Middle East
research by myself and Nellie Ohr finds the line
between state and society under Stalin and later
leaders to be blurred. If such were not the case, it
would be difficult to explain the rise of criticism and
eventually of reform within the state apparatus, which
played such a large role in frustrating the attempted
coup of August 1991. Here Smith might have benefited
as well from Moshe Lewin's work on the background
to perestroika.
Smith uses the word "totalitarianism" to distinguish
the entire Soviet period from the post-1991 era. Her
definition has the "party-state" as "sovereign," using
its "monopoly on power to penetrate all aspects of
social economic, and political life" (pp. 9-10). She
does not refer to recent discussions by Abbott Gleason
(Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War
[1995]) and Giuseppe Boffa (The Stalin Phenomenon
[1992]), who have detailed its many uses and permutations. In any event, "monopoly on power" is uninformative on the ways in which the state could not
effect its will, such as to inculcate respect for all
nationalities. Nor is the extent to which life was
penetrated by the state made clear. Of course there
were no independent organizations and no Westernstyle public criticisms of national policy; yet these
observations conceal as much as they tell us.
Smith does guide the reader carefully through Memorial's difficulties in contesting the regime, which
naturally tried to defend its legitimacy. She provides
valuable insights into the harassment of opposition
groups, which continued for years under Gorbachev,
although she is wrong to suggest that all efforts to
thwart criticism were centrally directed. The conservative defense of Stalinism is also explored, although its
representatives are never brought to life the way
Memorial's are.
Smith's book is thus largely a tale of good versus
evil, state versus society, and progress versus totalitarianism. While the undeniable suffering of millions of
people under Stalin is moving to consider, the faith
that other millions (among them more than a few
victims) had in him and his rule calls for a more
nuanced treatment of how the past is constructed and
used.
ROBERT W. THURSTON
Miami University
MIDDLE EAST
YAEL ZERUBAVEL. Recovered Roots: Collective Memory
and the Making of Israeli National Tradition. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press. 1996. Pp. xx, 340.
If we detach the core of this book, a systematic account
of the state of Israel's generative myths, from its
modish theoretical setting in neo-Jungianism (the collective unconscious transformed into "collective memory"), we are left with a thoroughly professional,
workmanlike, and solid, if unexceptional, monograph
about Israeli political culture ("collective memory").
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239
Like all effective political movements, Zionism reconstructed the past of the political community it intended
to define, beginning with its periodization into the
ancient nation, the intervening dark ages of exile, and
the modern nation rebuilt upon the lost homeland.
Yael Zerubavel's study systematically expounds three
principal components of Israel's formative national
myth, effective so long as the left governed and now
trashed into sentimental tourist-kitsch. She identifies
these as the battle of Tel Hai (1920), the Bar Kokhba
revolt (ca. 132-135) and the fall of Masada (73). The
first represents "a new commemorative tradition, a
myth of new beginning"; the second, "dual image and
transformed memory"; and the third, "a myth of
fighting to the bitter end." Collectively, Zerubavel
shows, they formed the foundations of national propaganda ("memory"), explaining, to Zionists before 1948
and Israelis after, who they were, what they should do,
and why they mattered. Zerubavel then spells out how
the three mythopoeic moments have been translated
into literature and ritual. Tel Hai moved from history
to legend, Bar Kokhba from mourning to celebration,
and Masada formed the goal of "a new Hebrew
pilgrimage." She also shows how debates about these
three events defined the agenda for political confrontation over public policy in chapters on: "Tel Hai and
the meaning of pioneering," "the Bar Kokhba revolt
and the meaning of defeat," and "Masada and the
meaning of death." The book is well-researched, informative, and fresh for the English-language reader,
much of the work of Israeli revisionist history being
not well known overseas.
Zerubavel's opening and closing chapters, mercifully
short and ignored in the core of the book, purport to
supply an analytical occasion, borrowed from murky
postmodernist ruminations about "history and memory," for "Israeli collective memory." By "memory," she
means merely the manipulation of the past tense in the
formation of contemporary discourse. The category of
"memory" is invoked to gussy up a good study of
political propaganda, and "collective memory" or
"Jewish memory" turns out to be a fancy way of talking
about plain facts. Everyone knows that the Second
Temple priests wrote up the history of the Israelite
monarchy to suit their purposes, Augustus remade the
Republic, the Evangelists worked out pictures of Jesus
in response to communal concerns decades post facto,
and so on through time, down to Joseph Goebbels,
Benito Mussolini, the Bolsheviks, and the postmodernist "historians" themselves (as the debate over Hiroshima demonstrates). As to the Jews' alleged racial
memory, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi's Zakhor: Jewish
History and Jewish Memory (1982) rather pretentiously
covered the same ground, most of it already well
plowed by others. How do we benefit by invoking the
category of "memory" for things that people do not
actually remember at all but only fabricate or manipulate? I do not know. But perhaps new names for old
things-"collective memory" in place of the racist and
discredited "collective unconscious"-are meant to
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240
Reviews of Books
mark as elegant what is, in its own terms, a perfectly
fine, old-fashioned historical study of political culture.
My advice is, skip "the dynamics of collective remembering" and "history, memory, and invented tradition"
and read the rest. The publisher does not help with a
cascade of extravagant blurbs, flowing mostly from
people quoted in the book itself. But despite the
fabricated glamor and postmodernist glitz of its cover,
the book is solid and informative.
JACOB NEUSNER
University of South Florida and Bard College
NACHMAN BEN-YEHUDA. The Masada Myth: Collective
Memory and Mythmaking in Israel. Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press. 1996. Pp. xxi, 401. Cloth $60.00,
paper $22.95.
There is much that is good and rich-and some things
that are troubling-about this book. Written by an
Israeli sociologist with a passionately personal as well
as scholarly engagement with twentieth-century narratives about Masada, it is not a book of history as much
as it is a book about sociopolitical uses of particular
historical events. Nachman Ben-Yehuda sees it as an
analysis of how nation-building myth-making works,
and as such I think it is excellent. Wonderfully detailed
and well-researched, the book documents both the
intentional interventions of particular individuals and
the nation-building practices whereby huge numbers of
people came to promote and consume a story of what
happened to some Jews at Masada nearly 2,000 years
ago.
Part two explores the involvement of an appropriate
array of institutions in the telling and retelling of a
heroic story of Masada. Included are divisions within
the Israeli Army, the Israeli tourist industry, and that
part of Israel's publishing industry that produces
school textbooks, guidebooks, and "children's literature." Also examined in a usefully illuminating way are
similarities, differences, and historical changes in the
views of "Masada" found among seven of the country's
twelve main youth movements, four "pre-state Jewish
underground groups," and the two most widely circulating Hebrew newspapers in the years (1963-1965)
during which famed archeologist Yigal Yadin excavated Masada.
In these chapters, we see ideological differences
leading some youth movements and "defense groups"
(more than others) in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s to
pay special, and even ritualized, group visits to the
mountaintop and to invoke "Masada" as a story of
inspiration, dedication, and historical attachment.
Ben-Yehuda documents a major decline in such visits
and textual references in the early 1970s, a period that
saw the transformation of Masada into a major tourist
site attracting large numbers of foreign tourists. Figures from the Israeli National Parks authority show a
rise from 34,000 visitors (foreign and domestic) in 1959
to 90,160 in 1968-1969 to 357,690 in 1971-1972 and
646,000 in 1994. But the author is only in part inter-
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
ested in these historical transformations. It is clear that
Ben-Yehuda, while personally invested in exposing the
typical Masada narrative as a nation-building fabrication, is equally invested in using this case study to
advocate "contextual constructionism" as an analytic
framework in the social sciences. This is sociological
work in both form and content. Parts one ("The Puzzle
and the Background") and three ("Analysis, Discussion, and Summary") sandwich the "data" section, a
format that echoes the structure of scientific articles
and allied social science publications. Chapter titles,
not surprisingly, include "The Research Puzzle,"
"Methodological Framing," and "Theoretical Interpretation."
Ben-Yehuda explicitly frames Masada as a case
study to endorse the superiority of "contextual constructionism" over what he calls "strict constructionism" (pp. 20-22). Although he never really offers an
explicit critique of "strict constructionism," he does
describe what he sees as the virtues of "contextual
constructionism," namely, that it "offers a solution for
the problem focusing on the nature of reality [and] sets
the defining parameters of reality and hence provides
the researcher with a powerful analytical docking
anchor" (p. 21). To put it differently, this is a position
that insists on distinguishing between "objective" and
"constructed" versions of reality and contrasting them.
Thus Ben-Yehuda, arguing for a particular paradigm in the sociology of deviance, contrasts what
presumably "objectively" happened between 66 and 73
A.D. on or near the Masada mountain with the
narratives about it that have developed and become
popular since then. He articulates a strong belief in the
ability of a researcher to get at the "real facts"-a
much stronger belief than I have-and this results in
some missed interpretive opportunities. The most glaring is his refusal to treat the earliest known and widely
read account of what happened on Masada before and
during the Roman siege as a narrative itself, subject to
the same kind of critical analysis as more recent
printed and oral narratives. Ben-Yehuda's privileging
of Josephus Flavius's text to this degree and his
insistence on the falseness and "fabricated moral
claims" (p. 3) of recent accounts make me wonder if he
is not unconsciously but problematically attributing
authenticity and objectivity only to very old texts and
inauthenticity, even duplicity, to contemporary ones.
VIRGINIA R. DOMINGUEZ
University of Iowa
AsHER SUSSER. On Both Banks of the Jordan: A Political
Biography of Wasfi ai-Tall. Portland, Oreg.: Frank
Cass; distributed by ISBS. 1994. Pp. x, 208. $35.00.
Too often, the swinging of the historiographical pendulum between proponents of the "Great Man" theory
of history and advocates of various sorts of historical
determinism leaves out the "near-great," the "behindthe-scences great," and the "great helpers." Historiography of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan provides a
FEBRUARY 1998