, economics, geography, and similar "imper- sonal" phenomena' (p. 138), while Mead maintains that her findings are a supplement to rather than a replacement of those of other disciplines. Moreover, we should not forget that we appraise these texts today with the benefit of hindsight and, in some cases, thanks to increasing archive access, insight.

Notwithstanding the fact that we are presented with what appear to be accounts of impressions rather than hard core theory and data-driven academic analysis, we get a feeling for the periods in which they were composed. This is felt not only through language and style, especially with Rickman and Gorer, but also the technique of description and the very situations the authors chose to describe. What mars the reading somewhat is the consistent number of typographical errors and mishaps in punctuation. Overall, this re-publication is a useful addition to the books on the Soviet Union, and a timely one at that, for what we witness today is no lesser a change in the system than when tsarist Russia had to give way to the Bolsheviks.

School of Slavonic and East European Studies B. S. WEICHERT University College London

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