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Economic Development in East-Central Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries. By Ivan T. Berend and György Ránki New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1974. Pp. xiii, 402

East-Central Europe as an entity has attracted few scholars. In those cases where historians have dealt with more than one country, they usually have confined themselves to diplomatic maneuverings, wars, and the like. Given this situation, one turns to Berend and Ranki's study (originally published in Hungarian in 1969) with great hope—two well-known economic historians attempting a synthesis in a field where the most elementary of textbooks hardly exists in any language. The story begins in mid-nineteenth century with the emancipation of the serfs in the various empires (Russia, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman, with the Prussian state in the background). The first hiatus is World War I; then comes a tale of economic woe in a whole series of newly independent states (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Rumania); and finally, the creation of Nazi-run economies. In all of this, economic growth and development is at issue; the political side of even such intensely political events as the emancipation of the serfs remains muted. The authors make extensive claims for their vision of economic history and of the industrial revolution in particular. Not only are they Marxist in the sense of talking about the necessities of historical development, but they envisage any history of economic growth as dealing with a whole panoply of social institutions and with social conflict as well. That is a lot to promise, especially given a field where they have to gather the most elementary raw data from studies published in many languages. The actual product is useful but far more limited. Berend and Rdnki describe various elements of nineteenth-century economic growth—agrarian transformation, credit and transport, the role of the state, foreign capital, and the development of manufacturing industry. The hope for a broader socio-economic framework, despite grand promises, remains unfulfilled. The twentieth century fares a little better in the context of the World Wars and the Great Depression, but here too the emphasis lies on the growth of product (both in the aggregate and sector by sector). Furthermore, the attempt to describe East-Central Europe as a whole founders on the extreme variations in economic development in the area, ranging from advanced Bohemia, which outstripped even France in several ways, to economically primitive sections of Yugoslavia, where industry appeared only after 1945 if at all. The authors resolve this question by presenting countries or regions in serial fashion without establishing any adequate comparative framework. Given their interests and linguistic abilities, they pay most attention to Hungary, with the other sections of Austria-Hungary coming in second. Areas like Poland, on which a good deal of work has been published in the national language, remain relatively neglected and appear only sporadically.