For most Westerners, Eastern Europe remains one of the most complex and baffiing areas of the world, despite its superficial rationalization under communist rule. This is an impression which even a more prolonged acquaintance with its history over the last two centuries can only confirm. It is certainly one that this reader gained from a perusal of the detailed studies contained in Stephen Horak's comprehensive handbook of national minorities in Eastern Europe between 1919 and 1980. Arranged by ‘state-nation’, the studies offer a brief historical survey of the overall position of minorities in each state, followed by sections on each minority, together with a valuable bibliography arranged by national minority within each state. It is therefore possible to compare the fate of, say, Jews, Gypsies and ethnic Germans in several states, particularly through the many tables of population growth and decline. It is also possible to gauge the demographic impact of the Second World War on the fate of minorities within each ‘successor state’, and the ways in which post-war settlements have reduced the political importance of the problem of national minorities in Eastern Europe. In these respects, the handbook, by compiling and presenting so much scattered information in a single volume and indicating what is being done in Eastern Europe in the way of further research, performs an invaluable service. My only regret is that its focus on the state boundaries of ‘national’ minorities does not allow a simultaneous presentation of the fate of ‘ethnic’ minorities as a whole, i.e. across the historical boundaries of the successor states.

A similar demographic emphasis is apparent in the otherwise excellent short general account of Eastern European minorities by Raymond Pearson. Here the time-scale stops at 1945 but extends back to 1848, a date which by his own admission possesses symbolic rather than real significance in Eastern Europe (and in some cases the story had to be carried back to Napoleon's incursions, in many ways a more helpful starting-point for a complex story). Again, the effects of the World Wars, especially the Second, on political boundaries and demographic patterns, notably of ethnic Germans, Russians, Gypsies and Jews, are presented in a concise, but balanced, manner.