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The Soviet Union and Arab Nationalism, 1917-1966. By S. Hashim. H. Behbehani. London and New York: KPI, 1986. 252 pp. $65.00, cloth. Distributed by Routledge and Kegan Paul/Methuen.

those who surrounded Stalin brought with them unique ethnic, geographic, and political backgrounds, and, if the western scholarly community hopes to broaden its understanding of this period, it must examine the contributions made by those individuals whose effect on the formation of the Soviet state was second only to that of Stalin. Thus it is with great hope that we greet The Wolf of the Kremlin, a biography of Lazar Kaganovich written by Stuart Kahan, an American relative of Kaganovich who had the opportunity to interview Kaganovich personally for this book. It fails, however, to live up to its promise for a variety of reasons. The style Kahan chooses to tell his story is straightforward exposition with little critical analysis. Although this style could have been effective, the book is fraught with factual errors and inconsistencies: The author obviously mistakes Nikolai A. Bulganin for Nikolai I. Bukharin at one point (p. 87); he gives an incorrect date for the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly (p. 88); and he mistakenly locates the antiparty challenge in the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (p. 293). Kahan does not footnote his sources and gives only a cursory analysis of complex themes. He is particularly troubled by the national dynamics of Kaganovich's native Ukraine. Several times he seems to interchange the Russians and Ukrainians and at one point he writes "The Ukrainian Cossacks were chiefly Russians and Poles" (p. 34). The errors, combined with the total absence of reference to prevailing western interpretations of major events, cause the reader to treat with great circumspection the "new" information promised by the book's cover. Kahan's most sensational—though hardly novel—claim involves the events surrounding Stalin's death. Kahan states that Kaganovich conspired with Bulganin, Viacheslav M. Molotov, and Kliment E. Voroshilov to accelerate Stalin's death by tampering with his medication. Rumors of such a chain of events have long been afloat, but Kahan offers no specific evidence. Kahan suggests that Kaganovich was convinced that his brother Mikhail was guilty of treason charges when he was investigated but was plagued by doubts in later years that perhaps the charges were all contrived by Stalin. As a rule, Kaganovich's role in major events is greatly inflated in this book. He is portrayed as suggesting to Stalin the idea of socialism in one country and is said to have personally directed the purges of the 1930s, an assertion for which Kahan provides no evidence. While one can understand Kaganovich's exaggerating his contribution to Soviet history, one would also expect Kahan to provide balance. Kahan's lack of detachment is obvious throughout and appears in a rather curious form. Whereas biographers, particularly relatives, often go to great lengths to glorify their subjects, Kahan tells us in his preface that Kaganovich was a "devil" and seems willing to believe any hint of nefarious activity on his part. In other words, he accepts the prevailing cliche of Kaganovich as fact and works from there. This book is not totally without interest. Kahan draws a rather full picture of Kaganovich's childhood, for which he obviously benefited from conversations with his grandfather, Kaganovich's closest boyhood friend. If for no other reason than that this is the first effort of its kind, the book also merits the attention of the specialist of the period, who should be able to sift through the errors and find some new information or interpretations. The main contribution of The Wolf of the Kremlin, however, is to demonstrate the need for serious scholarly biographic research of Kaganovich and other leading figures from the Stalinist period.