REVIEWS 793 Pigeons ('Popularbeliefs'), Protestantism('Religion') and Prostitution('Popular custom'). Such socially complex subjects as marriage, blood feud and sexualmores reallyneed to be contextualizedifthe accounts are not to lead to misconceptionsby readers.Moreover, it is difficultto dojustice to the diversity of local customs where regional variation in these areasis so marked and the time span covered by the author long. A separate volume for 'cultural particularities'would have enabled the writer to provide us with extended discussionsplacing these topics within their various social, geographical and temporalbackgrounds. To these criticisms,Elsie might of course retortthat compiling a dictionary is not social science; that the copious referencesfollowingmany of the entries aretherepreciselyso that readerscan furtherinformthemselveson individual topics. The referencesare indeed valuable and the bibliographyat the end of the Dictionay is extensive (pp. 27I-357) with excellent coverage of recent writersaswell as older ones. Newnham College C. R. DE WAAL University ofCambridge Ransel, David L. Village Mothers: 77Tree Generations ofChange inRussiaandTataria. Indiana-Michigan Seriesin Russianand EastEuropeanStudies.Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 2000. ix + 307 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography.Index. f28.50. RANSEL'S originalaim in writingthis book was to continue his earlierresearch into the causesof infantmortalityamong the ruralpopulation in late Imperial Russia. In 'Mothering, Medicine and Infant Mortality in Russia: Some Comparisons'(OccasionalPaper236, Kennan InstituteforAdvancedRussian Studies, I990) he examined a number of late nineteenth and early twentieth century studies population censes, medical accounts and statistical surveys -which had alertedthe Russiangovernmentofficialsto the existence of vastly differentlevels of infant mortality among the various peoples of the Empire: very high among the Russian Orthodox peasants and significantly lower ones among the Muslims andJews living in ruralareas in comparable economic conditions. Ransel's intention was to continue his investigationinto the Soviet era using similarmethods. However, when he arrivedin Russia in the spring of iggo intending to starthis work in the Soviet archives, the new opportunitiesto conduct fieldresearchin post-perestroikaRussia enticed him away from the archive room to work instead in the Russian countrysidewith the living exponents of the notions and practices he intended to study. Over the next three years,with the help of severallocal scholars,Ransel was able to assemblean impressivecollection of tape-recordedinterviewswith over eighty Russian and over two dozen Muslim Tartar women, from those in their nineties to the generation born after the war, and living across a wide geographical area, from Smolensk province in the East to the Urals. The interviews were conducted using set questionnaires to guide the train of thought of the interviewees who, otherwise, were allowed to provide a free 794 SEER, 8o, 4, 2002 narrative account of their lives as young girls, brides, mothers and grandmothers . They told Ransel and his colleagues how they were being brought up as children, often in large families of ten or more in which babies were looked after by girls as young as six; of their courting rituals and wedding arrangements;of their own reproductive lives and attempts to control their fertility;of the effortsto care for their babies and the emotional detachment expected of them when facedwith infantdeaths.They recountedthe accepted practicesof givingbirth,feeding infantsand using spellsto cure illness. Village Mothers is in nine chapters. The first two draw on Ransel's earlier historicalresearchand describethe effortsof the medics, social reformersand government officialsin late Imperial Russia to reduce the appalling levels of infant mortality, particularlyamong the Russian Orthodox peasants whose birth rates were high, with a disproportionate number of deaths directly attributableto controllable causes: the practice of feeding infants cow's milk and solidsfroma soska, a feeding device made froma cow teat, lackof hygiene, poor nutrition in mothers, and superstitionwhich dictated that babies were not to be exposed to freshairor that childrenaffectedby certainillnesseswere untouchable and shouldbe left to die. With the historical backdrop set, the next six chapters closely follow the rites of passage in the life of a country woman in the more recent past. Here Ransel skilfully weaves the women's own accounts into the narrative, sometimes paraphrasing or quoting from the interviews, and other times summarizingthe women's experiences, attitudes and beliefs. He does this so well that at times one can almost hear the women speak. His translationsof the interview passages arejust idiosyncraticenough not to sound contrived, and in...