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Paul E. Michelson, Romanian Politics, 1859–1871: From Prince Cuza to Prince Carol. Iaşi: Center for Romanian Studies, 1998, 344 pp., photographs, bibliographical essay, index. U.S.$50.00.

In Part Four, "Statist Solutions," Smith argues that the russianization movement of the late 1930s and 1940s was virtually inevitable. Anew, mostly Russian-speaking managerial class had arisen throughout the country, and the promotion of Russian was essential to its continued status. The Muslim clerics vanquished, the center was now able to introduce various Cyrillic-based scripts for the Turkic languages. The Soviet victory in World War II elevated the Russian language as a symbol of the victorious motherland, which now became synonymous with the country as a whole rather than just the Russian Federation. The place of Russian now secure, the Marrists lost much of their bite. In fact, the teaching of standard Russian, both to less educated Russians and to the minority peoples, proceeded once again along mostly structuralist lines. The best feature of this book is its vivid portrayal of the passions and vicissitudes of the "linguist wars" during the 1920s and 1930s, a microcosm of the upheavals in both the Soviet academy and the society as whole. From it one can also understand why linguistics, as a discipline, has enjoyed a far more prominent position in the Russian and Soviet traditions than, say, in the United States. It is also masterful in tracing the evolution of Nikolai Marr from a respectable, if eccentric, scholar in the prerevolutionary period to a virtual handmaiden of the state. From a linguistic standpoint, perhaps the weakest feature is Smith's absolute equation of the educational and cultural outreach to the illiterate Russian masses with similar attempts in the Soviet East. There were undoubtedly many parallels, and Smith points out that even many of the principal players themselves saw the campaigns as essentially the same enterprise. However, there is a great difference between raising the linguistic and cultural level of one's own people and transforming a totally different nationality by means of another language and culture entirely, which is what the Soviets were indeed trying to do by promoting Russian as a second native language. That notwithstanding, Smith succeeds in demonstrating that matters of language and culture, perhaps more than any others, were the pivot points in the formation and perpetuation of the Soviet Union and, by extension, in its ultimate unraveling.