Technical Details

Edition Used and Copyright

Pagination and Local Links

For citation and indexing purposes, the pagination is shown in the right margin of the text at the page turns (like at the end of this line); p57  these are also local anchors. Sticklers for total accuracy will of course find the anchor at its exact place in the sourcecode.

In addition, I've inserted a number of other local anchors: whatever links might be required to accommodate the author's own cross-references, as well as a few others for my own purposes. If in turn you have a website and would like to target a link to some specific passage of the text, please let me know: I'll be glad to insert a local anchor there as well.

Proofreading

As almost always, I retyped the text by hand rather than scanning it — not only to minimize errors prior to proofreading, but as an opportunity for me to become intimately familiar with the work, an exercise I heartily recommend: Qui scribit, bis legit. (Well-meaning attempts to get me to scan text, if success­ful, would merely turn me into some kind of machine: gambit declined.)

My transcription has been minutely proofread. In the table of contents above, the sections are shown on blue backgrounds, indicating that I believe the text of them to be completely errorfree; a red background would mean that the page had not been proofread. As elsewhere onsite, the header bar at the top of each chapter's webpage will remind you with the same color scheme.

The printed book was indifferently proofread. Serious mistakes have been corrected with a bullet like this;º the other errors were trivial, and I marked them with a dotted underscore like this: as elsewhere on my site, glide your cursor over the underscored words to read what was actually printed. Similarly, underscored measurements provide conversions to metric, e.g., 10 miles.

The author states that he "did not attempt to bring order to the chaos of the transliteration of Slavic words". Fair enough — but he's been internally inconsistent, even when writing in his own voice, for which there's less of an excuse. In case of doubt, look for Polish-style transcriptions, e.g. Chmelnycky rather than Khmelnytsky, although he also writes both Khmelnitsky and Khmelnytsky; not infrequently these inconsistencies appear in the same paragraph. More understandably, since he is not a native speaker, the author's English is occasionally a bit odd, articles absent, etc.: I've made only the minimum changes, when strictly necessary for the sense.

Similarly, odd spellings, curious turns of phrase, etc. have been marked <!‑‑ sic  in the sourcecode, just to confirm that they were checked. In sum, the book would have benefited from a good, or even average, copy editor; but that's a task I've forborne to take up.

On "Ukraine" and "the Ukraine", an important note is in order. As most of us know by now, the correct form of speech is "Ukraine" — not "the Ukraine", which latter, here too, is the work of Russian and Soviet propaganda (for why it matters, see Kathryn Graber's excellent explanation at Sapiens.Org). It is only recently that this standard has been generally adhered to: earlier English-language writers almost invariably included the article; our book reflects its time, if inconsistently, and I have not edited it to conform to modern usage.

Any over­looked mistakes, please drop me a line, of course: especially if you have a copy of the printed book in front of you.

Other than a small map on p347, the printed book is unillustrated, except for its cover, which is a map of nationalities in the Soviet Union as viewed by the author. He in turn did not choose to explain how he arrived at his territorial delimitations of the many national groups: it would have been dull, as statistics usually are, but its absence is to be regretted, and while I'm not qualified to have any opinion as to the map's accuracy, I've provided a fully readable and consequently very large scan of it (6.9 MB) to enable its merits to be judged.

That said, the map does correspond at least in its general lines to the known distribution of the submerged nations of the Soviet Union as they were when the author wrote, and I've used it as my icon for the book, highlighting the Russian areas in red; with the further caveat that in redu­cing so large a map to so small a vignette, additional inaccuracy is inevitably introduced: the gentle reader should view this little icon as intended, a visual signpost and no more.

Images with borders lead to more information. The thicker the border, the more information. (Details here.)
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