The Reconstruction of Russia. Edited by Sir Paul Vinogradoff, (Oxford
University Press. Is. 6d. net.)—The four essays in this little pamphlet deserve very serious consideration. They traverse the view that " the self-determination of peoples " is an all. sufficient principle, and emphasize the importance of traditional connexions and of economic tics. Sir Paul Vinogradoff paints to Great Britain as a typical historic State, and asks " What would be the result of dissolving this mighty organism, created by centuries of efforts and sacrifices, into its component national elements ? What would happen —taking one instance—if the Sims Feiners in Ireland were granted to the full extent the right of national self-deter. urination ? " Russia, too, he says, is a great historical organism, created by many centuries of toil, and each of her many nationalities is economically dependent on the others. He looks for a Federal State reuniting all the Russias, as the historic process, though interrupted, will be resumed. He minimizes the alleged differences between Great Russia and the Ukraine. This question is discussed more fully in the same sense by Mr. Shklovsky, who says that a few literary cranks have tried to devise a speciaktikrainian language, which is intelligible neither to the Ukrainians nor the Great Russians. Local autonomy would, he thinks, satisfy nearly every one. M. Nordman, of the old Russian Foreign Office, has a valuable paper on " Russia as an Economic Organism," and M. Poliakoff-Litortzeff dis- cusses the position of the Russian Jews, most of whom, he assures us, are " most bitterly opposed to Bolshevism," though they suffer for the crimes of Trotsky and other Jewish renegades.
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