The “mosaic” in the title of this festschrift honoring John L. H. Keep refers both to the diversity of that scholar’s interests in Russian history and to the eclecticism of the essays solicited by the editors of this collection. Like the multicolored and seemingly haphazard pieces of a mosaic, which can only be appreciated from a proper distance, the variegated individual contributions form a pattern that gives the reader an overall impression of the British historian, his scholarly work, and his professional contacts in the broader academic world. Indeed, under the capable editorship of Alter Litvin, the book is as much a tribute to growing cooperation within the international community of historians of Russia as it is a monument to Keep’s collegiality and scholarly achievements.
The contributors are as diverse as the topics of the essays collected, representing Keep’s colleagues, co-workers, and friends from Canada, the United States, Scotland, Israel, Switzerland, Finland, and Russia. Only some of these topics can be confined within the research interests of the scholar to whom they are ostensibly dedicated. For example, Christine Worobec’s excellent essay on East Slavic fertility rituals at the summer solstice is only tangentially related to Keep’s work on the politicization of the peasantry during the Russian revolutions. Similarly, Paul Dukes’ careful study of the diplomatic wrangling surrounding the 1922 Russo-Japanese Conference of Changchun contributes more to the memory of their mutual friend, George B. Tolmakoff, than to the discussion of the larger social and political issues confronted in Keep’s work on the Russian military. And it is surely mostly for reasons of chronology that a collection on Russian history begins with an essay on state-building and land-reform in seventeenth-century Sweden (Antti Kujala), an essay, furthermore, that makes no explicit mention of its undoubted significance to the historiographical issues surrounding the reforms of Peter the Great. That task is left to the editors of the festschrift and although their introduction does a good job of tying all of these varied pieces together and of drawing out their possible implications for scholars of Russia, it appears that the editorial choices that went into this collection reflect the overall goal of international inclusiveness rather than of topical relevance.
The essays that deal with historical subjects close to Keep’s heart are perhaps the brightest spots of this pastiche. Besides the previously discussed essay on Swedish absolutism, the only piece to pay tribute to Keep’s studies on early modern Muscovy is that of Philip Longworth, whose short article offers a gloss on N. Novombergskii’s monumental study of lese-majeste (slovo i delo) cases in pre-Petrine Russia. Keep’s interest in Soviet historiography is represented by two essays, one of which deals with the pitfalls and possibilities of Soviet “ego-documents” (Heiko Haumann) and another that offers a whirlwind tour of the institutions and personalities that shaped the field of Ukrainian studies in post-war North America (Thomas Prymak). In honor of Keep’s abiding interest in military history, John Stanley summarizes his work on the educational activities of the Polish Legions during the Napoleonic Wars; J. M. P. McErlean provides a thick description of bureaucratic politics in the Nicholaevan ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately after the Revolution of 1830; and Peter Brock, the world-renowned scholar of military non-conformism, offers a fascinating study of the relationship between ethnicity and conscientious objection to military service in Imperial Russia during the First World War. Brock’s conclusions about the strength of local and religious solidarities and the relative weakness of ethnic identity should be of particular interest to the readers of this journal. The rest of the essays in this collection deal with the other great theme of Keep’s scholarly work: the rise, evolution, and decline of Russian social democracy. Israel Getzler’s study of Georgii Plekhanov can very profitably be read together with I. Kh. Urilov’s survey of recent Russian historiography on the origins of Menshevism. Similarly, A. Sal’nikova’s essay on children’s reactions to the Sturm und Drang of 1917 offers a nice antipode to Alter Litvin’s piece on the politics of their grandchildren who are now debating whether or not to re-instate monuments to Feliks Dzerzhinskii toppled in 1991. This section is capped off by Carter Elwood’s re-assessment of newly released archival evidence about Inessa Armand’s illicit love affair with Lenin. Besides its indisputable scholarly interest, the essay by the prize-winning author of a biography of Armand constitutes a model of historical scholarship and careful reading, and is alone worth the trouble of ordering this volume for your local library.
But the most interesting piece in this historical and historiographical mosaic is not the essay about Lenin’s sex life, but rather Keep’s autobiographical introduction, entitled “Notes on John.” Although the editor apparently re-wrote this section in the third person, it is clear from the internal evidence that this was Keep’s own take on his life as a Western historian of Russia during the turbulent twentieth century. Keep’s sketch explains how his childhood in war-time London led him not only to track the advancing eastern front but also to teach himself Russian; how his military service as a very un-James Bond-like attachй to the Soviet embassy in Austria impinged on his choice of professional career; and how his international connections (and a certain amount of luck) allowed him to escape the somewhat rigid and hierarchical atmosphere of post-War British academia for the relative freedom of North America. Indeed, when it is read alongside his bio-bibliography, which is helpfully attached at the end of the festschrift, Keep’s brief memoir offers a fascinating insight into the events and people that helped to shape the contours of his life’s work.
Written in the quaintly old-fashioned, self-deprecating style of a garrulous English don, Keep’s piece offers a fascinating counterpoint to Richard Pipes’ Vixi, the recent autobiography by the much more politically engaged and ideologically driven doyen of Russian imperial history at Harvard University. Indeed, these two memoirs can most profitably be read in tandem, as a telling illustration of the differences between Anglo-Canadian and American academic establishments, particularly those segments that are directly involved in the teaching and study of things Russian. It is a juxtaposition that would be very familiar in Russia, with its continuing conflict between the St. Petersburg and Moscow “schools” of Russian history – one that a Kazan school of Russian historiography will surely help to redress. The very fact that an international, star-studded festschrift in honor of a British scholar of Russia has appeared in Kazan marks a radical shift in the “traditional” centers of Russian history writing and publishing. Indeed, the book under review can be said to embody the former imperial periphery’s claim to parity in the field of historiography. In this way, much like Keep’s trans-Atlantic career, the festschrift in his honor straddles the boundaries of two academic traditions and bridges the old world and the new.