This is a damaging book that contains lots of distortions and misconceptions. ...the other hand, accusations, particularly when levelled against a whole nation, must be supported by evidence. It is clear that Loftus has not yet learned how to collect that evidence, and has insufficient linguistic and historical knowledge to deal with source material."<...

An outstanding book and eye opening - how evil can walk among us un-noticed. This is a lesson many of us learned after Sept 11 -- how the next door friend can be a fiend in disguise. Readers of this book could have learned that lesson long ago.

So you have already seen the present and former capital, and now you would like to see the "real Russia", or you have adopted a child from Murmansk, or you are meeting a prospective bride from Magadan (don't laugh--whenever I answer questions from people who are traveling to regions outside of Moscow/St. Petersburg, 80% are going for adoption or marriage!). There are almost no current guidebooks to regions such as Perm, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Volgograd, Crimea, Minsk, and the Far East. The 'Lonely Planet Russia, Ukraine & Belarus (Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, 2Nded)' has the largest area coverage of any guide currently published in English.

It is also ideal for those taking a river cruise between Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The coverage of the famed Trans-Siberian route is ok, although I think the 'Trans-Siberian Handbook' and 'Siberian Bam Guide : Rail, Rivers & Road' do a better job for those particular regions.

The Moscow/St. Petersburg sections are ok as well, although I think anyone spending more than a few days in each of those cities should look into guides that cover only those cities.

Restaurant, hotel and travel information are good, although could use more details. The history sections are adequate considering the scope of the book. Also, the twice-yearly updates at Lonely Planet's web site, although lacking in breadth and depth, provide some more timely information than what appears in the book.

My wife and I will be spending the summer in her home town of Kiev. Since I am an American, I want to go with as much information as possible so that I can get the most out of my time there. To this end, I bought Let's Go Eastern Europe 2000 and Lonely Planet's Russia, Ukraine & Belarus 2000 books. We have reviewed both books and with respect to Ukraine, we find Lonely Planet's travel guide superior. It contains a lot more information about Ukraine than the Let's Go book. Of course the Let's Go book covers many more countries than the Lonely Planet guide so this fact is not surprising.

However, the Lonely Planet book is also more up-to-date. For instance, the Let's Go book makes very wrong predictions about the presidential election that took place last fall. It also contains exchange rates from last summer.

Meanwhile Lonely Planet not only talks about the actual result of last fall's elections, it tells how this set of elections significantly affects the country. My wife's parents generally confirm the observations Lonely Planet offers. Lonely Planet's guidebook also mentions several news events that are only a few months old.

I am very satisfied with the Lonely Planet travel guide and considerably more satisfied than I am with a leading alternative. I am looking forward to using it.

This review is a follow-up to my May 13, 2000 review and only addresses the Ukraine portion of this guidebook. My wife and I did spend our entire summer in Ukraine and used this guidebook as our travel bible. We found the information up-to-date and accurate. We also generally agreed with the advise which I think is remarkable since, with three months there, my wife took me to see just about everything the book suggested doing in Kiev and many things it merely discussed but did not recommend. Additionally we also traveled throughout western Ukraine for two weeks. In fact, we went on a group tour of western Ukraine and our guidebook turned out to be a big hit. Everyone on the bus wanted to read it. A fellow traveler who had brought Let's Go Eastern Europe 2000 with him agreed that Lonely Planet was much better. Until something newer comes out, with respect to Ukraine guidebooks I think Lonely Planet can't be beat.

Urban collected and processed a lot of data for this book, and I have to give him credit for that, for sure. His objective is to create a rigid, mathematically based methodology for studying the movements in the Soviet bureaucracy, which by no means acted as a conventional bureaucracy, despite many scholars' attempts to analyze it as such. Looking at Belorussia, he gathered data for office vacancies and mobility for twenty years, and plugged them into his "algebra" to calculate probabilities of office-holders coming from particular areas of the bureaucracy, looking for patterns. In this, he is quite thorough, and one really cannot doubt the extent and factuality of his research (although it doesn't make for easy reading).

His analysis, on the other hand, does not come out as solidly as his data collection. Not that what he says did not hold true for the Belorussian republic, but he resists making generalizations from it, extending it to the soviet system as a whole. He also, in considering factionalism in Belorussia (actually one of the strongest sections of the book) does tend to drop back into the subjective mode of analysis that he decries in the book's introduction.

This is not an easy book to read. A strong backing in statistics, some higher math, and a good working knowledge of Russia between Brezhnev and Gorbachev is almost necessary. But with all its faults aside, Urban has created a useful methodology for study of the movements of power in the late soviet period.

The format of this book is well laid out and provides a good snapshot of Belarus. Unfortunately, it is out of date by some 2 to 3 years. It is especially terrible when the picture depicting the national flag is incorrect. Over all. I do not recommend this book.

This could have been a great reference - But almost all of the data is from 1997 or before. The discussion on relations with Russia ends in 1995, with no mention of the unification pacts. The only current information are texts of addresses given by the President.

The best review I have seen of this book is the following by Professor James Dingley, whose review title I include here, and which originally appeared in 1984.

This book review appears on the Web by permission of both the author and the periodical in which it appeared:

[...]

Source citations are included in the article, as well as contact information for "The Journal of Byelorussian Studies" (which was published between 1965 and 1988; thus the older spelling of "Belarusian").

The last paragraph of the review is a telling summary of the book:

"No-one can seriously maintain that Byelorussians could not possibly be implicated in Nazi war crimes. On the other hand, accusations, particularly when levelled against a whole nation, must be supported by evidence. It is clear that Loftus has not yet learned how to collect that evidence, and has insufficient linguistic and historical knowledge to deal with source material."

Sadly, this is one of the very few books with information on this part of the world - and it gets many facts wrong. This book is obvoiusly aimed at the K-12 market, and aims to function as a primer on this region. Unfortunately, it fails.

* Ukrainian place names are invariably given in Russian instead of Ukrainian (for example, Kyiv is spelled Kiev in this book).

* Moldovan place names are either not spelled correctly - e.g. "Belsiy" for Balti, or given in Russian - e.g. "Kishinev" for Chisinau.

* Country names are not accurate - for example, the German Democratic Republic is labeled as "East Germany".

* Information on these countries' ethnic minorities is shallow. The Gagauz and Bulgarian minorities in Moldova are simply labeled as "other", and the percentage of the pie chart given to these "others" is wrong (13 per cent instead of approximately 4 per cent).

* Finally, many other details are wrong. For example, Moldova is described as having "abundant natural resources and well-developed industries", when in fact Moldova imports nearly all of its power and natural resources, and has virtually no developed industry save for some decaying factories in the Trans-Dniestr Republic.

In short, save your money. If you're looking for information on these countries, look elsewhere.