REVIEWS 557 also well traced, as in Sabina Lewin's examination of Jewish secondary schooling in the tsarist-ruledKingdom of Poland and in the inter-warPolish state. She pays special attention to the effect of external political and social forces on the tempo of the processofJewish polonization. PiotrWr6beloffers a content analysisof the officialnewspaperof the PolishGovernment-in-Exile, Dziennik Polski.Wr6bel demonstratesthat the paper was a major conduit for information about the evolving mass-murder of East European Jews. This articlelinksnicely with Natalia Aleksiun'sreview of Polish historiographyon the Holocaust from I945 to I998. Literarystudiesare well representedby Michael Steinlauf's study of Mark Arnshteyn, the bi-lingual (Polish and Yiddish) playwright and actor. The theatre, as Steinlauf demonstrates,functioned as a 'borderland'where Poles and PolishJews interacted in a unique way. Special attention should be paid to Hana Shlomi's study of the resettlement of Jewish repatriantsfrom the Soviet Union to Lower Silesia. This is a contribution to a topic that is beginning to attractscholarlyattention:the 'ethnic cleansing' that took place in Central and Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War. The settlement discussed by Shlomi should be seen in the context of polices that culminated in Operation Vistula in 1947, the wholesale deportationof 'alien' elements of the population of south-easternPoland. Gender Studiesmakesa welcome appearancewith Tamar Salmon's article on problemsattendingdivorce among PolishJews in the earlymodern period when the wife was 'mad' (shotah), and in theory not liable to divorce by her husband. Salmon investigateshow Jewish legal scholars sought to overcome thisresultantdifficulties. A special feature of Gal-Ed,itself virtuallyworth the subscriptionprice, is Stephen D. Corsin's bibliography of recent works on Polish Jewry. The survey, which includes retroactive listings as well, includes 632 individual items. The utilityof thisbibliographyis increasedby the inclusionof a general index. In short, the diversityand qualityof this issue of Gal-Edgives evidence of a vigorous and healthy field, a tributeto both the veteran and new generation of scholars. University College London JOHN D. KLIER Dixon, Simon. Catherine the Great.Profiles in Power. Longman/Pearson Education, Edinburgh and London, 2001. xi + I96 pp. Notes. Bibliography .Index. ['4.99 (paperback). 'I do not know how great the lust for power is in other rulers,Lbut]in me it is not great', wrote Catherine II of Russia in 1790 in the margin of Alexander Radishchev's Jounneg from St Petersburg to Moscow,next to the condemned author'sremarksabout the dangersof 'impassioneddelight in the exercise of power'. After reading Simon Dixon's illuminating study readerswill be in a good position to judge the sincerity of Catherine's claim. The first chapter provides an admirably succinct account of her reign and sets out the wider historiographicaland theoreticaldebate, while the second considersthe coup 558 SEER, 8i, 3, 2003 that brought her to power in 1762. The six chaptersthat follow approach the subjectthematically,dealing with images and representations,ideas, political culture, Enlightened despotism, power relationships and Russia as a great power. A briefepilogue about EmperorPaul'sunfortunatereign (I 796- I 8oi) suggests why the legitimate male successor lasted only five years before influential men arranged his assassination, whereas his 'usurper' mother's thirty-four-yearreign ended with death by naturalcauses. As in his earlierbook, TheA,Modernisation ofRussia,I676-I825 (Cambridge, 1999), which kicked off with a discussionof modernization theory, Professor Dixon furnisheshis readerswith frameworksfor approaching such topics as despotism ('the eighteenth century's dirtiest word', p. 70), female rule and social forcesversusindividualgenius as leversof history.Cutting through the old debates (who hoodwinkedwhom?)about Catherine and thephilosophes, he places the empresson the 'Enlightenedspectrum'(p. 65) and presents'the art of public relations' in a pre-modern age as a valid subject for scholarly investigation. The Russian court may have been 'the most expensive place inl Europe' (p. 49), but as Article 579 of Catherine's Nakaz stated: 'Decency requires that Affluence and Magnificence should surround the throne, as the Source of Prosperity to the whole Community.' Art and book collections demonstrated civilized values to those who cared about such things, while huge firework displays or lavish building programmes displayed success to a wider public. When Catherine wrote in I770 that she wished 'our nation to shine in all the military and civil...