LETTERS 

From the Editor: 
Slavic Review publishes letters to the editor with educational or re-

search merit. Where the letter concerns a publication in Slavic Review, the 
author of the publication will be offered an opportunity to respond. Space 
limitations dictate that comment regarding a book review should be lim-
ited to one paragraph; comment on an article should not exceed 750 to 
1,000 words. The editor encourages writers to refrain from ad hominem 
discourse. 

D.P.K. 

To the Editor: 
I am pleased that Slavic Review has again (vol. 54, no. 4) reviewed my book The Slave 

Soul of Russia: Moral Masochism and the Cult of Suffering. However, Laura Engelstein has mis-
attributed one of her quotations. It was the late Nicholas Vakar, not I, who said that "Rus-
sian habits of obedience have been the cause, not the result, of political autocracy" (The 
Taproot of Soviet Society, 1961, 40). I made my source perfectly clear on page 2 of my book. 

Another misrepresentation is Engelstein's assertion that my book is "based on quota-
tions from a smattering of oddly chosen literary works" (870). In fact my evidence in-
cludes, in addition to literary works, Orthodox attitudes regarding the importance of 
smirenie, Russian proverbs such as "Derzhi golovu uklonnu, a serdtse pokorno," other kinds 
of folklore such as bridal laments and folktales about Ivan the Fool, Russian cultural prac-
tices such as beating oneself with a birch switch in the hot bania, observations of many 
Russian philosophers from Petr Chaadaev to Nikolai Berdiaev on the prominent role of 
submissiveness among Russians, and key historical changes such as Petr Stolypin's reforms 
and the post-Soviet antimasochistic trend. Surely my evidence is not as narrow as Engel-
stein suggests. It includes both of what she terms the "representational" and the "actual." 

Most unfortunate is Engelstein's assertion that Russian masochism, as I describe it, is 
an "allegedly pathological disposition" (870). On the contrary, I stated: "no claim is being 
made here about whether masochism is 'pathological'" (Slave Soul of Russia, 7). By assum-
ing that psychoanalysts deal only with "pathological" matters in the clinical context, she is 
confusing what a psychiatrist does with what a psychoanalytic scholar of culture does. 

DANIEL RANCOUR-LAFERRIERE 

University of California, Davis 

Professor Engelstein does not wish to reply. 

To the Editor: 
Our reactions to William T. Lee's comments on our book, Soviet Defense Spending, 

A History of CIA Estimates, 1950-1990 (Slavic Review 58, no. 1), are best described by a 
quotation from Benjamin Franklin. In a letter written to his sister over 230 years ago, 
Mr. Franklin eloquently noted, "As to the Abuses I meet with . . . you must know I number 
them among my Honours. One cannot behave so as to obtain the Esteem of the Wise and 
Good, without drawing on one's self at the same time the Envy and Malice of the Foolish 
and Wicked, and the latter is a Testimony of the former" (Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., and Leo-
nard W. Labaree, eds., Mr. Franklin, A Selection from His Personal Letters, 1956). Since he left 
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a disgruntled employee about thirty years ago, 
Mr. Lee has had almost exclusively negative and harsh words for CIA analyses and analysts. 
His attack on our book sustains this record. We recommend that in order to obtain a more 
balanced perspective your readers should also consult the judgments of our book made 

Slavic Review 58, no. 3 (Fall 1999)