From "AA" to "Zyryanovsk"
G ., E.
MCGRAW-HILL ENCYCLOPEDIA of RUSSIA AND THE SOVIET UNION, edited by Michael T. Florinsky. New York: A Donat Publication. McGraw-Hill. Illus., maps. xiv + 624 pp. $23.50. With this new...
...Why then is "S" unmistakably an "outstanding novelist...
...So Robert Daniels writes that "the theme of bureaucratic degeneration has inspired a considerable neo-Trotskyist literature, represented by James Burnham's Managerial Revolution (1941) and Milovan Djilas' New Class (1957...
...From "AA: see GAUYA" to "ZYRYANOVSK, town in E.-Kazakhstan Oblast, Kazakh SSR, in Altay Mountains...
...MCGRAW-HILL ENCYCLOPEDIA of RUSSIA AND THE SOVIET UNION, edited by Michael T. Florinsky...
...But in the post-Revolution period, they would seem to belong more in a "Who's Who" than an encyclopedia...
...The illustrations, where they lend themselves to line cuts, as in charts, are helpful...
...The virtues of the Encyclopedia exceed by far the blemishes...
...Nevertheless, all of it is easily readable...
...In an effort to gain space the editors have resorted to an extreme use of abbreviation...
...with a period (and Education is "E" while East is "E...
...Takes a little watching...
...and, it should be added, legibly set—compact, but not so small in type size as we often find in encyclopedias...
...While many of the 91 contributors are unknown to me, their biographic notes in most cases establish their authority, and some of them—for example, Richard Loewenthal, Solomon Schwarz, Alexander Dallin, Hans Kohn, Frederick C. Barghoorn, Robert V. Daniels, to cite a few—are familiar names to many of us...
...And, allowing for the fact that the purges, the Opposition, and related matters, are treated extensively under separate entries, is it really the best encyclopedic practice to say of Christian Rakovsky, for example, that he was "found guilty of high treason, and sentenced to 20 years' hard labor," and leave it at that...
...I cannot help but feel that, wilfully or not (and probably not), the blandness of tone frequently runs the risk of being mistaken for its own kind of "editorializing...
...Does encyclopedic objectivity really require that Ehrenburg, Babel, Olesha, Pasternak, and Sholokhov receive the same dispassionate treatment...
...An encyclopedia cannot be less than objective if it is to be anything at all...
...The writing is perhaps uneven, revealing some inconsistencies and an absence of uniform professionalism in editing...
...It is very nearly ungenerous to cavil in any way about the results achieved in this scholarly undertaking...
...In the pre-Revolution entries, they would have obviously have been pruned by the editing of time...
...With this new Encyclopedia at hand, it seems inconceivable that we had to make-do without something like it up to now...
...If I cite the weaknesses at all, it is really in the hope that the Donat organization will keep at it, and ultimately produce a revised edition...
...I find it incredible that a group of individuals, unsponsored by institution or foundation, were intrepid enough to assume a task of this dimension, and to bring it off with so much skill...
...However, the editors legitimately affirm in their preface that while they have eschewed a "partisan approach," they have tried to do more than list facts and figures—to offer "interpretations of the principal developments discussed...
...Apart from sampling its thousands of entries for purposes of this review, I have referred to it innumerable times to find an answer that would otherwise have taken endless (and possibly fruitless) poking through various sources...
...Editor Michael T. Florinsky, and mnaging editors David S. Anin and Alexander Donat, are to be commended as are the consultants Harry Schwartz (New York Times), Theodore Shabad (New York Times), John Turkevich (professor of chemistry, Princeton) and Earl Ubell (New York Herald Tribune...
...Founded 1794," the Encyclopedia ranges the gamut of Russian history from its earliest days to the present, and covers in its subjects every field from architecture to zoology...
...16,000 (1939), 54,000 (1959...
...I found the geographic entries particularly useful, in many cases an essential supplement to the very best of atlases...
...But Russia is always "R...
...Here the briefest entry serves a clear purpose...
...Where economy dictated line cuts in place of half-tones, as in portraits of individuals, they have an awkward look, and might possibly have been better omitted...
...The editors have maintained a scrupulous, sometimes an excruciating, objectivity...
...Thus Railroads become "R" without a period...
...After its first appearance in an entry, the subject is referred to only by initial in the remainder of the entry...
...Would it be improper to mention many people think Ehrenburg is a rat...
...There is a literal accuracy here...
...The contributor of the Pasternak article avoids an opinion—there are two schools of thought, so to speak...
...But given Burnham's current renown as a leading ideologist of the most irrepressible Right, a wiser choice of available references to couple with Djilas could sensibly have been made...
...They are to be forgiven, I suppose, for it no doubt permitted the addition of hundreds of entries, but it is distracting...
...Lead, asphalt concrete...
...Their omission would surely have left space for elaboration of some entries, or the inclusion of entries that might have been forced out...
...I am not, however, convinced that all the metallurgists, academicians, and bassos, rated inclu Sion, where they claim no special distinction of originality or excellence...
...Here and there, too, the necessities of compression have produced simplifications which lend themselves too easily to dismay or confusion...
Vol. 9 • April 1962 • No. 2
