Stone, Gerald Slav Outposts in Central European History: The Wends, Sorbs and Kashubs (review)

Abstract

SEER, 95, 3, JULY 2017 552 modern cinematic hero, Sergei Oushakine examines two films of two postSoviet decades, Govorukhin’s Voroshilov Sniper (1999) and Zviagintsev’s Elena (2011), and discusses the trend of aesthetic privatization and the self-validation of violence. Oushakine argues that the films testify to the ‘publicly executed punishment’ undertaken outside the law in the late 1990s such that Sniper turns into a ‘quiet murder’, a ‘crime without punishment’ (p. 177) a decade later. Further on, Peter Rollberg examines the career of the Russian born IsraeliAmerican Slava Tsukerman, while Eugénie Zvonkine explores compositional and architectonic forms in Kira Muratova’s films, positing that the latter is Muratova’s uncompromising constant. In the concluding chapter of the volume, Birgit Beumers considers the image of St Petersburg in Balabanov’s films, arguing that it presents ‘an empty, grey frame, the colourful canvas of which has been lost’ (p. 242). The volume is highly valuable, offering an assertive opening to the debate of new Russian fin de siècle culture. The book’s studies are primarily empirical, however some chapters contain a number of profound theoretical observations that would no doubt lay the foundations for the future paradigm (or set of paradigms) of a post-Soviet Russian traumatic cultural age. Department of European Languages & Cultures L. Ryazanova-Clarke University of Edinburgh Stone, Gerald. Slav Outposts in Central European History: The Wends, Sorbs and Kashubs. Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2016. ix + 398 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. £25.99 (paperback). Against the trend of transnational history, Gerald Stone has written a definitive master narrative of (or perhaps for) Wends, Sorbs and Kashubs. The western Slavic minorities, often neglected in scholarship, are given centre stage in this tour de force through nearly thirteen centuries. It may perhaps seem curious to read a history of minorities in this way, yet in reading this book it becomes apparent that this is a much-needed history to be told. Drawing on a formidable range of sources, Stone pieces together a comprehensive study of the westernmost Slavs. Often relying on sources from ‘outsiders’, the book presents snippets of evidence of the extent of the Wendish reach into Germany. These Slavs lived as far west as the Lüneburger Heide, though they were gradually pushed back to the north-east and south-east of Berlin. Much of what we learn, especially in the first half of the book which spans the period up to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, comes from sources documenting (or at the very least hinting at) the existence of Wends in Lusatia, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Brunswick and elsewhere. As Stone points out, the REVIEWS 553 earliest written Wendish source dates from the sixteenth century (p. 43). He suggests that the reformation led to a proliferation of Wendish vocabulary by the clergy (p 116), though, as with much of Wendish and Sorb history, the source base is sparse and ambiguous. The main body of evidence in western Slavic vernacular has only really been carefully compiled since the nineteenth century. Out of this emerges a fragmentary picture of various Slavic sub-groups that form the backbone of this story: Wends, Sorbs and Kashubs through the turmoil of history from early medieval times to the present. On this journey, we gain a number of fascinating insights. For instance, the word Kiez, a common expression for ‘neighbourhood’ in the cities of Berlin and Hamburg, is a legacy of the onetime Wendish presence in the area (pp. 58–60). But it is the diversity of the Slavic presence up to around the Elbe region that impresses most. Still, we have to wait until 1574 for the first published Wendish book to make an appearance (p. 99). Thereafter, the perspective shifts somewhat: away from outside onlookers towards ‘internal’ sources. The more frequently local vernacular sources feature, the more alive we are to the emergence of a common European history. From chapter six on (‘Awakening’), the story becomes a rather familiar one. The centre (Prussia) suppressed Wendish language education in elementary schools (p. 225) and in churches (p. 226), but this was followed by a growth in non-devotional Wendish literature towards the middle of the nineteenth century...