The preface to this grand three-volume work created by an international team of scholars defines as its purpose the presentation, as accurately and completely as possible, of the many contributions made by Russian émigrés to the social, scholarly, and cultural life of France and the Russian diaspora. With over 16,000 name entries, the dictionary certainly succeeds in satisfying this ambition.

The book’s extensive coverage has been achieved largely by expanding its selection criteria to include previously under-researched and poorly represented groups. The biggest influx of new names resulted from the dictionary’s focus on the “second and third tiers” of Russian emigration, that is, on ordinary people who received little or no attention in previous works. Casting the broadest possible net, the compilers have also included numerous people who spent little time on French soil if they in any way contributed to the cultural, political, or religious life there. For example, the extensive entry on Alexander Solzhenitsyn focuses on his considerable lecturing and publishing activities in France. Similarly, journalist Grigorii Akimov, who studied in France but spent his life in Russia and China (albeit writing for a francophone newspaper in Shanghai), has been included. The book’s geographical coverage extends to the French colonies with large Russian émigré communities, in particular Morocco and Tunisia.

Previous publications on the history of the Russian diaspora have tended to focus on the activities of the first wave of emigration, which occurred in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917. (An example is the eight-volume chronicle of Russian emigration in France edited by Lev Mnukhin and T.L. Gladkova, Russkoe zarubezh’e: khronika nauchnoi, kul’turnoi i obshchestvennoi zhizni, 1920-1940, 1940-1975 [The Russian Diaspora: A Chronicle of Its Scholarly, Cultural, and Social Life, 1920-1940, 1940-1975], published in Moscow and Paris, 1995-2005). [Ed. note: see RREA 8:143 and 144 for a brief bibliography of works on Russian émigré writers in France and Germany during this period.]The current book follows this tradition but also attempts to widen the time frame by putting more emphasis on present-day personalities. Other additions are children and grandchildren of émigrés, as well as French citizens whose activities brought them into contact with the Russian diaspora. The initial name list for the book was derived from Mnukhin and Gladkova’s 1995-2005 publication; it was substantially enhanced by utilizing additional sources such as encyclopedias and other reference works in half a dozen languages, periodicals, documents, archival materials, databases, tombstones, and cemetery records, as well as oral histories. Volume 1 begins with a Russian-language preface, while the other two volumes have prefaces in both Russian and French. Articles vary in length from a few lines to a full page or more, with an average length of about a quarter-column. In general, they highlight their subjects’ activities during the French period of their lives. For a variety of reasons, including the widespread use of oral histories, the sources are not cited at the article level. The scarcity of biographical information has in some cases led to confusing and possibly duplicated entries. The compilers were faced with numerous challenges in tracking down biographical data such as the exact dates of birth and death—a problem often compounded by the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendar dates and by contradictory archival data. The place of interment is often included, since cemetery records and tombstones constituted important sources of information for the book.

Any work on the Russian diaspora in the West has to deal with converting names from the Latin to the Cyrillic alphabet and vice versa. Unfortunately, this conversion is where the compilers have stumbled. The book transcribes all Western, especially French, proper names into Cyrillic, leaving the readers to do quite a bit of detective work to figure out the original, which is often a challenge since French pronunciation differs markedly from its spelling. Some examples are articles on the Comtesse Humilly de Chevilly (found under the Russian letter for “Sh”), Victor Henri (under “A”), and Marie and Serge d’Hotman de Villiers (under “O”). Occasionally some Latin-alphabet entries, such as noms de plume, are included, appended at the end of Cyrillic letter sections. Again, Russian phonetic conventions determine these placements, often to the detriment of clarity. For example, Dominique Hennemont appears at the end of the section for Cyrillic “E” (romanized by the Library of Congress as E), following “Efrussi.” The section under the Cyrillic letter for “IA” ends with two Latin-script names, Janek and Jason.

Improving the book’s usefulness for the Western scholar would have required a minimal amount of effort. Both problems could have been fixed by a consistent inclusion of Latin-alphabet spellings in articles, together with the addition of an index of Latinalphabet names—both straightforward transliterations and pseudonyms—keyed to the Cyrillic entries used in this dictionary.

An addendum at the end of volume three provides additions and corrections for the first two volumes (A-K and L-R). Next is an extensive source list, which includes books, e-resources, archives, periodicals, and cemeteries both in Paris (over 60) and in the provinces. The volume ends with a listing of Russian orphanages and retirement homes as well as a map of France indicating its départements. Here, happily, all place names are spelled out in both Russian and French.

As the largest compendium of biographical information on the Russian émigrés in France and beyond, Rossiiskoe zarubezh’e vo Frantsii, 1919-2000 presents a broader, more nuanced view of this community that has ever been possible before. In spite of the above-listed shortcomings, it is an indispensable aid for researchers. It is to be hoped that the proposed online database will be an efficient way to add further information and to correct inaccuracies. The book is recommended for academic library collections with an interest in European history or Slavic studies.

He Glossa tes geuses: lexiko tes historias tes Hellenikes diatrophes [The Language of Taste: Dictionary of the History of the Greek Diet]. Marianna Kavroulake. Athena: Asprimera Publications, 2011. 317 p. ill. 24 cm. ISBN 978-960-99484- 3-2: EUR 15 (Phalerou 57, 117 42 Athena, fax [30 210] 9223982, phone [30 210] 9223988, e-mail info@asprimera.com)

An RREA Original Review by George I. Paganelis (California State University, Sacramento)