Reviews

Michael Mandelbaum (ed.), Post‐Communism: Four Perspectives. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996, vi + 208 pp.

Raymond Taras, Consolidating Democracy in Poland. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996, xii + 276 pp., £44.50 h/b, £13.50 p/b.

Jane Leftwich Curry & Luba Fajfer (eds), Poland's Permanent Revolution: People vs. Elites, 1956–1990. Lanham: American University Press, 1995, x + 294 pp., $64.50 h/b, $27.50 p/b.

Ben Slay (ed.), De‐monopolization and Competition Policy in Post‐Communist Economies. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996, ix + 245 pp.

Éva Ehrlich & Gabor Révész, Hungary and its Prospects, 1985–2005. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1995, 166 pp., $29.00.

Simon Clarke (ed.), Conflict and Change in the Russian Industrial Enterprise. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1996, ix + 298 pp., £45.00.

Maurice Ernst, Michael Alexeev & Paul Marer, Transforming the Core: Restructuring Industrial Enterprises in Russia and Central Europe. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996, xx + 315 pp., £13.50.

John S. Strong & John R. Meyer, Moving to Market: Restructuring Transport in the Former Soviet Union. London: Harvard University Press, 1996, ix + 237 pp, £19.95.

Raymond J. Struyk (ed.), Economic Restructuring of the Former Soviet Bloc. The Case of Housing. Washington: The Urban Institute Press, 1996, xviii + 373 pp., £51.95 h/b, £22.95 p/b.

Istvan Pogany (ed.), Human Rights in Eastern Europe. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995, xv + 255 pp., £39.95.

Lucjan Dobroszycki & Jeffrey S. Gurock (eds), The Holocaust in the Soviet Union. Studies and Sources on the Destruction of the Jews in the Nazi‐Occupied Territories of the USSR, 1941–1945. London: M. E. Sharpe, 1993, xii + 260 pp., $59.95 h/b, $24.95 p/b.

Robert Bideleux & Richard Taylor (eds), European Integration and Disintegration: East and West. London and New York: Routledge, 1996, xii + 298 pp., £45.00 h/b, £13.99 p/b.

F. Stephen Larrabee (ed.), The Volatile Powder Keg: Balkan Security after the Cold War. Washington, DC: The American University Press, 1994, xxviii + 320 pp., $27.50.

John F. Wright, Suzanne Goldenberg & Richard Schofield (eds), Transcaucasian Boundaries. London: UCL Press, 1996, vii + 237 pp.

Juris Dreifelds, Latvia in Transition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996, ix + 214 pp., £40.00 h/b, £14.95 p/b.

Alfred Erich Senn, Gorbachev's Failure in Lithuania. New York: St Martin's Press, 1995, xx + 188 pp., $39.95.

Neil Melvin, Russians beyond Russia: The Politics of National Identity. London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1995, vi + 170 pp., £11.99.

Kathleen E. Smith, Remembering Stalin's Victims. Popular Memory and the End of the USSR. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996, xv + 220 pp., £23.50.

Martin McCauley, Stalin and Stalinism, 2nd edn. London and New York: Longman, 1995, xiii + 142 pp., £5.99.

Christopher Read, From Tsar to Soviets. The Russian People and Their Revolution, 1917–1921. London: UCL Press, 1996, vi + 330 pp.

C. M. Hann, The Skeleton at the Feast. Contributions to East European Anthropology. Canterbury: Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing, University of Kent at Canterbury, 1995, xv + 250 pp., £10.00.

Irena Maryniak, Spirit of the Totem: Religion and Myth in Soviet Fiction, 1964–1988. London: The Modern Humanities Research Association, Texts and Dissertations Series, Volume 39, 1995, x + 186 pp., £25.00.

Nancy Condee (ed.), Soviet Hieroglyphics: Visual Culture in Late Twentieth‐Century Russia. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995, xxv + 179 pp., £14.99.     

Looking Good: The Lesbian Gaze and Fashion Imagery

This paper is concerned with the different forms of pleasure and identification activated in the consumption of dominant and subcultural print media. It centres on an analysis of the lesbian visual pleasures generated through the reading of fashion editorial in the new lesbian and gay lifestyle magazines. This consideration of the lesbian gaze is contrasted to the lesbian visual pleasures obtained from an against the grain reading of mainstream women's fashion magazines. The development of the lesbian and gay lifestyle magazines, in the context of the pink pound, produces a situation in which an eroticized lesbian visual pleasure is the overt remit of the magazine, rather than a clandestine pleasure obtained through a transgressive reading of dominant cultural imagery. In contrast to the polysemic free-play of fashion fantasy by which readers produce lesbian pleasure in the consumption of mainstream magazines, responses to the fashion content in the lesbian magazine Diva suggest that in a subcultural context readers deploy a realist mode of reading that demands a monosemic positive images iconography. The article uses the concept of subcultural competency to consider the different ways lesbians read mainstream and subcultural print media and suggests that the conflict over Diva's fashion spreads may be linked to changing patterns of identification and the use of dress for recognizability.     

Public Service 2000 and cultural change in the Department of National Defence

Abstract: External changes are challenging fundamental management practices of the Department of National Defence that have been in place since the unification of the military services and creation of National Defence Headquarters over the years 1964–72. Trends in management thinking such as empowerment, total quality management, and learning organizations should cause DND senior management to review many of these practices. More directly, initiatives undertaken by the federal government under the aegis of the Public Service 2000 white paper may challenge certain DND practices, but paradoxically may also be of benefit to a large, decentralized military/public service organization. Sommaire: Des changements en provenance de l'extérieur mettent à l'epreuve les pratiques fondamentales de gestion du ministère de la Défense nationale, pratiques qui existaient depuis l'unification des services militaires et la création du Quartier général de la Défense nationale entre les années 1964–1972. En effet, les courants de pensée en gestion, tels que l'habilitation, la gestion de la qualité totale et les organisations d'apprentissage devraient mener la haute direction du MDN à revoir bon nombre de ces pratiques. Plus directement, des initiatives entreprises par le gouvernement fédéral dans le cadre du Livre blanc “ Fonction publique 2000 ” sont directement contraires à de nombreuses pratiques actuelles du MDN, mais, de maniere assez paradoxale, elles pourraient aussi être utiles à une organisation à la fois militaire et de service public, et qui est décentralisée et de grande taille.     

The origins of APRA in Cajamarca, 1928–1935⋆

From its foundation in 1930 until the late 1980s, the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) comprised the largest and best organised political party in Peru, but surprisingly few studies exist on how the organisation was established and built up a mass following at the provincial level. This article examines the birth of APRA in the Andean department of Cajamarca. It highlights the support the organisation obtained among key middle–class groups (i.e. lawyers, schoolteachers, cattle dealers, etc.), and the links they forged with the rural and urban poor. APRA's efforts to mobilise “new” social actors, such as women and students, are also described.