Reviews

Ference Feher, Agnes Heller and Gyorgy Markus, Dictatorship Over Needs, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983, xiii+312 pp. £22.50.

Pierre Kende and Zdenek Strmiska, (Eds.) Egalités et inégalités en Europe de l’ Est, Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Paris, 1984.

Lewis H. Siegelbaum, The Politics of Industrial Mobilisation in Russia, 1914–17: A Study of the War‐Industries Committees, London, Macmillan (in association with St. Antony's College, Oxford), 1983, xix + 312 pp. £25.00

William J. Conyngham, The Modernization of Soviet Industrial Management, Cambridge University Press, 1982, pp. 332 + ix. £19–50.

Caroline Humphrey, Karl Marx Collective: Economy, society and religion in a Siberian collective farm. Cambridge, Melbourne, Sydney: Cambridge University Press, 1983. xviii + 522 pp. £30–00 (£10–95 paperback).

Victor Zaslavsky and Robert J. Brym, Soviet Jewish Emigration and Soviet Nationality Policy, London, Macmillan, 1984, vii + 185 pp. £20.00.

James E. Mace, Communism and the Dilemmas of National Liberation: National Communism in Soviet Ukraine 1918–1933, Harvard University Press for the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S., Cambridge, Mass. 1983. xiv + 334 pp. $21.50.

Kalman Rupp, Entrepreneurs in Red, State University of New York Press, Albany, N.Y., 1983. 260 + xvii pp. £37.60 (hardback) £14.25 (paperback).

Cole Blasier, The Giant's Rival: the USSR and Latin America. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983, xvi + 213 pp. $7.95 (paperback).     

Technical Management in an Age of Openness: The Political,Public, and Environmental Forest Ranger

Modern bureaucracy faces trade‐offs between public and congressional input and agency expertise. The U.S. Forest Service offers an opportunity to quantitatively analyze whether an agency that is required to be more open to the public and congressional input will be forced to ignore its technical expertise in managing resources. This study uses data on 83,000 hazardous fuels reduction activities conducted by the Forest Service from 2001 to 2011. Although the results show that managers are responsive to public and congressional considerations, this has not prevented them from utilizing their technical knowledge to restore lands most deviated from natural conditions. This suggests that managers can balance responsiveness to public and political principals with technically sound management.     

The Why and How of the New Capital Asset Reporting Requirements

New requirements for reporting capital assets associated with the governmental funds of state and local governments are among the most significant changes that will be required by Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) Statement No. 34. Under Statement No. 34, the historical cost of these assets, including general infrastructure assets (for example, roads and bridges), must be reported in the government-wide Statement of Net Assets. The cost of using those assets—generally depreciation expense—must be reported in the government-wide Statement of Activities. This article explores why the GASB established these requirements and how it worked with preparers and others to make meeting these requirements less costly.