Blousmevisr Rvesr4.—By Anton Hart ren, translated' from the. Swediah Anna Barwell (Allen a Unwin, Ws, Gtk met.)
This is probably the most import-fant account of town and country conditions in Russia that has recent ished in English (writes is, Professor of Slavonic in the Waiversity of Copenhagen, and has visited Russia yearly from 1904 to 1916. The present volume is the record of a very thoroughgoing and, the main, very objective investiga. tion of town and country conditions in 1924. The book is bared on a zeal knowledge and understanding of, the principal aspects of Russian Jife, It shows discrimination throughout, and is well written and admirably "translated, As was inevitable, it is full of irony, for it a calm and critical record of a whole number of fiascos and volte-faces of Bolshevist policy. For the most part these are recorded in the often astonishing admissions contained in the speeches of the most responsible of the Commissars, Drerzhinsky, Rykov, Semyashko, 'Trotsky, and (especially), Lunacharsky. But for his account of living conditions, the author is not only able to rely on extremely' frank and detailed publications of Bolshi authorities, especially 'a searching. investigation of rural life by Yakovlev, but is also able to supplement it at first hand with his own observations and with a number of ithy comments made to him, espe-laily by officials and by peasants, These last are peculiarly valuable,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.