Berlin: LIT Verlag for The University of Hradec Králové, 2010. 305 p.*

The peer-reviewed publication is a publication of reports read out at the Viva Africa! conference, held in 2009 in the Czech city of Hradec Kralove on the initiative of one of the most prominent East European Africanists, P. Skalnik. As the subtitle promises, the collection really presents an analysis of a number of topical issues of modern African studies, and from a certain point of view (which gives the publication a conceptuality that does not always distinguish the publication of conference materials). According to its editors and authors, the peculiarity of political, socio-cultural, economic and other processes in postcolonial Africa is due not only to the active but also to the central role of the state in them, its primacy in relation to social and economic institutions, i.e. the ability not only to serve and direct, but also to form them, and together with them and the system of public relations itself.

It is obvious that such a specific nature of society and the state in modern Africa is a consequence of the special way in which they were formed. Having begun to take shape in its present form during the colonial period, and therefore reproducing the form of the political institutions of the Modern West, the African state could not assimilate the inherent content of civil society, which exists in Europe, but not in Africa. It is precisely the gap between the form of political institutions and the nature and character of the society in which they exist that allows the post-colonial African state to be beyond the control of society, beyond the control of its mechanisms of influence, including public opinion. The degree of lack of state control over society in Africa is sufficient to ensure that the former does not so much serve the latter as use it for its own purposes (i.e., for corporate and personal purposes of members of the bureaucratic apparatus of various ranks), in the name of this, often voluntarily transforming public institutions, imposing favorable economic models, socio-cultural norms and ideological systems.

At the same time, as rightly noted in the paper under review (p. 1), the postcolonial African state turned out to be much more stable and able to adapt to changes at the global, regional and national levels than it seemed to researchers a decade ago. Less obvious, but certainly worthy of serious attention and further analysis, is another postulate contained primarily in the general articles of the collection-P. Shabal (p. 9-17) and the only Russian author V. Arsenyev (p. 19-25). This is a postulate about the illegality of applying the same performance criteria to the African state as to the Western one, primarily due to fundamental differences in the nature of relations between the state and society. Hence, the authors and editors of the collection draw conclusions of both methodological and practical nature: about the need to form special approaches to the study of African realities and about the futility

* Africanists about Africa. Aktual'nye problemy [Actual problems] / Ed. by P. Shabal and P. Skalnik. Berlin: LIT Publishing House commissioned by the University of Hradec Kralove. 2010, 305 p.

attempts to impose on the Black continent countries models of political, socio-economic and cultural development that are supposedly universally suitable, but in fact civilizationally determined by the historical and cultural experience of the West.

In a broader theoretical context, these conclusions can be considered as a further development of the idea of the fundamental incompatibility of the political (and socio-cultural) structures of Africa with European ones throughout history: to date, the position of the special character of pre-colonial African polities has been firmly established in political and anthropological science; the uniqueness of the phenomenon of the colonial state, including in Africa, is, has always been self-evident. In general, it should be noted that in the reviewed collection, the current trend of "Africanization" of approaches to the study of the Black Continent is reflected quite deeply, up to the consideration (and from a very reasonable moderate position) in the Preface and Introduction of the issue of the limited opportunities for non-Africans to know Africa due to their belonging to fundamentally different cultures, which is fashionable in the current era of the heyday of postmodern discourse.

In view of the above, it seems absolutely natural and reasonable that it is precisely the diverse ways of decisive influence of state power on various aspects of society as a manifestation of the specifics of African countries that have become the central theme of the reviewed collection. Moreover, the reasonableness of the point of view chosen by its creators is confirmed by the multiplicity of spheres and the variability of forms and ways of reflecting the determining role of the state in their transformations, considered in the articles that made up the collection.

Thus, P. Chabal shows the futility of attempts by non-African states and international organizations to launch mechanisms for the development of African countries by providing them with assistance due to the requirement to reduce the role of the state in socio-economic life and reduce public spending. In particular, the second requirement, as the researcher emphasizes, in practice most often leads to spending cuts in those areas in which, on the contrary, they are needed in large quantities (infrastructure development, maintaining public security, etc.), which only hinders the development of African societies. Moreover, in these societies that are not civil, i.e. basically self-organizing, only the state can act as an engine of economic development: the classical postulate of capitalist political economy about the self-regulating nature of the market is not embodied in them, even to the extent that it can be a reality, and not an ideologeme in the West.

Obviously, the authors of the collection (as well as between them and the reviewer) do not disagree in recognizing the exclusivity of the role of the state in Africa and understanding the essence of this exclusivity. However, this raises the following equally important questions, in particular: what should an African State be like in order to ensure socio-economic development? What are the actual, objective criteria for its effectiveness? How meaningful can such concepts as "African democratic State" and "African civil society"be? How should African States build relations with the so-called traditional political institutions artificially incorporated into them due to colonialism, i.e., solve the problem of tribalism? Most of the collection's articles are devoted to finding answers to these and similar questions in one way or another. This search is conducted in connection with the authors ' consideration of such specific (but very broad) topics as, for example, the organization and functioning of political parties and party systems, the role of leaders and other representatives of the "traditional elite" in the political process, interstate and internal military conflicts and appeasement, problems of federalism and "failed states" methods of political struggle and corruption of the authorities, formation of national ideology and identity, the role of the state in the economy and the social structure of society... These and other topics are covered both in general articles and in special ones written on the materials of individual countries: Benin, Cape Verde, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia, Sierra Leone, and South Africa.

As the authors rightly argue, the essence of the problems of African countries is not that the state, which plays a central, system-forming role in the continent's societies, is fundamentally different from its Western counterpart (like the African societies themselves), but that today it remains ineffective from the point of view of its own internal logic. Taking into account the special position of the state in African society, this is precisely the case

This circumstance is the main obstacle to the socio-economic development of the latter: the state cannot solve problems that, taking into account the local socio-cultural specifics, no one else can solve. Nevertheless, the editors of the collection define their attitude to the prospects of Africa as "pragmatic optimism", believing that the transformation of an African state into what its citizens would like to see it - "responsible and controlled" - is possible in principle, but it will still take "time and effort"to achieve this goal. In this case, I share their opinion (which has become increasingly widespread among researchers in recent years, replacing the "afropessimism" that has prevailed in world science since the mid-1970s), and I will conclude my review by noting that the authors of the collection certainly managed to achieve the goal they set for themselves: "... with this book contribution to a better understanding of current issues in Africa as seen by professional Africanists" (p. 8).

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