making possible the wide dissemination of ideas and information after the mid-15th century, the tsarist government claimed a near monopoly of Russian presses until the early 19th century, reserving the machines to publish official documents.
At first glance, Starr concedes, today's pattern appears similar. The Kremlin views computers as "the last best hope" to make the Soviet Union's creaky centralized economy work. Manufactured or imported the state and for the state, computers have...
by D. Cameron Watt
Cambridge, 1984
302 pp. $34.50
by John B. Dunlop
Princeton, 1983
$32.50
by Stephen Saunders Webb
Knopf, 1984
440 pp. $25
translated by W. S. Merwin
North Point, 1984
284 pp. $12.50
Reinhold Heller
Univ. of Chicago, 1984
240 pp. $39.95
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I '-
1,
Contemporary Affairs
CITIES AND THE WEALTH OF NATIONS: Mnciples of Economic Life
Jane Jacobs Random, 1984 257 pp. $17.95
"I do not believe," said Norway's greatest painter, Edvard Munch (1863-19441, "in an art which is not forced into existence by a hu- man being's desire to open his heart." Com- ing from most people, the utterance would sound melodramatic. From Munch, whose devotion to his art helped him...