Protest and the Politics of Blame: The Russian Response to Unpaid Wages. By Debra Javeline. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003. 312p. $60.00.

Why, in the face of massive delays in the payment of wages throughout the Russian Federation during the 1990s, did so few Russian workers engage in organized protest? This empirical puzzle has important implications not only for understanding how the fragile post-Soviet regime managed to endure more than a decade of severe socioeconomic crisis, but also for general theories of social mobilization. In her highly original and thought-provoking book, Debra Javeline argues that the relative quiescence of Russian workers can be explained parsimoniously: In the face of the complexities of post-Soviet political and economic transition, workers could not collectively decide who was to blame for wage arrears, and hence could not organize effective protests against any particular individual or institution.