REVIEWS 783 have their lived experiences both reproduced and transformed Soviet and Russian society after 1953?' The book has no conclusions, however: Raleigh suggests that to answer these questions himselfwould be to 'limit what readers might otherwise see' (p. 22). Considering that the book's readership will probably consist mostly of academic and graduate students, such abstinence is probably fair enough and may enhance the collection's usefulness as a teaching tool. (A bevy of obvious essay questions immediately suggest them selves.)As well as conveying important general points, for example about the comfortableness and optimism of the 1960s, relative to the Stalinist period, the book contains a mass of fascinating detail on all sortsof subjects from the purity of theRiver Volga ? whose water children drank when at school camp on an island near Saratov in the 1960s ? to the intertwining of school and criminal gangs in the city. (Raleigh comments thathe is reminded of his own schooldays inChicago.) All in all, this is an extremely informative book. It is also highly readable, partly because of itsnovelistic qualities: the characters of both Raleigh and his informants shine through the text.The introduction to each interview includes a lively account of the interviewee's behaviour during the event as well as a narrative of Raleigh's various adventures, such as getting lost on the way, in the labyrinth ofMoscow University, or being jumped on by an unannounced pet rat.The book isbeautifully illustratedwith photographs of the informants, for example, atMay Day parades, on the beach, or dressed for graduation ball. At the very end, hiding beyond the Index, are photographs ofRaleigh himself in 1967 and 2005. A valuable feature of thebook is its sparing but deft drawing of parallels between Russians and Americans of the same generation, leading the reader to reflect on how far the book tells a specifically Russian story or, conversely, one more universal. Department of European Studies and Modern Languages Anne White Universityof Bath Schwartz, Katrina Z. S.Nature and National Identity after Communism: Globalizing the Ethnoscape. Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 2006. xvii + 288 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $27.96 (paperback). The trees of Latvia, branches spreading far and wide, trunks standing firmly in the ground and in history, create the stage for the narratives and discourse inKatrina Z. S. Schwartz's book of changing landscapes and altered lives in post-Communist Latvia. It isappropriate that in this time of increased aware ness and concern about global climate changes a book should be published highlighting the intersection of national identity, globalization and the environment. This monograph surprises, however, in the utter honesty and complexity of the vision Schwartz brings us from postsocialist Latvia. The current message of environmental responsibility bandied about in North America is puerile in light of the ideas and actions of the Latvian people. 784 SEER, 86, 4, OCTOBER 2008 Latvia is a landwhere the primordial relationship between people and nature has never been far removed from the everyday. Schwartz oudines the his torical integrityof a Latvian ethos centred on thepreservation of theprimeval wilderness. This isno politically correctmove by politicians or left-wingradi cals; it is a common thread uniting Latvians from pre-Christian timeswhen the deities worshipped dwelled innature, to theUlmanis days between World War One and World War Two characterized by the growing importance placed on individual farm ownership and labour, to membership in the European Union (1 May 2004) and negotiating a future between a 'postpro ductivist [European] paradigm' reassessing rural land use and a Latvian tradi tion of locally inspired and developed eco-movements. In the early 1990s, Latvia was peppered with environmental groups inspired by an anti-dam movement that succeeded in halting Moscow's plan to build a hydroelectric dam on theDaugava River. Schwartz rightly illustrates throughout the text that these and other environmentally oriented turns in Latvia's history are certainly about more than simply land, trees and lakes. However, in a nation where trees thatwere 'old and large, or notable for ritual, cultural, historical, or other reasons' (p. 61) would be added to the list of state protected trees ? growing to include 635 trees by...
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