This very interesting work focuses its attention above all on social questions, and not only on those prompted by the first Cossack rebellions in the Ukraine towards the close of the 16th century. The book deals more generally with the Cossack problem as it appeared in the PolishLithuanian Republic in the 16th century and, to a certain extent, in the 17th century. The Jewish question or, to be more precise, the question of anti-semitism has only a few pages (pp. 53-7) and scattered references dedicated to it.

In these brief commentaries, the author cautions particularly against simplification of the question. At the tum of the 16th-17th centuries, according to the author, the Jewish population of the country (within the frontiers as stipulated in the book, and thus including Rus, Wotyii, and Podole; the author is mistaken here, since at this time neither Rus, Wotyii nor Podole were part of the Ukraine) came to 120,000 and so constituted a sizeable and wealthy minority group. As we know from the research of the outstanding scholar Salo Wittmayer Baron, an expert on this subject, the Republic's Jewish population increased considerably during this period, i.e. 1576-1648, rising from 2.0 to 4.5 per cent of the total population, reaching 450,000 by the middle of the 17th century (A Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 16, Poland-Lithuania 1500-1650, 2nd edn, 1976, p. 207). It seems, therefore, and the author is aware of this, that the estimate of 120,000 Jews in the Ukraine at the end of the 16th century is an exaggeration.

I am doubtful about the statement that it WᾳS primarily the townspeople who were ill-disposed towards the Jews, followed then by the peasants. The anti-semitism of the Ukrainian peasant did not manifest itself, and then in a most terrible form, uqtil the time of Chmielnicki's revolt, but it must have had roots reaching further back than that. It could not have appeared suddenly, deus ex machina, from nowhere in 1648. But the author goes on to build on the foundations of this hypothesis, assumed a priori, with a statement that does, in fact, constitute her basic thesis, namely that anti-semitism in the Ukraine during the era in question developed in two stages - a rural and an urban stage.