346 SEER, 8i, 2, 2003 Mead, M.; Gorer, G., and Rickman, J. Russian Culture.The Study of Contemporary Western Cultures, 3. Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford, 200I. xx + 324 pp. Notes. Appendices. Index. Ci7.o0 (paperback). TALES of crawlinginfestationsof cockroaches,musingson how the pleasurea Russian derives from an orgiastic feast is like that of an infant being unswaddled, nursed and loved, and reflectionson the psychology of a tyrant are all to be encountered in RussianCulture. Fewpeople will connect Margaret Mead's name with Russia, some may remember Geoffrey Gorer's much criticized swaddling hypotheses, others might have read John Rickman's account of his time as a doctor in Russiajust before the Revolution. The three authorshave now been united and re-printedin the presentvolume. In his introduction, Sergei Arutiunov, although unable on account of constrictions of space to provide a thorough historical and political background , neverthelessusefullyputs the topics treatedhere into a widercontext. He maintains that the facts presented by the authors may not be as reliable and the analyses not as correct as one might hope; yet their conclusions are evocative. Rickman'sSketches ofRussian Peasant Life(I9I6-I9I8) arean utterlyengaging and pleasurable read. The beautifullyworded accounts of his experiences in Russia transportthe reader into a world, glimpses of which he or she might have caught only from the Russian novel before. We are told astonishing, marvellous and at times horrific stories, calmly described by a doctor, who never seems to have lost his composure. While Rickman'swritingsare based on first-handexperience, Gorer'swas to be an interpretation and analysis of 'the experience and observation of others, immigrants, refugees and those temporarily resident in the U.S.A.' (p. 8), which grew out of his participation in the Columbia University Research Projecton ContemporaryCultures. Less lyricalthan Rickman and perhaps less sober than Mead, Gorer's 7hePsychology oftheGreat Russians, first published in I949, is an attempt to establishhow society preservesits identity and consistency through time. The underlying thread for almost everything Gorer covers here are his swaddlinghypotheses. Muscularrestraintby tightly wrapping an infant in bandages (swaddling) may provide 'a clue [...] to Russian behaviour' (p. I36), without which he doubts he could have reached the conclusionshe has. While psychoanalysisattachesgreatimportanceto the fact that an adult's character is strongly determined by his upbringing, it is questionable how far nurturereally determines an entire nation's character, as Gorer suggests.His subjectiveapproachdoes, indeed, leave us wanting, for what we are presented with are assumptions and observations rather than heavily backed-up arguments, and Gorer himself admits that some of his deductions are 'unverifiedhypotheses' (p. 89). It is with this in mind that the presentworkhas to be read. Mead's account of SovietAttitudesTowards Authority was first published in I95I. In her second chapter ('Methods and Materials')she outlines that hers is a studyof a culturefroma distance, 'usingindividualinformantsand written and visual materials where field work is impossible' (p. i66). She headed a REVIEWS 347 team of nine researchers and two consultants, out of whom only two (her included) were not familiar with the Russian language or Russian culture. Nevertheless, the author competently develops existing Western interpretations of the Soviet Union and its system.This is a soberaccount and insightful interpretationof state documents, political pamphlets, fiction and interviews with recent emigres. By way of interpretingstate doctrine, Mead deduces the mind-set of the leadership and manages to convey their frailtyand insecurity as well as the inconsistencies and contradictions in implementing and maintaining rigid control and order. It is from these shortcomings of the system that she in turn aptly illuminates the behaviour of the masses deviancy as a simplemeans to survive.Indeed, Mead derivesfromthese overt inequalities that the Soviet Union embodies a 'regime [...] trapped in an abuse of its own value system'(p. 275). Arutiunov poignantly observes that those who have read 'I984 could read Mead's work as a commentary and collection of factual sources for Orwell's novel' (p. xiv). Undeniably, the texts she quotes and especiallyher chapteron the political police, whom she likens to wolves who prey on the rest of society in their constant search for food to avoid starvation, have a very Orwellian ring to them. It is remarkable, given the relative lack of resources...