188 Slavic Review 

the need for similar expositions of the vocabulary structure of other Slavic lan-
guages, and provides a useful tool for pinpointing translator's "false friends"— 
for example, Russian otperet' (to unlock), Polish odeprzec (to repel), Czech 
odepfiti (to refuse), Serbo-Croatian odaprijeti (to open)—for linguistic study of 
the routes of semantic or phonetic change, or for moments of pleasant and use-
ful browsing. 

P H I L I P J. REGIER 

University of Southern California 

R U S S I A N C U B O - F U T U R I S M , 1910-1930. By Vahan D. Barooshian. The Hague 
and P a r i s : Mouton, 1974. 176 pp. 

Literature on Futurism—as a movement both in literature and in the other arts— 
has grown considerably during the last decade. While Russian Futurism was 
virtually unknown to Western readers (except a small group of specialists) some 
ten or fifteen years ago, they now have available a number of monographs, trans-
lations, reproductions of original materials, and so forth. Vladimir Markov's 
Russian Futurism: A History has competently documented and put in perspective 
the main phenomena of the movement in Russia, and thus has laid the ground-
work for further studies of specific groups, or of individual contributions. 

Barooshian's study, entitled Russian Cubo-Futurism, 1910-1930, is, in effect, 
a presentation of the five major members of the so-called "Gileia" group. That 
these members were Khlebnikov, Mayakovsky, Burliuk, Kruchenykh and Kamen-
skii should not be questioned, although it might be noted that contributions by 
some other artists, especially Benedikt Livshits and Elena Guro, could have been 
afforded at least a brief subchapter to make the picture more complete. 

The presentations of the five artists are quite lucid and well documented. 
They are preceded by a brief introductory chapter, "The Background of Early 
Russian Cubo-Futurism in Brief Historical Perspective." Perhaps because the 
perspective is so "brief," the triangle Symbolism-Cubism-Futurism appears a little 
too idyllic and too "equilateral." It is true that Cubism made itself felt in Russia 
earlier, but the question of the role of Cubism in the program of the Russian 
Futurists could have been afforded a little more discussion. On the other hand, 
the chapter entitled "French Surrealism and Russian Futurism" tends to con-
centrate, at times, on some less "intrinsic" aspects; it assigns too much impor-
tance to the French artists' ideological declarations. The interesting chapter on 
"Futurism in the Post-Revolutionary Period" contributes some valid remarks, al-
though in some places a slight uncertainty in delineating the subject is evident. At 
one point, for example, the author speaks of "the avant-garde which included the 
Russian Cubo-Futurists" (p. 116), and on the next page of "the avant-garde and 
the Cubo-Futurists" (p. 117). 

On the whole, this study is a valuable piece of research. It is a welcome addi-
tion to the body of "Futurisiana." 

Z. F O L E J E W S K I 

University of British Columbia