372 SEER, 8i, 2, 2003 Inside Russia, his huge popularity as an opponent of Communism and a decisive foil to an increasingly bewildered Gorbachev was soon dissipated. Russians began to blame him as much as Gorbachev for the loss of empire and prestige abroad, and for the decline in living standardswhich all but a minority experienced. They were furious at the way, as they saw it, that he allowed a handful of villains to plunder the property of the state. They felt personally humiliated by his erratic behaviour, his drunkenness,the bizarre incidentswhich puncturedhispublic appearances,and by his lengthy bouts of sickness. They were unpleasantly reminded of the humiliating years of the Soviet gerontocracy at the turn of theig80s. They embraced El'tsin'syoung, sober and decisive successoras soon as they got the chance. Now is perhapsnot the best time to be publishinga new book about El'tsin. The instant books, the journalistic accounts have all been published. El'tsin and many in his immediate entouragehave alreadygiven theirown versionof events: the rascallymemoirs of his former bodyguard are amongst the most engaging, provided you add the necessary amount of salt. In his massive biography(reltsin.ARevolutionay Life,London, 2000), LeonAronhasexamined and digested much of the availablematerial.He went backto El'tsin'srootsin Ekaterinburg,then called Sverdlovsk.He interviewed those who had known El'tsin as a young man, and those who were his colleagues in later life. His book isprettyclose to the currentstateof the art.Booksdo continue to emerge which cast additionallight on particularaspectsof El'tsin'scareer. One of the most recent and valuable is Strobe Talbott's 7The RussiaHand (New York, 2002), which throwsan intimate light on the relationshipbetween El'tsinand Clinton. Robert Service gives a more general perpsectivein Russia.Experiment witha People (London, 2002). But it will not be easy to add much substance until the archivesbegin to open, and until distance enables historiansto get a broaderperspectiveon the man and his age. Any worthwhile new book on El'tsin, therefore, has to meet some very demanding criteria.Andrew Felkay'spedestrianbook failsthe test. It contains no new insights. It trawls through a limited number of the most obvious sources,without anyevidence of seriousresearch.Itsummarizes reasonably efficiently -some of the knownfacts.Butitputsthem into an odd proportion. It pays substantialattention to minor incidents, such as the mystery(which it does not solve) of El'tsin'sfall into the Moscow riverin September I989. But it passestoo lightly over the Balticcrisisof I 990 and I 99I, and it failsto get to gripswith the centralproblem of El'tsinand the economy. It saysnothing new or illuminating about its ostensible subject, the relationshipbetween El'tsin's Russia and the West. It will do as a text book for firstyear students, but not more than that. London RODRIc BRAITHWAITE Shenfield, Stephen D. RussianFascism.Traditions, Tendencies, Movements. M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY and London, 2001. Xiv+ 336 pp. Notes. Bibliography .Index. $66.95; $29.95. THEriot that broke out on the Manege Square in CentralMoscow on 9 June 2002, followingthe I-o victoryofJapan over Russia in the soccerWorldCup, REVIEWS 373 showed the potential for racistviolence in Russiatoday. At the very time when a law against political extremism was before the State Duma, some of those who had been watching the match on a large-screen television rampaged through the streets, seeking foreigners to attack, injuring scores of people, resulting in at least one death. It was generally agreed in Moscow that this contemporarypogrom was not spontaneousbut organized. These events regrettablydemonstrated the relevance of Stephen D. Shenfield 's excellent volume, Russian Fascism. This is an encyclopaedic historyand analysis of Russian nationalist and extremist organizations in the I99os. He drawson theprogrammes,publicationsandwebsitesof thegroups,on Russian Press reports and particularlyon the valuable work of the Panorama experts in Moscow, Vladimir Pribylovskiiand Aleksandr Verkhovskii.The groups Shenfield covers include the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, tendencies within the Russian Orthodox Church, Vladimir Zhirinovskii's Liberal-DemocraticPartyof Russia, RussianNational Unity (RNE), formerly led by Aleksandr Barkashov, and Eduard Limonov's National-Bolshevik Party, as well as some smaller groups. He discussesmore amorphous trends, such as pagans, Cossacks, skinheadsand football supporters;and provides a most interesting discussion of the esoteric ideas of Aleksandr Dugin...