Book reviews

In a Collapsing Empire: Underdevelopment, Ethnic Conflicts and Nationalisms in the Soviet Union. Marco Buttino (editor). Milano: Fondazione Giangiacomo Fentrinelli, 1993, 375 pp, Lire80,000.

The Turkic Peoples of the World. Margaret Bainbridge (editor). London: Kegan Paul International, 1993, 403 pp, £65.

Where Two Worlds Met. The Russian State and the Kalmyk Nomads, 1600–1771. Michael Khodarkovsky. Cornell University Press, 1992, 278 pp, illus, index.

Please Don't Call it Soviet Georgia. Mary Russell. London: Serpent's Tail, 1991, viii, 268 pp, £9.99.

Georgia: a Rebel in the Caucasus. Peter Nasmyth. London, Cassell, 1992, 222 pp, £16.99.

Looking Toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History. Ronald Grigor Suny. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993, xiii, 289 pp, $17.95.

Muslim‐Christian Encounters. William Montgomery Watt. Routledge, 1991, 164 pp, index.

The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia. Peter Hopkirk. London: John Murray, 1990, xiv, 562 pp, illus, £19.95.

The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia. Peter Hopkirk. New York: Kodansha, 1992, xxiv, 564 pp, illus, $30.00.

Francis Younghusband and the Great Game. Anthony Verrier. London: Jonathan Cape, 1991, xviii, 238 pp, illus, £18.00.     

Truman's revenge: Social control and corporate crime

Many criminologists have found that corporate crime does more harm than street crime, whether measured by property lost, money stolen, or lives taken. Yet, public concern about crime is almost exclusively focused on street crime and “just deserts” for the offender. The authors argue that corporate criminality is more likely than individual criminality to be planned and subjected to cost/benefit analysis than street crime and therefore more likely to be deterred by raising the costs of corporate criminality. The Model Penal Code is used to demonstrate that both individual and corporate crime produce a comparable array of avoidable harms. Public policies that demand just deserts for individual offenders (natural persons) are revealed as highly inconsistent with policies that protect corporations (juristic persons) from accountability for the harms they create. A philosophical and legal foundation for corporate crime control strategies is provided. The authors propose a sanctions regime for corporate criminals comparable to the sanctions regime imposed on natural persons for street crimes. Strategies to avoid risk shifting by corporations are suggested. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Developing Principles for Best Practice in Expanded School Mental Health

On the basis of activities of a federally funded national center for school mental health, review of literature on principles for best practice in child and adolescent mental health and school health, and consultation with national experts and family members, a set of 10 principles for best practice in school mental health was developed. A survey was developed enabling 1–6 point Likert ratings (clearly unimportant to clearly important) for each of the 10 principles. With an original sample of 426 people involved in education, school health or mental health, all 10 principles were strongly endorsed, receiving mean ratings ranging between 5.10 and 5.75. On the basis of qualitative feedback from this survey and interactive forums, language for 9 of the 10 principles was revised and a survey reflecting these changes was developed and administered to a validation sample of 86 respondents. As with the original sample, endorsements of the principles were strong, with mean ratings ranging between 5.45 and 5.79. Findings are discussed in relation to advancing interconnected agendas related to quality assessment and improvement and empirically supported practice in school mental health.     

Improving Decision Making in Forensic Child Sexual Abuse Evaluations

Mental health professionals can assist legal decision makers in cases of allegations of child sexual abuse by collecting data using forensic interviews, psychological testing, and record reviews, and by summarizing relevant findings from social science research. Significant controversy surrounds another key task performed by mental health professionals in most child sexual abuse evaluations, i.e., deciding whether or not to substantiate unconfirmed abuse allegations. The available evidence indicates that, on the whole, these substantiation decisions currently lack adequate psychometric reliability and validity: an analysis of empirical research findings leads to the conclusion that at least 24% of all of these decisions are either false positive or false negative errors. Surprisingly, a reanalysis of existing research also indicates that it may be possible to develop reliable, objective procedures to improve the consistency and quality of decision making in this domain. A preliminary, empirically-grounded procedure for making substantiation decisions is proposed.     

“The Symbol of Our Nation”: The Slouch Hat,the First World War,and Australian Identity

Australian scholars are now familiar with the tropes of the Anzac legend. This narrative describes the realisation of an Australian masculine identity, whose characteristics were forged on the Australian frontier and validated through the ordeal of battle. Though many writers contributed to this narrative, C.E.W. Bean, the official historian of the Australian Imperial Force during the First World War, is most closely associated with the popularisation of this myth, which fused frontier and martial masculinity into a national archetype.

This article will examine the role of the slouch hat as a material and visual device that helped communicate the Anzac legend. While most of the scholarship that examines the construction of this narrative focuses on its articulation in prose, this narrative was also popularised through other media. Artists drew symbols of the frontier into their paintings while museum directors arranged their artefacts to support this narrative. This article will argue that the slouch hat provided an essential visual device to connect the narratives of frontier and martial masculinity through the image of the Australian soldier.     

Reviews

Jeffrey D. Sachs & Katharina Pistor (eds), The Rule of Law and Economic Reform in Russia. Boulder: Westview Press, 1997, ix + 214 pp., £16.00.

Igor Chernyshev (with a contribution by Guy Standing) Statistics for Emerging Labour Markets in Transition Economies: A Technical Guide on Sources, Methods, Classifications and Policies. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997, xv + 171 pp., £45.00.

Soren Rinder Bollerup & Christian Dons Christensen, Nationalism in Eastern Europe. Causes and Consequences of the National Revivals and Conflicts in the Late‐Twentieth‐Century Eastern Europe. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997, xx + 308 pp., £45.00.

Jane I. Dawson, Eco‐Nationalism: Anti‐Nuclear Activism and National Identity in Russia, Lithuania and Ukraine. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996, xii + 221 pp., $49.95 h/b, $16.95 p/b.

Mehdi Mozaffari (ed.), Security Politics in the Commonwealth of Independent States: The Southern Belt. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997, xlv + 234 pp., £42.50.

Fred Wehling, Irresolute Princes: Kremlin Decisionmaking in Middle East Crises, 1967–1973. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997, 225 pp., £40.00.

Roland Dannreuther, The Soviet Union and the PLO. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998, ix + 222 pp., £45.00.

William T. Lee, The ABM Treaty Charade: A Study in Elite Illusion and Delusion. Washington, DC: Council for Social and Economic Studies, 1997, 165 pp.

Willie Thompson, The Communist Movement Since 1945. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998, 262 pp., £13.99.

Robert Service, A History of Twentieth‐Century Russia. London: Allen Lane, 1997, xxxiv + 654 pp., £.25.00.

R. W. Davies, Soviet History in the Yeltsin Era. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997, viii + 264 pp., £15.99.

Paul R. Josephson, New Atlantis Revisited. Akademgorodok, the Siberian City of Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, xxii + 351 pp., £27.50.

Andrei Sinyavsky, The Russian Intelligentsia. Translated by Lynn Visson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997, x + 98 pp.

Vera Tolz, Russian Academicians and the Revolution: Combining Professionalism and Politics. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997, xiv + 236 pp., £45.00.

Peter Waldron, Between Two Revolutions. Stolypin and the Politics of Renewal in Russia. London: UCL press, 1998, viii + 220 pp., £40.00.

Aleksandr B. Kamenskii, The Russian Empire in the Eighteenth Century. Searching for a Place in the World, trans. David Griffiths. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1997, xii + 308 pp., $65.95 h/b, $24.95 p/b.

Mark Brzezinski, The Struggle for Constitutionalism in Poland. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998, xi + 254 pp., £45.00.

Anita J. Pra?mowska, Britain and Poland, 1939–1943: The Betrayed Ally. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, xi + 233 pp.

Mette Bryld & Erik Kulavig (eds), Soviet Civilization between Past and Present. Odense: Odense University Press, 1998, 193 pp., Kr. 225.00.

Graham Roberts, The Last Soviet Avant‐Garde: OBERIU—Fact, Fiction, Metafiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, xiii + 274 pp., £40.00.     

Demographic manipulation in the Caucasus (with special reference to Georgia)

The author discusses political developments in the Caucasus region since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The focus is on the events in Georgia that led to the war in South Ossetia (particularly in Abkhazia), and the author suggests that this development is the latest in a 200-year history of demographic manipulation of minority peoples by the region's two major powers, Russia and Georgia. Parallels are drawn between the Georgian war in Abkhazia and Russia's war in Chechenia. The author questions the value of the principle of territorial integrity, and suggests that alternative principles safeguarding the rights of ethnic minorities would be more appropriate in these circumstances.