Mother Russia
DAVID FOOTMAN
Russian Writers and Society Ronald Hingley (World University Library: hard cover, 25s; paperback, 14s) The great nineteenth century. Russian novelists had no idea that their works would be widely read abroad. They wrote for Russians, about Russians, in a Russian setting in many ways quite unlike any other. What that setting was is the subject of, Russian Writers and SocietY. The period covered is from the publication of the first part of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin in 1825 to the death of Chekhov in 1904. It was an age with plenty of negative features. But the author makes clear in his preface that any comparison with modern Soviet conditions' is quite outside his scope. As he writes, 'Old Russia and new Russia are both fascinating subjects, but it is tempting to add that no "western" person in his senses would ever have chosen to be a citizen' of either.'
The book was specially commissioned for the World University Library, and its declared aim is to provide 'both a textbook for students of nineteenth century Russian literature and a framework through which the general reader can look anew at the greatest Russian fiction.' What we have in fact is as complete a portrait of the old Russia as one can hope to find in a volume of 250 pages-L-down to winter tempera- tures at Verkhnoyansk and to the proper way to address a Collegiate Secretary of Class Ten of the hierarchy of official grades. The need to ';be informative has not inhibited the lively humihity we have come to expect along with Dr Hingley's scholarship. The book is ex- tremely readable ,in itself. There are eighty photographs, maps, a select bibliography and an index. All together it seems 'very good value for fourteen shillings.
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