REVIEWS 767 memorable pieces. Readers of Soviet diaries and memoirs will not find any startlingdiscoverieshere (why should they?)but some catch the imagination. Kostrovitskaia'sdescription of watching, through the window, as a group of sailormusicians weakens and dies, is eery, and Veshenkova'sstory of a child, locked in the room each day, waiting for her mother'sreturnin the evening, is a fine piece of writing. In both cases the element of being trapped inside, of looking through windows, is critical.Windows are a recurringmotif. But the compilers leave us to do our own analysis. They tell us that they opted to organize the materials using genre and time as dividers - 'in order to foreground [. . .] the nuances of context, the shiftof context in time, and the conscious individual attempt to explore and interpret history through fictionalization' (p. xxxiii) - but we are left to interpret the significance of these dividers. What should interest a historian, and why? Are diaries and memoirs always so different?Fiction and memoir? What if we read them as one and they are another?What do these materials tell us in answer to such questions?Here areplenty of questionsfor students. The issue of women's writing is underexplored. To discover how the siege impacted upon theirperception of themselves as women, and to observe how gender differencesinfluenced theirwriting, we need a wider perspective. Did the siege, or World War II, play a significant or minor role in altering the woman's role in SovietRussia?The post-warshortageof men affecteda whole generation but throughout the 1930S women had increasingly shouldered multiple roles, moved into new and often arduousprofessions.These diaries and memoirs do not suggest significantdeparturesin these respects. Did/do women write differentlyfrom men when under conditions of severe deprivation or stress?It would be difficultbut rewarding to compare the diaries of men, left in civilian occupations, or of the soldiersservingon the outskirtsand walking back into the city to share their rations with their families. Does gender matter more or less when the chips are down? Is it age-related?Are starving children the first to forget that they are girls or boys? There are probably not enough surviving children's diaries left for a comparison, and once we move into memoirs (with their later gender-layering) it becomes difficult to know. But it would be interesting to see whether there are clear differences in 'remembering' that are gender-related and, if so, to seek for explanations. London MARY McAULEY Kozlov, Vladimir A. Mass Uprisings in theUSSR:Protest andRebellion in thePostStalinrears .Translated and edited by Elaine McClarnand MacKinnon. The New Russian History Series. M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY, and London, 2002. xix + 351 pp. Notes. Index. $68.95; $26.95. ON its dustcover,Mass Uprisings in theUSSRpromises to 'astoundWesterners who neverknew how widespreadand variedwere the instance of massprotest in thepost-Stalinperiod'. This excellent studyof strikes,riotsand insurrections does indeed offer an astonishinglyoriginal social history of the Soviet Union under Khrushchevand Brezhnev.While much studyof theperiod 1953- I985 768 SEER, 8 i, 4, 2003 has to date focused on the emergence of conscious political dissent amongst the intelligentsia,Kozlov turnsattention to the wider Soviet public, exploring how the adversities of daily existence could on occasion lead to collective, violent protest. Firmly rejecting post-Soviet nostalgia for a way of life that is now remembered as ordered and peaceful, Kozlov's examination of violent social and ethnic conflict depicts the post-Stalin period as an era of struggle, in which ordinary Soviet citizens could become albeit briefly the principalactors.Based on unparalleledarchivalresearch,hispioneering work provides an amazing breadth of material and detailed insight into events almost entirelyabsentfrommainstreamnarrativesof Soviet history. The firstchapters narrate numerous incidents of mass uprisingsoccurring between I953 and I960, and explore the conditions that provoked these violent eruptions, such as excruciating living conditions, a sense of isolation from 'normal'society, a collective identitythatmuted any feelingof individual responsibility, the influence of criminal ringleaders, and ineffectual police action. Kozlov uses this model to explain violent unrest to Virgin Lands projectson the huge constructionsitesof the 195os,amongst the militaryand, with ethnic tensions in addition, in the rebellions in Georgia in I956 and Chechnia in I958. PartTwo findsan escalationof unrestin theyears I96 I-62...