Reviews 605 materials will be impressed by their apparent richness and variety. The General Survey, for example, with its associated "economic notes," provides coverage of thirty-four of the fifty-four provinces then in existence and contains detailed in- formation on land use, population, crafts, industries, and physical conditions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Central State Archive of An- cient Acts contains well over one million items related to the General Survey, offer- ing the potential, when combined with other materials described by the author, to reconstruct much of the historical geography of Russia. The translation itself is handsomely produced, but in size and concept this publication falls short of what one might expect in a separate issue of a monograph series. As an historical geographer, Professor Gibson could well have enhanced the volume by providing a substantial foreword and by using editorial comments to update the original version. Unfortunately this was not done, and as a result the usefulness of the volume as a reference for historians and geographers is less than might have been expected. ROBERT G. JENSEN Syracuse University STUDIES ON THE INTERIOR OF RUSSIA. By August von Haxthausen. Translated by Eleanore L. M. Schmidt. Introduction by 5*. Frederick Starr. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1972. xlv, 328 pp. $10.50. Teachers and students of Russian history will welcome this abbreviated one-volume English translation of August von Haxthausen's celebrated three-volume German account of his travels in Russia in 1843. The only other English translation (also drastically shortened), that of 1856, is now difficult to obtain. Moreover, the present version is accompanied by an extensive scholarly apparatus, and it is attractively presented. The book opens with Professor Starr's lengthy and fasci- nating study of the author, which emphasizes not only the voyage itself but also Haxthausen's continued active interest in Russia, and even suggests that he, by means of a meeting and a memorandum, influenced Alexander II toward inau- gurating the emancipation of the serfs. (Khomiakov's name, however, was Alexis, not Alexander, pp. xxiv, xxxi.) To squeeze three volumes into one "the frequent repetitions that encumber the German original have been deleted," always with appropriate markings. More important, numerous chapters and parts of chapters have been eliminated. To summarize what remains, in the scholars' own words: "The principle of selection applied throughout has been to translate those sections most closely connected with Haxthausen's own deepest concerns and with those of contemporary social thought in western Europe and Russia. Accordingly, the descriptions of village life in central Russia and especially the extensive accounts of Iaroslavl and Nizhnii Novgorod provinces are translated almost in full from volume 1. Also included from volume 1 is the excellent discussion of the sectarian communities, a theme followed up later in the chapter on the Mennonites from volume 2. Haxthausen's thoughtful analysis of colonization and national integration from volume 2 is translated and abridged. Finally the lengthy essays from volume 3 on Moscow, the nobility, the religiosity of Russians, and the peasant commune are included. These passages, along with the analysis of colonization, present con- venient summary of Haxthausen's investigations and form the basis for the author's concluding prognostications in 'The Mission of Russia'" (p. xliv). The translation reads well. The editor's notes are on the whole useful, although 606 Slavic Review they do not indicate an expert knowledge of the period and are occasionally er- roneous. (At the bottom of page 226 Granovsky is assigned a wrong subject for his lectures, Pogodin a wrong view of the origin of the Russian state, and Peter Ki- reevsky a wrong year of death.) The Russian is also shaky at times, in translitera- tion and terminology. To cite a recurrent problem, although an initial Russian s can properly be translated into German with an s, this should not be done in an English text. The volume contains an index of personal names and a subject index. NICHOLAS V. RIASANOVSKY University of California, Berkeley A TOUR OF RUSSIA, SIBERIA AND THE CRIMEA, 1792-1794. By John Parkinson. Edited with an introduction by William Collier. Russia Through European Eyes, no. 11. London: Frank Cass, 1971. xix, 280 pp. £4.00. This book is a condensed version of the diary of John Parkinson, a clergyman and "Oxford don," who as a companion to a young British nobleman made a "grand tour" of Europe which led him via Stockholm to Russia. The first hundred pages deal with the three-quarters of a year which Parkinson spent in Stockholm, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. There is not much of interest in this account. The writer relates chiefly the conventional, deals with court stories, dinners, balls, and love affairs, and says little about life in general or, except for the Hermitage and the interior of some palaces, of the sights. He met many well- known figures, and speaks of Dr. Pallas, Quarenghi, the imperial family, Catherine's favorites, and the upper crust of the nobility. He sometimes makes acid remarks— about a lady "almost too foolish to laugh at and too lousy to be approached" (p. 94) —and seldom misses an occasion to disparage the late Potemkin. The diary changes in character, and in interest to the historian, when Parkin- son leaves Moscow, which he calls "forlorn and uncomfortable" (p. 99), and travels via Kazan and Perm to Tobolsk. He begins to describe the scenery and takes an interest also in the life of peasants (with whom he stays on his journey) and in some social and political affairs. We are surprised to hear him say that he found beyond Perm "the manners, the language, and the luxuries of every other place" so that he could "fancy himself" in some "great capital rather than in a village on the borders of Siberia" (p. 117). Since very few English travelers penetrated so deeply into the Russian empire and left accounts, his diary, though he lacks sensi- bility, is a useful supplement to other travel reports, such as those by the Swiss surgeon Jacob Fries and the American John Ledyard. On his return, he spent some time in Sarepta, which (with its German-Swiss colony) he described as a place unequaled for the "goodness of the people and for all the comforts of life" (p. 151). Going on to Astrakhan, Georgievsk, and Bakchisarai, he describes scenery, people, curiosities, and native habits. Though a clergyman, he never mentions attending divine service, except occasionally for Orthodox, Mohammedan, or Buddhist worship. A brief account of his return via Kiev and Moscow to St. Petersburg concludes the journey. Parkinson shows little sympathy for the Russians. Quoting Quarenghi, he speaks of them "from first to last as a set of rascals" (p. 42). He states that they are "totally destitute of principle" (p. 48), "destruction being an enjoyment and pleasure to them" (p. 143), and that the foreign colonists in Sarepta "look on the