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Reviews 213RUSSIA OBSERVED: COLLECTED ESSAYS ON RUSSIANAND SOVIET HISTORY. By Richard Pipes. Boulder, San Francisco,and London: Westview Press, 1989. 240 pp. $34.95.As a role, American publishers do not like to put out collections of previously publishedarticles by scholars. This is a pity for two reasons: first, given the parlous stateof even good university libraries, the original publication, more often than not, ishard to locate. Second, when gathered between two covers, the articles demonstratenot only the scholarly development of their author but also afford glimpses into hisworkshop. Fortunately, Westview Press overcame this reluctance and republishedten important articles from the pen of Richard Pipes, whose major efforts have beena ground-breaking history of the Formation of the Soviet Union, a challenginginterpretation of Russia under the Old Regime, a biography of Peter Struve, and theimpressive Russian Revolution.The volume under review shows the range of Professor Pipes's scholarlyinterests: from the Muscovite to the Soviet periods; from Great Russia to the non-Russian frontier territories. It also documents the historian's duty to subject all evidenceto critical examination—which also means paying close attention to the vocabularyused in the sources and its implications for a better knowledge and understandingof those ideas that have shaped political decisions or responses in the past.Quite naturally, such a methodological orientation leads to critical discussions ofopinions held by earlier historians, so that the articles also make a contribution to thehistoriography of their subject matter.Far from being occasional pieces or extended notes on some trivial issues thatfound no place in a major monograph, the articles in this collection are interestingand self-contained explorations. They may be arranged in several broad topicalgroups. The first deals primarily with Russian domestic politics and political ideas.The introduction to a republication of Giles Fletcher's classic description of latesixteenth-century Muscovy, Of the Russe Commonwealth (1966), provides a usefultour d'horizon of Russian historiography of foreign travelers' accounts and a concisestatement of the major features of Ivan the Terrible's realm. Much more original,even pathbreaking in its approach, is the article entitled "Catherine Π and theJews: The Origins of the Pale of Settlement." It is pathbreaking for its examinationof the "Jewish Question" in Russia from the point of view of the Russian governmentin its imperial, expansionist context. Pipes concludes that far from being purposefullyoppressive (as they were to become eventually), the measures adopted byCatherine Π with respect to the newly incorporated Jewish population were, for theage, the most liberal and progressive. The acts restricting the activities and rights ofresidence of the Jews resulted from pressures put on the government by conservativemerchants and artisans fearful of Jewish competition. Since the appearance of thearticle, several monographs on the Jews in Russia from similar perspectives havecontributed significantly to a fruitful revisionist interpretation of the question. Sincethe main territory where the Jewish question was of significance is now part ofUkraine and Belorussia, Pipes's article has important contemporary implications andshould be of particular interest to readers of Harvard Ukrainian Studies.