REVIEWS 149 incidentally showed how, in this vile century, courage became an ambiguous quality. New Anglo-American College,Prague Z. A. B. Zeman Braun, Leopold L. S. In Lubianka's Shadow: TheMemoirs ofanAmericanPriest in Stalin'sMoscow, 1934-1945- Edited by G. M. Hamburg. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, IN, 2006. lxxxii + 352 pp. Illustrations. Appendices. Index. $35.00. This isa refreshinglyold-fashioned book. During the 1940s and 1950s a whole flurryofmemoirs appeared as thoseWesterners who had been in the Soviet Union during and after thewar returned home to reportwhat theyhad seen in the land of the Soviets. Such reportswere popular with scholars fora while, then fell out of favour as too biased outside witnesses. However, anybody familiarwith a selection of these books knows that historians ignore them at their own peril. G. M. Hamburg has dug out another one, thememoirs of Leopold L. S. Braun, an American Assumptionist, who ran a Catholic church inMalaia Lubianka (hence the title) between 1934 and 1945. Braun was a brave man who delighted in beating the authorities at their own game. He had a good eye for social differences, spoke Russian fluently, and enjoyed talking to 'ordinary people', both in his professional capacity and as aflaneur in Moscow's streets. He had a car at his disposal, ignored the rules which bound foreigners to the city limits,and thus saw (and heard) more thanmany others. The chapters where he relates his various adventures are a pleasure to read and full of ethnographic details about life in Stalin's Russia, including but not limited to religious life.Braun ? a committed Cold Warrior ? often rages against the Soviet Union, sells hearsay as fact, and makes the strongest possible claims about the totalitarian police state. His sense of the party-state's structurewas hazy, and he obviously had only themurkiest idea of Bolshevik ideology, taking the slogan 'From everyone according to his ability; to every one according to his needs', as an affirmation of social stratification and a retreat from Communist utopianism, which he assumed was merely show for well meaning liberal dupes in the West (pp. 17,90). The littlehe knew about Marxism-Leninism came from the study of anti-religious tracts distributed by theLeague of the Militant Godless ? an atheism which clearly shocked him. His tale is still useful, even in these polemical passages as they suggest one reason why the notion of the all-powerful police state emerged ? it reflected the real experience of foreigners like Braun inMoscow. Even if in other sections he undermines this picture unwittingly, his everyday lifehappened, both literallyand figuratively, 'inLubianka's shadow'. Braun wrote three drafts of his memoirs, with different levels of invective against the Soviets (1948, 1953, 1961).The book is based on the latest, least polemical version and reading it one understands why the publication was stopped by his superiors, interested in cordial relations between the Holy 150 SEER, 87, I, JANUARY 200g See and theKremlin. Why should we read such an anti-Soviet memoir of a rather queer outsider?Why should we not? Here is an interesting storyof an American priest running a Catholic church in the centre of Stalin's Moscow, which could be put to good use in the college classroom. Hamburg has provided a very useful introduction, including a succinct history of Soviet policies towards believers and organized religion between 1917 and 1945. Unfortunately, he then presents the textuncommented, without explanatory annotations. He does not point out where Braun gets itwrong ? and the text is litteredwith speculation as well as factualmistakes. For example, should the remark that during theGreat Purge 'from 5 to 6 million Russians were sup pressed' (p. 134)go uncommented, given the state of research on thisquestion? Or should erroneous statements like 'every single Soviet citizen [...] must be inpossession of a passport' (p. 137)go without a footnote in a memoir edited by a historian in 2006? Should readers not be alerted that calling the Spanish Anarchists a Soviet-controlled 'Red-modeled police' (p. 188) is turningvictims of Stalinist terror into itsperpetrators? Many more such mistakes could be added. Braun not only got thingswrong about the time he had been in the Soviet Union, he also frequendy...