354 SEER, 84, 2, 2006 The story,predictably,ends in tears.Kharikand many of the other leading activistsof the Soviet Yiddish intelligentsiacame to a stickyend in the purges of the 1930S. The Nazi Final Solution on Soviet soil, which swept away the Yiddish-speakingheartland,completed the process of destroyinga secular Jewish culture based on Yiddish. Yet the experiment itself deserves a close examination, and is well-servedby Shneer's sensitiveand well-arguedbook. Department ofHebrew andJ7ewish Studies J. D. KLIER University College London Dukes, Paul. TheUSAintheMaking oftheUSSR:TheWashington Conference, I92I1922 , and 'Uninvited Russia'.Studies in the History of Russia and Eastern Europe, 2. RoutledgeCurzon,London and New York, 2004. xi + 156 pp. Table. Map. Notes. Bibliography.Index. ?6o.oo. THE Washington Conference of I921-22 forms the only significantachievement in foreign affairsof the Harding Administration.The literatureusually focuses on the agreements reached in the area of naval disarmament.Paul Dukes has made a notable additionto it by adoptinga comparativeapproach. Dukes has sought to reassessthe relationsof all the Great Powerswith Russia after the Revolution. He stressesthe importance of Soviet Russia to the process of attemptingto bring stabilityto the Pacific. He arguesthat the United States believed that the Bolshevik Revolution representeda brief, transitory phase thatwould precede the emergence of a new, capitalistRussia.American policy thus aimed to maintainthe integrityof the territoryof the formertsarist empire, and resisted all effortsby other powers to dismemberit, so that the non-Communist successor state would inherit the power and influence of the tsars.Thus, despite itself, the US 'promoted rather than undermined the process of the formation of the Soviet Union' (p. I28). Dukes offers a brisk survey of the sources of American predominance after I920. American policy-makersexploited their hold over the other Great Powersthat stemmedfromwar debts.Most notably, they forced GreatBritain to abandon the Anglo-Japanesealliance in I922 (threateningalso to disrupt the Empireby coercing the Dominions to disavowthe alliance should Britain standby its ally).Britainalso relinquishedthe two power standard(thatis, the requirementfor the Royal Navy to be equal in strengthto the combined naval forcesof the next two navalpowers).The interestBritainpaid on itswar debts was equal to the cost of a squadronof new super-dreadnoughts.As the Soviet critic,L. E. Berlin,discerned,at little cost to itself,the US had become nearly as powerfulat sea as Britain,with the potential to overtakeits position effortlessly . (Indeed the Royal Navy was actually weaker than the American and Italian fleets combined, let alone the next two strongest.) Dukes suggeststhat the Conference's success in limiting naval armaments can be explained as a confirmation of a realignment that had already occurred. Effortsto cut the number of supportingvessels, especiallycruisers, failed; indeed, investment in the latter would increase after 1922. Dukes remarksgloomily that, overall, defence expendituredid not diminishin order REVIEWS 355 to protectwhat had been gained duringthe Conference. The seriesof treaties signed at Washington 'did not free the world from the danger of armed conflictseven more terriblethan the War of I9I4-I8' (P.43). On the contrary, they 'cleared the decks for rearmament' (p. 47). Such a judgment seems tainted by excessive hindsight. It was by no means self-evidentthat rearmament on a great scale would be needed in the early 1920S. The Washington treaties were fundamentallyarms control agreements that sought to control the increase in armamentsand were moderatelysuccessful.Fortunately,their flexibility permitted rapid re-equipment once the strategic conditions had drasticallyaltered. To scholarsdeeply versed in the strategicdilemmas of the inter-waryears, Dukes's discussionof these aspectswill not appear as strikinglynovel, despite his stimulatingcomparativeapproach,and the use of Soviet writersneglected by Anglo-Saxon historians.Dukes'smajor contributionis an acute assessment of American policy in the Far East vis-a-visBolshevikRussia who lurked outside the Washington system. The main difficultyin the region was posed by the other power to emerge strengthenedby the FirstWorld War, namely Japan. The Japanese had occupied the southern part of Sakhalin and had encroached upon the Far Eastern Republic (FER) adjacent to Manchuria. The American Secretaryof State, Charles Evans Hughes, stubbornlyrefused to recognize BolshevikRussia, but despiteallowingan FER Trade Delegation to visit the US in September 1922, declined to recognize the FER either, mainly because he opposed the 'Balkanization'of Russia. On I3 November I922 the FER asked to join...