Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1996 (reviewed in Pimlico edition, 1997), 923 pp., ISBN 0–150–24364–X.

Vladimir N. Brovkin, Behind the Front Lines of the Russian Civil War: Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia, 1918–1922 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 455 pp., ISBN 0–691–03278–5.

Edward Acton, William G. Rosenberg and Vladimir Iu. Cherniaev, eds., Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution 1914–1921 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997), 782 pp., ISBN 0–340–61454–4.

Ronald Kowalski, The Russian Revolution, 1917–1921 (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 269 pp., ISBN 0–415–12437–9.

André Liebich. From the Other Shore: Russian Social Democracy after 1921 (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1997), 476 pp., ISBN 0–674–32517–6.

Over eighty years after it occurred, the Russian Revolution continues to engender debate among professional historians as well as the interested public. If the French Revolution is any guide, this interest is very likely to continue indefinitely. Causes and consequences, the meaning and significance of individual component events, the interplay of social forces, and cultural, political, intellectual, economic and a myriad of other aspects have and will continue to be examined and sifted through. Last year – the eightieth anniversary – produced a number of important works on the revolution and its consequences. Those under review here, including an older one from 1994, represent a range of approaches, from introductory accounts for the general reader to summations of the state of knowledge to histories of the revolution's ‘losers’.

Jean-Marie Mayeur, La question laïque (XIXe–XXe siècle) (Paris: Fayard, 1997), 239 pp., 95 FF. IBSN 2–213–60013–9.

Etienne Fouilloux, Les chrétiens français entre crise et libération (1937–1947) (Paris: Seuil, 1997), 293 pp, 130 FF. ISBN 2–020–28131–7.

Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996), 300 pp., £15.95. ISBN 0–8014–8320–4.

Emiel Lamberts, ed., Christian Democracy in the European Union (1945–1995) (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1997), 511 pp. ISBN 9–061–86808–4.

‘Christians and political life’ (taking the latter term in its widest sense) is a theme which continues to attract a great deal of interest among contemporary historians, in terms of both detailed research and broader surveys. René Rémond and Aline Coutrot demonstrated the interconnectedness of the two domains of religion and politics when they abandoned the restricted subject of relations between states and the Roman Catholic church and initiated the study of religion as an integral part of history, and the social sciences, as a whole. Approaches since 1966 have been greatly modified, as shown by the treatment of the material in the four works now to be reviewed.

Herbert Kitschelt in collaboration with Anthony J. McGann, The Radical Right in Western Europe. A Comparative Analysis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 323 pp., $49.50, ISBN 0-472-10663-5.

Peter Merkl and Leonard Weinberg (eds.), The Revival of Right Wing Extremism in the 90s (London: Frank Cass, 1997), 304 pp., £18.50/$24.50, ISBN 0-714-64207-X.

Urs Altermatt and Hanspeter Kriesi, L'Extrême droite en Suisse. Organisations et radicalisation au cours des années quatre-vingt et quatre-vingt-dix (Fribourg: Les Éditions Universitaires, 1995), 293 pp. (pb.), SFr. 42.00, ISBN 2-827-10727-9.

Mike Cronin (ed.), The Failure of British Fascism. The Far Right and the Fight for Political Recognition (London: Macmillan, 1996), 182 pp. (hb.), £35.00, ISBN 0-333-58438-4.

Gerhard Feldbauer, Von Mussolini bis Fini. Die Extreme Rechte in Italien (Berlin: Elefanten Press, 1996), 224 pp. (pb.), DM 29.40, ISBN 3-885-20575-0.

Helmut Reinalter, Franko Petri and Rüdiger Kaufmann (eds.), Das Weltbild des Rechtsextremismus. Entsolidarisierung und Bedrohng der Demokratie. Gesellschaftliche Bedingungen, Strukturen und Wirkungen rechtsextremen Denkens (Innsbruck/Vienna: Studienverlag, 1998), 576 pp., DM 82.00, ISBN 3-706-51258-0.

Tore Bjørgo, Racist and Right-Wing Violence in Scandinavia: Patterns, Perpetrators, and Responses (Oslo: Tano-Aschehoug, 1997), 386 pp., Kr 298.00, ISBN 8-251-83665-4.

Jeffrey Kaplan and Tore Bjørgo (eds.), Nation and Race: The Development of a Euro-American Racist Subculture (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), 273 pp. (pb.), £19.00, ISBN 1-555-53331-0.

Victoria E. Bonnell, Iconography of Power. Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and Stalin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 364 pp., 8 colour plates, 92 b/w illustrations, £38, ISBN 0–520–08712–7.

Enrico Sturani, Mussolini. Un dictateur en cartes postales (Paris: Somogy, 1997), 240 pp., 284 colour illustrations, FF 189, ISBN 2–850–56292–0.

The rhythm of the history of human societies is determined by the constitution of the powers which organise them. Violence, persuasion, acquiescence might be adduced as the three stages of a broad schema whereby a coherent system of reference, based on rules which are respected by most (if not all) people, succeeds in establishing itself on a lasting basis of political constitution, civil law, and a legal system to govern systems of work and exchange. Individuals, whose primeval subjection was to the law of family, tribe or gens, do not readily submit to absorption into an entity which does not coincide with this original cell. Therefore, by definition, the history of the creation of political systems in Western societies must be set in a context of permanent tension between the interests of the individual, or the primordial group, and those of new institutions or bodies which are more abstract, and therefore harder to identify, recognise and, eventually, accept. But it is also the history of how peoples view the world, of their common points of reference: in short, a history of mental representations, which can partly be written by studying their translation into figurative images – into political iconography developed for purposes of mass propaganda.

Mike Hawkins, Social Darwinism in European and American Thought 1860–1945. Nature as Model and Nature as Threat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 348 pp., £19.95, ISBN 0–521–57434 X.

Carl Ipsen, Dictating Demography. The Problem of Population in Fascist Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 281 pp., £35, ISBN 0–521–15545–7.

Simon Szreter, Fertility, Class and Gender in Britain 1860–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976, 704 pp., £50, ISBN 0–521–34343–7.

Alain Desrosières, La politique des grands nombres, histoire de la raison statistique (Paris: La Découverte, 1993), 437 pp., FF 220; ISBN 2–707–12253–X; English translation by Camille Naish, The Politics of Large Numbers. A History of Statistical Reasoning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 416 pp., $45, ISBN 0–674–68932–1.

Paul Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism 1870–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 641 pp., £22.95, ISBN 0–521–42397–X; French translation by B. Frumer, L'Hygiène de la race (Paris: La Découverte, 1998), 301 pp., FF 160, ISBN 2–707–12706–X.

Over the last ten years a series of social historians have published studies of the link between the definition of scientific categories and the implementation of demographic policies in Europe. This discussion of the classification of populations in terms of social class, race or location (rural, urban, underprivileged areas) has complicated the traditional theories of the scientist and politician, Max Weber, and the student of ‘bio-power’, Michel Foucault. Now, historians of political ideas are finding living examples to illustrate recent advances in the sociology of science, establishing themselves at the interface between the history of human health and that of population policies. The aim is to throw light on the exchange between scientists and population management: among the themes to be treated are natalism, populationism, hygienism and eugenics.

Mabel Berezin, Making the Fascist Self. The Political Culture of Interwar Italy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 264 pp., ISBN 0-801-43202-2.

Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle. The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini's Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 303 pp., ISBN 0-520-20623-1.

Emilio Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy, trans. Keith Botsford (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 208 pp., ISBN 0-674-78475-8; originally published as Il culto del littorio. La sacralizzazione della politica nell'Italia fascista (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1993), 326 pp., ISBN 8-842-04384-2.

Giorgio Israel and Pietro Nastasi, Scienza e razza nell'Italia fascista (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998), 408 pp., ISBN 8-815-06736-1.

Karen Pinkus, Bodily Regimes. Italian Advertising under Fascism (Minneapolis-London: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 268 pp., ISBN 0-816-62562-X

Adolfo Scotto di Luzio, L'appropriazione imperfetta. Editori, biblioteche e libri per ragazzi durante il fascismo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996), 301 pp., ISBN 8-815-05559-2.

Norsk utenrikspolitikks historie (‘The History of Norwegian Foreign Policy’), 6 vols. (Universitetsforlaget, 1995–7), NOK 298 – per volume ISBN 8–200–22639–5.

Volume I: Narve Bjørgo, Øystein Rian and Alf Kaardtvedt: Selvstendighet og union. Fra middelalderen til 1905 (1995), 416 pp., ISBN 8–200–22393–0.

Volume II: Roald Berg: Norge på egen hånd 1905–1920 (1995), 401 pp., ISBN 8–200–22394–9.

Volume III: Odd-Bjørn Fure: Mellomkrigstid 1920–1940 (1996), 434 pp., ISBN 2–200–22534–8.

Volume IV: Jakob Sverdrup: Inn i storpolitiken 1940–1949 (1996), 389 pp., ISBN 8–200–22531–3.

Volume V: Knut Einar Eriksen and Helge Ø. Pharo: Kald krig og internasjonalisering 1949–1965 (1997), 505 pp., ISBN 8–200–22894–0.

Volume VI: Rolf Tamnes: Oljealder 1965–1995 (1997), 568 pp., ISBN 8–200–22893–2.

It is a tempting thought that there is a contrast between, on the one hand, this voluminous, painstakingly thorough and admirably documented publication and, on the other hand, the size of its subject. A foreign policy history is a prestigious project that is traditionally associated with the great and powerful states of Europe. The Norwegian Foreign Ministry has approached the project with no less austere a mind than the authorities of more populous European states. Well financed, well led and with stunningly generous access to even contemporary archive materials – up till 1995 – this particular foreign policy history might even be the one with the best official backing to date. Moreover, of the Scandinavian countries Norway is the one with the strongest tradition of international history, and most of the best minds in the field have been members of the team of authors. But why then, some would cry, throw this impressive weight into a history of one of Europe's smallest states, 4.5 million souls, placed at the outskirts of the European continent, not a member of the European Union and with fewer than 100 years of independent foreign policy at that?

Pamela Beth Radcliff, From Mobilisation to Civil War: The Politics of Polarisation in the Spanish City of Gijón, 1900–1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 354 pp., £40, ISBN 0–521–56213–9.

Carolyn Boyd, Historia Patria: Politics, History, and National Identity in Spain, 1875–1975 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 358 pp., $49.50, £35.00, ISBN 0–691–02656–4.

Sebastian Balfour, The End of the Spanish Empire 1898–1923 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 269 pp., £35.00, ISBN 0–198–20507–4.

Clare Mar-Molinero and Angel Smith, eds., Nationalism and the Nation in the Iberian Peninsula: Competing and Conflicting Identities (Oxford/Washington, DC: Berg, 1996), 281 pp., £34.95, pb £14.95, ISBN 1–859–73175–9.

Michael Richards, A Time of Silence: Civil War and the Culture of Repression in Franco's Spain, 1936–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 314 pp., £40.00, $59.95, ISBN 0–521–59401–4.

Gerald Howson, Arms for Spain: the Untold Story of the Spanish Civil War (London: John Murray, 1998), 354 pp., £25, ISBN 0–719–55556–6.

During the long years of Francoism, Spanish historiography was dominated by a search for explanation. Against the regime's triumphalist account of the ‘essential’ Spain – resurgent in the form of the victorious general's authoritarian, confessional state – exiled intellectuals such as Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz and Américo Castro posed questions about the ‘problem’ of Spain, looking to the country's past to explain the political violence of the present. For those who won the Civil War of 1936–39, Spain's national destiny was to remain true to the imperial, Catholic legacy of the Habsburg monarchy. Eschewing modern ‘decadence’ and the false paths of secularism and democracy, Spain was to remain, according to Franco, the ‘spiritual reserve of the west’. Such a vision of history, in Mike Richards's words, ‘appropriated time itself in acknowledging no distinctions between past, present and future’ (Mar-Molinero and Smith, p. 152). To Francoist ideologues, both history and the nation were understood in terms of providential destiny: once understood, the national destiny would prove immutable.

Robert Mark Spaulding, Osthandel und Ostpolitik. German Foreign Trade Policies in Eastern Europe from Bismarck to Adenauer (Oxford and Providence: Berghahn, 1997), 546 pp., £60, ISBN 1–57181–039–0.

Volker R. Berghahn, ed., Quest for Economic Empire. European Strategies of German Big Business in the Twentieth Century (Oxford and Providence: Berghahn, 1996), 224 pp., £35:00 (hb), £16.50 (pb), ISBN 1–57181–027–7.

Meung-Hoan Hoh, Westintegration versus Osthandel. Politik und Wirtschaft in den Ost-West-Beziehungen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 1949–1958, (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1995), ISBN 3–631–49003–8.

Friedrich von Heyl, Der innerdeutsche Handel um Eisen- und Stahl, 1945–1972. Deutsch-deutsche Beziehungen im Kalten Krieg. (Cologne: Böhlau, 1997), DM 64, ISBN 3–412–03897–0.

Research into the history of foreign trade relations languishes in a grey area between the history of foreign policy and economic history. This is particularly true of German trade relations with eastern Europe during the Cold War, even though this was precisely the time when the topic was the focal point of public interest. Before Chancellor Willy Brandt and Foreign Minister Walter Scheel introduced their New Ostpolitik, the Federal Republic's trade with the East (Osthandel) was one of the most controversial issues in foreign policy. The reasons for this were, in no small measure, historical, closely tied up with the ‘ghost of Rapallo’ and the myth of red trade. The treaty concluded between the German empire and Soviet Russia at the economic conference of Genoa in 1922 created the fatal impression that this was a case of two underdogs in the international community getting together to undermine the status quo established by the Treaty of Versailles. From then on, whenever the ‘ghost of Rapallo’ was invoked what was meant was that Germany could be sure of Soviet support for the implementation of its revisionist claims in the East, and thus have greater room for manoeuvre vis-à-vis the West.

Martyn Cornick, The Nouvelle Revue Française under Jean Paulhan 1925–1940 (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1995), 224 pp., Fl. 65, $40.50, ISBN 9-051-83767-6.

Nicholas Hewitt, Literature and the Right in Postwar France: The Story of the ‘Hussards’ (Oxford and Washington, DC: Berg Publishers, 1996), 218 pp. (hb.), £34.95, ISBN 1-859-73029-9.

Denis Hollier, Absent Without Leave: French Literature under the Threat of War, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1997), 256 pp. (pb.), £18.50, ISBN 0-674-21271-1.

Jeffrey Mehlman, Geneologies of the Text: Literature, Psychoanalysis, and Politics in Modern France (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 262 pp., hardcover, ISBN 0-521-47213-X.

Jennifer E. Milligan, The Forgotten Generation: French Women Writers of the Inter-War Period (New York and Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1996), 236 pp. (pb.), £14.99, ISBN 1-859-73118-X.

A. J. Nicholls, The Bonn Republic: West German Democracy, 1945–1990 (London: Longman, 1997), 341 pp. ISBN 0–582–49230–0 PPR; 0582–4931–9 CSD. Hb £44. Pb £14.99.

Gerhard A. Ritter, Über Deutschland: Die Bundesrepublik in der deutschen Geschichte (Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck, 1998), 303 pp., DM 39 80, ISBN 3–406–44039–8.

Rebecca L. Boehling, A Question of Priorities: Democratic Reforms and Economic Recovery in Postwar Germany, Monographs in German History 2 (Providence RI and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1996). 301 pp., IBSN 1–571–81035–8.

Anne Sa'adah, Germany's Second Chance: Trust, Justice, and Democraticization (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). 352 pp., £24.95, ISBN 0–674–35111–8.

Volker Hentschel, Ludwig Erhard, die ‘Soziale Marktwirtschaft’ und das Wirtschaftswunder: Histo-risches Lehrstück oder Mythos. (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1998), 95 pp., IBSN 3–416–02761–2.

Robert G. Moeller, ed., West Germany under Construction: Politics, Society, and Culture in the Adenauer Era (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997). 462 pp., IBSN 0–472–09648–6 (hb), 0–472–06648–X (pb.). Peter James, ed., Modern Germany (London & New York: Routledge, 1998), 220 pp., IBSN 0–415–15034–5.

For those who for whatever reason acquire an interest, the study of Germany since 1945 has to begin somewhere. It is hard to conceive of a more elementary introduction than that edited by Peter James and comprising the contributions of colleagues in the Department of German at the University of Northumbria plus his own. Although ‘aimed at all those who have an interest in life and society in modern Germany’, it is basically an introductory text for first-year students of German Studies. According to the editor of the slim volume, ‘Clearly the text is not intended to be exhaustive’; although one of the contributions, according to the blurb, claims to provide an ‘in-depth treatment of Germany's coming to terms with its past’ - within sixteen pages!