536 SEER, 79, 3, 200I Germany, Vilmos Heiszler (Budapest)the same topic in Hungary, and in the last chapter Peter Borowsky(Hamburg) describes the revolution in his own town. All in all, only three chapters, Agnes Deak, Gunter Wollstein and Gabor Erd6dy'sdeal with comparativesubjects.The volume exhibitsa rathertypical weakness of conference papers thrown together after the event: the parts do not reallycohere.As the editorobservedin hispreface,the comparativepoints were well explored at the conference. A summary of what emerged in these discussions might have been included in the volume or a comprehensive introductioncould have broughtthe chapterstogether.In itspresentformthe contribution of this compendium rests on fourteen short individual items. Even so theyoffersome insightsinto the currentscholarlyconcernsin the ever green subjectof the I848 revolutions. London LASZL6 PETER Kagan, FrederickW. TheMilitagy Reforms ofJNicholas 1. TheOrigins oftheModern RussianArmy.Macmillan, Basingstoke and London, I999. xii+337 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Index. ?40.??. THE 'iron tsar' a reformer?The term need not mean liberal or progressive, explains FrederickW. Kagan of the US Military Academy, and so even conservative measures designed to buttress autocracy may legitimately be accounted reforms. Judged in this light, Nicholas I deserves credit for centralizing the military administration (I832-36) and placing it on a firm legal basis by promulgating a systematicdigest of army regulations in I838. Though certainlyimportant, these achievements were scarcelyon a par with those of D. A. Miliutin in the next reign, and to claim that 'Russia'smilitary administration was [... .] revolutionized by Nicholas's policies' (p. 6) goes much too far. Kagan deserves praise for being the firstto have tackled the mountain of official papers produced in connection with the reforms. He shows convincingly thatthe tsar,understandablyanxiousto cut costs, took up the challenge aftersufferingnear-catastrophein thewarwiththe Turksin I828. The liveliest chapterdealswith this unjustlyneglected conflict. Quite reasonably,Nicholas and his advisers(Dibich, Chernyshev)decided to eliminate the autonomous 'main'(= general)staf, set up in I8I 2, and to concentratepower in the hands of the WarMinister. The unpopular Chernyshev'sperformancein this office was better than usually thought;junior officialswere wisely brought into the reformprocess;salarieswere increasedbut staffreduced;andNicholas showed determinationin overcoming bureaucraticresistance.All this materialis new and welcome. But did the resulting apparatus, sixteen hundred strong, give value for money? Unfortunately Kagan, so skilled at sifting through the paperwork, offers little analysis of the reform's implementation in practice. We are not told whetherthe channels of command functionedproperly,or whetherarmy regulationswere kept to, during the savage colonial warfarein the Caucasus, which rates scarcelya mention here. What should one make of the claim that REVIEWS 537 the War Ministry'scouncil 'in most cases (sic)was able to keep a very careful check on all aspects of the military economy' (p. I56), given the notorious corruption in the supply services during the Crimean war? The AuditoriatGeneral 's archive for I836-53 (availablein RGVIA) contains few records of anyproceedingsagainstcommissariatofficersformalfeasance,suggestingthat it eitherpassed undetected or was condoned. It is a pity that the authorchose to exclude military-judicialaffairsfromhispurview, and so overlookedElaine Wirtschafter'sexcellent study of the subject (Princeton, I990).Nor does he consider whether improvements in the medical services,usuallyattributedto N. I. Pirogov and other professionals,might not have owed something to the much-malignedpost-reformadministration. Army intelligence, on the author'sown showing,was poor in I 828. It could not get much better as long as militarycommanderswere obliged to sharethe tsar'sown warped'threatperception'.Nicholas, as iswell known, sawenemies everywhere.In I833, we learn here, he feared that his Prussianand Austrian allies might make common cause with the Anglo-French, and so wastefully strungout his forces along the entire western border. Instead of questioning Nicholas's 'ideologized' approach to international affairs,Kagan pleads for sympathy with Louis-Philippe,he could not be sure(p. 229) and detects a well-concealed 'manpowercrisis'in Russia'sarmedforces,which at 8so,ooo men were by far the world'slargest.However, since notjust serfs(p. 22 I)but state peasants too had to provide recruits, the ensuing calculations need adjustment.The main argumenthere is that the tsarcould not have shiftedto a thorough-going European-style cadre-and-reserve system without undermining serfdom,foronly a majordefeatwould have led the nobilityto tolerate emancipation. This is plausible up to a point, although after i857...