Freud and the Bolsheviks: Psychoanalysis in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. By Martin A. Miller. New Haven,  CT: Yale University Press, 1998,  256 pp., $30.00.

Psychoanalysis is fortunate in having Professor Martin A. Miller as the chronicler of its heretofore neglected history in Russia. A student not only of Russian history but also of psychoanalysis, he is in the ideal position to correct this rather puzzling and unfortunate omission. He notes that previous histories of psychoanalysis (Jones, Fine, Gay, Kurzwell and Ellenberger) have had little or nothing to say about the impact of Freud's work and the development of a vigorous and creative psychoanalytic community in prerevolutionary Russia. As evidence of Russian enthusiasm over Freud's ideas, translation of his Interpretation of Dreams into Russian preceded translation into any other foreign language.

Professor Miller finds some basis for this Russian readiness to embrace psychoanalysis in the realization of the failure of existing theories of organic etiology in mental illness to find practical answers beyond hospital confinement. New conceptual frameworks and therapeutic solutions were needed and psychoanalysis offered such a promise. It must also be recognized that in addition to psychiatrists searching for better theoretical and therapeutic understanding, members of the academic, literary, and intellectual communities found psychoanalysis appealing for their special interests.

Professor Miller views this time in Russian psychoanalytic evolution as critical. Expansion of professional capacities of clinical practice and organization had reached a point in 1914 where psychoanalysis seemed poised for beginning formal training programs and broader cultural penetration. Then war broke out, preempting such potential for service to the Fatherland. While medical and psychiatric demands were those of a nation at war, literature of the period reflected the psychoanalytic influence on the understanding of and recommendations for the treatment of the psychiatric casualties of warfare.

If the war was a major adversity to the further development of psychoanalysis, a far more balef