BOOK REVIEWS Anna Lawton. Kinoglasnost: Soviet Cinema in our Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. xv, 288 pp. $54.95, cloth. $16.95, paper. ‘The final years of cinema in the Soviet Union are the subject of this book. The focus is on Russian cinema or, more precisely, on films and film activities taking place in Moscow during Gorbachev's perestroika. A project that was intended in 1991 as a journalistic account of current events became a history book by the time it was published in 1992, As one of the first attempts to deal with the closing period of Soviet cinematic history, the book succeeds in introducing to the English-speaking world many films and their makers, It amounts to an invaluable source of information about the topical nature of these films. The book has two parts: “The Melting of the Ice” and “Spring Waters and Mud.” The first provides historical background, focusing on films madebefore 1985; the reforms and the economics of the film industry; as well as issues of film popularity with Soviet audiences. The second part classifies and elaborates on Soviet productions according to their subject matter. It includes rather incomplete accounts of films “shelved” and released only during glasnost; those dealing with the Soviet past, the Soviet present, as well as those trying to foresee the “Soviet future.” ‘The most serious drawback of this otherwise well-researched book is the lack of critical perspective. Marred by “unrestrained optimism” (a Soviet film critic’s term), and the official enthusiasm of the Russian press, the first part sees Gorbachev's coming to power and the four years that followed as revolutionary. Although the proclamations and resolutions of the Party and film organizations like the Filmmakers’ Union sounded “revolutionary” at the time, not too many changes were actually implemented. There has always been a discrepancy, to put it mildly, between manifestos or even laws and Soviet reality. The example of the Soviet constitution cannot be easily forgotten, The proclamations and attempted reorganizations of the Filmmakers’ Union as reported in the Soviet press warrant a certain enthusiasm but do they tell us the whole story? Moreover, the book assumes that the changes in official Party policies and the changes of rulers in the Soviet Union reflect changes in Soviet society. A reader is prompted to believe that the year 1985 saw the transformation of Soviet society as reflected in the films. Missing from the book is the concept that changes within Soviet society were gradual, slow and far from radical. The same can be said about the films. The menu of permitted film topics was expanded to include such taboo topics as sex, drugs and prostitution, as well as corruption and criminal activities, but the films did not get much better because of that. The question arises whether the changes were dictated by the new political situation or, perhaps, by the economics of the film industry and the need to compete with foreign (legal and pirated) films and videos on such topics. In the glasnost era, studios still employed thousands of people paid by the Ministry of Culture. Independent filmmaking often meant moonlighting, using the Tesources of govemment-owned studios. Most “independents” kept their influential Positions at the state studios or at the Filmmakers’ Union. Government resources and employees (there were no job losses) were “shared,” making the independents into profitable enterprises. One has to remember that the “conflict of interest” concept has hot been observed in Russia. Most of the people in charge were those who made their careers under Brezhnev. Although several scapegoats were found (Ermash, Bondarchuk) the changes were far from radical. Truly independent film organizations Started to form only in the nineties. ‘Canadian Stavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavises Vol. XXXVI, Nos. 1-2, March-June, 1905226 BOOK REVIEWS Had the book, as its title suggests, limited itself to the era of glasnost, there simply would not have been enough material for a volume. Kinoglasnost often goes back to the 1960s and 1970s and cites examples from these decades. The author demonstrates that interesting Soviet films were made prior to the glasnost era as well as after Gorbachev's rise to power. This blurs and, in a sense, contradicts the book’s thesis that glasnost and perestroika were responsible for the sudden changes in the film industry. The homogeneous view of the Soviet Union that only recently was described as “the greatest blunder of American Sovietology” prevents the author from testing some of her propositions. For example, she claims that the glasnost era brought democratization and decentralization to the film industry, yet she deals mainly with the central (i.e, Moscow and, less often, Leningrad) studios. Would it not be appropriate to test the decentralization hypothesis further from the centre? This book must be recommended with caution. Kinoglasnost succeeds in introducing and describing many films, but is inadequate as an analysis of the Soviet film industry or the Soviet society that watched its movies. Bohdan Y. Nebesio, University of Alberta Leonid Ouspensky. Theology of the Icon. Volumes I and I. Trans. Anthony Gythiel. New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1992. Vol. I: 194 Pp. Mlustrations. Vol. I: 322 pp. Plates. Index. $25.95, paper. Roderick Grierson, ed. Gates of Mystery: The Art of Holy Russia, St. Petersburg: Intercultura [1993]. 336 pp. Theology of the Icon brings together two quite separate books by Leonid Ouspensky (1903-1987), the doyen of both the practice and the theory of iconography in the Russian emigration: his most famous book, The Meaning of Icons (1952), written with the theologian Vladimir Lossky, has done more than any other single book for the study and appreciation of icons in the twentieth century. Both the volumes under review were written in Russian and have long been available in French translation, and the first volume was published in English as Theology of the Icon in 1978. Unnecessary confusion is caused when the same publisher brings out a completely new book, publishes it as the second volume of a set whose title is that of the first volume alone. Not only is Volume II a completely different book: it is far more valuable as a work of scholarship. Volume I is a brief introduction to Christian art and Byzantine and Russian iconography; it provides a useful summary of the theology of the image as it was debated and formulated in the Ecumenical Councils, and contested most dramatically in the Iconoclastic controversy of the eighth and ninth centuries, A good and lucid introduction, Ouspensky’s work suffices until students car be directed to the work of Grabar, Weitzmann and others. The second volume has little of the introductory and less of the polemical tone of the frst volume, recently mocked, gently, by Leszek Kolakowski: “Beware of all those Michelangelos, you pious people....” It gathers eight leamed articles on aspects of the history of Russian iconography, published between 1950 and 1975. The tone is of passionate, engaged learning, and the volume constitutes a serious contribution to the understanding of Russian culture. Particularly valuable are the four chapters devoted 1 the decline of Russian iconography after its “flowering” of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as attested by the work of Theofan the Greek and Andrei Rublev. It is easy to blame the influence of westem models and the seductive powers of Renaissance aesthetics—a favourite