The latest book of Professor Rogger, whose previous publications on Russia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries eajoy high reputation, consists of eight rather loosely connected articles that appeared originally between 1964-1976. Only one, the introductory essay, which is devoted to the question of Jewish emancipation as seen from the perspective of modem European history, appears for the first time. The remaining articles are but slightly modified versions of the original texts. Most examine various aspects of the ‘Jewish question’ in late imperial Russia under Alexander III and Nicholas II. Among the topics covered are attitudes towards Jews after 1881(chapter2), the infamous Beilis case and its relation to the internal politics of pre-war Russia (chapter 3), solutions to the Jewish question proposed by such leading statesment as Ignatiev and Goremykin (chapter 4), Jewish policies in context of the liberation of the serfs (chapter 5), official restrictions on emigration (chapter 6). Somewhat different problems are explored in the final chapters which discuss the formation of right-wing Russian organizations at the beginning of the twentieth century. Yet, here too, the author retains the same basic approach and the book can be treated as a coherent whole. Twenty years separate the writing of some of these essays, yet Rogger's views on the subject have not changed.

The central question that links all the essays concerns the reasons why Russia's policy towards the Jews was both so inconsistent and so radically different from the policies of other European countries. In trying to explain why, for instance, the Pale of Settlement remained largely intact until the First World War, Rogger rejects most standard explanations. Nothing that occurred is treated as either obvious or inevitable: he rejects Richard Pipes's theory that attributes the especially virulent Russian form of antisemitism to the impact of Orthodox Christianity and also questions ‘scapegoat theories’ since these do not sufficiently take into account the social and economic reality. In Rogger's opinion, the treatment of Jews here was the direct consequence of a peculiarity of their position in imperial society. This does not mean that he denies the existence of antisemitic feelings.