Polin. Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 14: Focusing on Jews in the Polish Borderlands by Antony s> Polonsky (review)

358 SEER, 82, 2, 2004 scientificdiscovery,and a collectors'item. But its importanceis enhanced remarkably bytheseriesofarchival publications intimately linkedwithit. I am immenselyimpressedby the level of painstakingscholarlywork involvedin reconstructing andtranscribing thetraveljournals,oftenwritten in crampedconditions bythelightofflickering candlesbymenwhosefingers were stifffromfrostand hardphysicallabour.ElsewhereI expressedthe opinionthatthesewere'wonderful sourcebooks,richin theextreme,which will undoubtedlybecome treasuresof Siberianhistoriography' (Sibirica, 2, 2002, I, p. II8). The 2I5 documentsreproducedin thepresentvolume mainly come from Russian repositories, though there are a few additions from elsewhere (a report from the Dutch Ambassador about a visit from Bering, letters in Danish from Bering to his aunt and to the Mayor of Horsens). A whole gamutofmattersiscoveredby the documents.They begin with Bering's proposals for a second expedition to the Pacific region and for establishing firmcontrol of the easternseaboard,improvingconditions for those stationed in the region. The documents clearly demonstrate the process whereby his plan was developed (by Kirilov), leading to the Senate, the Empress and the Sibirskii prikaz sending Skorniakov-Pisarevas Commander of the Port of Okhotsk to settle and economically develop the region. Iron workers,clergy and others were also sent. Here we see the process of government decisionmakingin action. We also gain many insightsinto the workingof bureaucracy and its limitations: instructions about provisioning and the (only partially successful) attempts to obtain enough food, reports on the advance party's progress across Siberia (including requests to sack some men who proved unsuitable), attempts to gain information from shipwreckedJapanese sailors and a host of other matters. I cannot emphasize too much how useful all this information is to historians of eighteenth-century Russia, not only to those interested in Siberian exploration and settlement. The series will stand alongside other fine editions, such as A. M. Lysaght's Joseph Banks in Newfoundland andLabrador, I766: His Diagy,Manuscripts andCollections (London, I971), mentioned because it is on my table at the moment, as monuments not only to scholarship,but to the worldwide spread of European endeavour and resolution. I sincerely hope that funds will be forthcoming to complete the whole series of volumes. A glossary of archaisms, and thorough name, geographical, and subjectindexes are included. Department ofRussian andSlavonic Studies D. N. COLLINS University ofLeeds Polonsky,Antony (ed.). Polin.Studies inPolishJewryVolume I4. Focusing onJews inthePolishBorderlands. Studiesin PolishJewry. LittmanLibraryofJewish Civilisation, Oxford and PortlandOR, 200I. xxi + 456 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Obituaries. Glossary.Index. ?9.gs (paperback). IN I930, LeyzerWolf,a nineteen-year-oldrisingstarof the YungVilne (Young Vilna) groupwrote a poem about unrequitedlove as being likethe uselessness of the wrapping-paperprovided for fish in cereal shops. It was one of iOOI untitled poems in Yiddish Wolf wrote at break-neckspeed as a mock riposte REVIEWS 359 to the I00 i Arabian Nights. At the same time he was also composing a poetic political drama: ridnland('A State for the Jews') in which he imagines the declarationof a freeJewish land on an islandin the middle of the ocean. Four years later, the irrepressibleWolf reworked Sholem Aleichem's great classic, Tevye theDaigyman, now with Tevye remarried with a revolutionary teenage son, and in which, in the last scene, Tevye is implicatedby associationwith his son's activities, has his cows slaughteredand himself is forced to flee. Should Tevye's future henceforth have been with those who had taken the road of a Zionistic-styleempowerment?Wolf's nationalfantasyhowever does not seem to have provided a straightforwardanswer. 'Jews,get back to the synagogue ... back to exile', ajester shouts towards to the end of Yidnland. As for Wolf, he may have got out of Vilna before the Germans arrivedbut only to die of typhusor malnutritionin the Soviet Union in 1943. Brilliantly elucidated by Justin D. Cammy, Wolf's life and labours seem somehow to uncannily encapsulate the whole modern PolishJewish experience grindingpoverty and culturalbrilliance, the desire to stay and make something of the land which was home, the urge to get out before it was too late and hence determine one's own destiny. All this, of course, with great dollops of whimsy, parody, the grotesque as well as political mud-slinging thrown in for good measure. In many ways it is Polin'sconstant refrain. Volume Fourteenin this consistentlyexcellent series, however, is not focused on the Polishheartlands on, for instance,Warsaw,Lodz, or Cracow -but on the...

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