Book Review

“Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.” Joseph Conrad1 It may well be that I am the only person to have experienced this book not only as a student assigned weekly readings from its first edition, but also as the teacher making the assignments a few years later from the second edition.2 Both experiences were rewarding, and I recommend this third edition from both perspectives. As a student, I was privileged to study Russian law under the late Professor Gennady Danilenko.3 This was not my first study of Russian law. That introduction I enjoyed as a graduate student in the rooms of the extraordinary Professor Bernard Rudden at Brasenose College, Oxford. Several weeks before the start of those tutorials (held in Hilary Term 1995 and entitled “Soviet and Post-Soviet State and Law”), I received a letter from Professor Rudden, instructing me to begin my “vacation preparation” with “the best books to be read right through (more than once if possible)”. These were identified as Harold Berman’s Justice in the USSR and Ferdinand J. M. Feldbrugge’s Russian Law: The End of the Soviet System and the Role of Law.4 More great books followed: Alekseev,5 Butler,6