bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Ecological and genetic factors contributing to the low frequency of male sterility in Chamaecrista Fasciculata (Fabaceae)
Authors: Williams Holly L. , Fenster Charles B.
Published: April 2006

Bumble bee pollinated Chamaecrista fasciculata provides pollen as the sole reward to its pollinators. Male sterility, expressed as an absence or nearly complete absence of pollen production, occurs in low frequency in populations of C. fasciculata. Here we describe experiments, using C. fasciculata, to examine frequently cited determinants of the spread and maintenance of male sterility: compensation and the genetic basis of male sterility. In addition, we examine the role the pollination system plays in determining the reproductive success of the male steriles. Seventeen populations in Maryland, Illinois, and Kansas were surveyed and found to range from 0 to 6% male sterility per population. An artificial population of male‐sterile simulants and hermaphrodites was created to examine how the local frequency of nonrewarding male steriles might affect male‐sterile female reproductive success. Male steriles performed equally poorly, with respect to seed production, whether surrounded by other male‐sterile simulants or hermaphrodites. Compensation was examined by comparison of male steriles and hermaphrodites with respect to several reproductive and nonreproductive characters. Male steriles outperformed hermaphrodites in terms of nonreproductive biomass, but performed equally in terms of ovule number and produced many fewer flowers. The genetic basis of male sterility was examined by performing both intra‐ and interpopulational crosses of male steriles to hermaphrodites and indicate that male sterility is not purely cytoplasmic. The low frequency of male sterility in C. fasciculata populations may reflect reduced female reproductive success because of pollinator avoidance, lack of reproductive compensation, and a mode of inheritance that is not purely cytoplasmic.
Circumscription and phylogeny of the Orthotrichales (Bryopsida) inferred from RBCL sequence analyses
Authors: Goffinet Bernard , Bayer Randall J. , Vitt Dale H.
Published: April 2006

The affinities as well as the circumscription of the Orthotrichaceae (Bryopsida), one of the most diverse families of mosses, have been the focus of a controversy for much of the last century. We obtained rbcL sequences for 37 arthrodontous mosses, including 27 taxa of the Orthotrichales. The sequences were analyzed using maximum parsimony and neighbor joining in order to (1) test the monophyly of the Orthotrichales and the Orthotrichaceae; (2) determine their phylogenetic relationships; and (3) test the current subfamilial classification within the Orthotrichaceae. Both analyses suggest that the Orthotrichales are polyphyletic. The Erpodiaceae and the Rhachitheciaceae as well as Amphidium and Drummondia, two genera of the Orthotrichaceae, are shown to be of haplolepideous affinity. The Splachnales, the Bryales sensu lato, and the Orthotrichales form a monophyletic clade sister to the Haplolepideae. Both neighbor joining and maximum parsimony also suggest that the Orthotrichaceae are composed of two major lineages dominated either by acrocarpous or cladocarpous taxa. The monophyly of the family is, however, only well supported by Tamura's distances. The genera Macrocoma, Macromitrium, Orthotrichum, Ulota, and Zygodon all appear to be artificial assemblages. This study illustrates the contribution of rbcL sequence data to bryophyte systematics and, particularly, in determining the affinities of taxa lacking a peristome, whose characters are central to the classification of mosses.
Russia's Special Position in China During the Early Ch'ing Period
Authors: Hsü Immanuel C. Y.
Published: April 2006

During the K'ang-hsi (1662-1722) and Yung-cheng (1723-35) periods, Russia was the only foreign country with which China maintained treaty relations, the only “Western” state to which China sent diplomatic missions, and the only foreign power granted religious, commercial, and educational privileges in Peking. These were most unusual phenomena in Chinese foreign relations in view of China's claim to universal overlordship. As the Celestial Empire and the Middle Kingdom, China normally maintained no treaty relations with other states, sent no diplomatic missions abroad, and allowed no foreign country to keep permanent establishments in the capital city of Peking. It may therefore be asked, what differentiated Russia from the other foreign states in Chinese eyes and what prompted the Chinese to accord Russia preferential treatment?
The Episcopacy of St. Methodius
Authors: Imre Boba
Published: April 2006

Despite a continuing interest in Moravian and Methodian studies little progress, if any, has been made with regard to some basic issues. There is still a diversity of scholarly opinion as to the very nature of Methodius's episcopal dignity, as well as to the location—or even the existence—of his episcopal see. Methodius has been considered by various scholars in turn to have been a bishop “at large“ without a permanent residence, a missionary bishop, a land-bishop (chorepiscopus), or, finally, a titular bishop of Sirmium on the River Sava who was active mainly in Prince Sventopolk's domain north of the Danube with a see either in Nitra, Velehrad, or elsewhere. Thus, on the one hand, we have differences of opinion on the nature of Methodius's episcopal dignity and, on the other, a general scholarly agreement that he had the function of archbishop of Moravia. The persistence of conflicting interpretations of the episcopal dignity of Methodius and the acceptance of the notion that he was archbishop of Moravia, a title for which there is no evidence in the sources, warrant a reexamination of the Methodian problem in an attempt to eliminate some of the contradictions.
Muscovy’s Conquest of Kazan: Two Views Reconciled
Authors: Ševčenko Ihor
Published: April 2006

The war of conquest presents the conqueror with two major problems: first, the isolation of the adversary by diplomacy and his liquidation by force; second, the justification of such aggression to his own supporters and to the outside world. Two tasks of the historian follow: the first is to fit into an understandable pattern what happened before, during, and after the conquest; the second is to tell us how the conquerors explained why the conquest should have happened, why it had to happen as it did, and—whenever there is evidence—how the conquered viewed the same sequence of events.
The Beilis case: Anti-Semitism and Politics in the Reign of Nicholas II
Authors: Rogger Hans
Published: April 2006

The Beilis case—a charge of ritual murder brought against an obscure Jewish clerk in July 1911 and tried before a Kiev jury in September 1913— has more than once been called Russia's Dreyfus Affair. As a shorthand summary, the comparison serves well enough. In both instances an innocent nonentity was plucked out of obscurity to become the object of a contest whose larger implications, while they agitated politics and opinion, escaped the victim or left him indifferent. Beyond this, points of difference loom larger than those of similarity.
Recent Soviet Historiography of Russian Revolutionary Populism
Authors: Bachman John E.
Published: April 2006

Lenin selected from the "populist heritage" and praised at various times those points which might strengthen his attempt to make a revolution, and condemned whatever parts did not relate well to a particular phase of his program. Wielders of Soviet power since Lenin have continued to demonstrate this artificial ideological flexibility in their efforts to perpetuate the victory of 1917. As political and national requirements have changed, the regime has demanded that interpretations of the revolutionary populist movement complement these developments.
The Legacy of Lunacharsky and Artistic Freedom in the USSR
Authors: Holter Howard R.
Published: April 2006

Since the Twentieth Party Congress, a controversy has developed in the Soviet Union concerning the activities and views of Anatolii Vasilievich Lunacharsky (1875-1933). Lunacharsky was the USSR's first commissar of education and an important and controversial figure in the arts during the 1920s. Of particular interest in the current debate is the underlying issue of artistic freedom in the Soviet Union today. In praising or attacking Lunacharsky, writers can set forth in an oblique manner their views on topics that cannot always be openly discussed. In this debate those who advocate change in the arts policy and those who support the current policies can confront each other, in an acceptable way, on such issues as censorship, the party's role in the world of art, artistic experimentation, and a variety of other issues of vital concern to artists and writers in the Soviet Union.
Tolstoy and the English Novel: A Note on Middlemarch and Anna Karenina
Authors: Blumberg Edwina Jannie
Published: April 2006

In the famous train ride scene of Anna Karenina, Anna reads “an English novel” and imagines herself the heroine—caring for a sick man, making speeches in Parliament, and riding to hounds (1:29). That she is reading about other people distresses her, because she wants to do all these things herself. She envisions herself joining “the hero of the novel [who] was about to attain the English notion of happiness—a baronetcy and an estate.” The English novel traditionally conveys a sense of orderliness, propriety, and happiness in marriage and home, and if we judge from appearances, Anna's daydreams of English happiness find fulfillment at Vozdvizhenskoe. There is a deliberate accumulation of things English on Vronsky's estate, as if these outward trappings might assure stability and well-being. When first we see Anna on the estate she is riding a “kob” (both the horse and the word are borrowed from the English). Vronsky has a racing stable and stud farm, and keeps an English trainer and jockey in his employ; his horses are clipped short in the English fashion. The nursery furnishings are all imported from England, including the head nurse.
Alcohol and Soviet Society
Authors: Connor Walter D.
Published: April 2006

If, in a nation where comprehensive statistics on social problems are rarely if ever published, legislative action and press attention to such problems may be taken as an indication of the seriousness with which they are regarded, then the Soviet Union's alcohol problem is serious indeed. On April 8, 1967, the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR approved a decree, On Compulsory Treatment and Labor Re-education of Habitual Drunkards (Alcoholics). This decree, which went into effect on September 1 of the same year, provides for one to two-year terms in special “treatment-labor” medical institutions for excessive drinkers who violate “labor discipline, public order, and the rules of the socialist community.” The new institutions were subordinated not to the Ministry of Health but to the RSFSR Ministry for the Preservation of Public Order (MOOP, now renamed MVD). While it contained a number of significant departures from earlier legislation, the decree's most important point was its “preventive” emphasis. Previously an offending drunkard had to be on trial for a crime in a people's court before proceedings for compulsory treatment could be instituted.
“Intelligentsia” from the German “Intelligenz”? A Note
Authors: Pipes Richard
Published: April 2006

The word "intelligentsia," according to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, entered the English vocabulary in 1920. Its source was undoubtedly Russian, where it first became current in the early 1860s and a decade later acquired the status of a household word. The Russian etymology of "intelligentsia" has long been a subject of controversy. The question recently acquired additional interest when a young American scholar, Mr. Alan Pollard, demonstrated that the novelist P. D. Boborykin, who liked to take credit for introducing the word into Russian, had no right to the claim. Without going into this complicated matter, I should like to call attention to evidence indicating that the German word Intelligenz was used as early as 1849 to describe the same phenomenon as "intelligentsia," namely, a group distinguished from the rest of society by its education and "progressive" attitude. The fact that this usage antedates the Russian by more than a decade suggests that die Intelligenz may have been the direct inspiration for the Russian concept.
Mirza and Mistress in Derzhavin's “Felitsa” Poetry
Authors: Hart Pierre R.
Published: April 2006

Encumbered by an accumulation of rhetorical devices, the panegyric ode seemed an unlikely vehicle for poetic innovation. Yet when Gavriil Derzhavin, after more than a decade of literary activity, turned once again to the celebration of that most illustrious of subjects, the Empress Catherine, he was rewarded with the immediate recognition of both his fellow writers and the monarch herself for his impressive success in the genre. Although odes previously written had given evidence of the poet's competency in working with this form, it was with “Felitsa” and “A Mirza's Vision” that he demonstrated his capacity for transcending its limitations. While seeming to accept the conventions of established genres, he subtly subverted them through recombinations which stressed the importance of a more subjective poetic vision.

Of particular significance was Derzhavin's introduction of both thematic and stylistic elements from the “oriental tale,” a prose genre which enjoyed considerable popularity throughout much of the eighteenth century. In terms of narrative stance, this provided the poet with an alternative to the traditionally anonymous role of the panegyrist. Clad in the disguise of the oriental moralist or mirza, he could address his sovereign in direct and uninhibited fashion and simultaneously create an impression of his own worth as a poet. In both odes it was the relationship between mirza and mistress or, more specifically, the poet's conception of his role in the service of the empress which lent much of the freshness to these works.
Ivan the Terrible as Renaissance Prince
Authors: Cherniavsky Michael
Published: April 2006

The image of the “Terrible Tsar” struck the imagination of his contemporaries with such force that it continued to tower in Russian consciousness until quite recent times. In chronicles and tales, folk songs and stories, and in historiography from Karamzin on, Ivan IV remained alive, more vivid even than Peter the Great. And the impact was not restricted to Russians; beginning with the Dutch, English, Italians, Danes, and Germans—adventurers, diplomats, merchants, prisoners, mercenaries— who visited the Russia of Ivan IV, the Tsar left an impression in West European minds such that today men who know nothing about Russia or its history will know the name of Ivan the Terrible.
The Russian Revolution and the Rumanian Socialist Movement,1917-1918
Authors: Hitchins Keith
Published: April 2006

The collapse of the Russian monarchy in February and the overthrow of the Provisional Government in October 1917 confronted Rumanian leaders with the prospect of a violent change in their own country. Rumania’s participation in the First World War on the side of the Entente had by February 1917 resulted in a succession of military defeats and the occupation of two-thirds of the country, including Bucharest, by German and Austro-Hungarian forces. The court and most of the leading politicians had taken refuge in Iasi, the chief city of Moldavia, located only a few miles from the Russian border. A Russian army of about a million men and a reorganized Rumanian field army of some eighteen divisions manned a newly stabilized front which stretched from Bukovina in the north along the eastern slopes of the Carpathians to southern Moldavia
M. N. Pokrovsky and Soviet Historiography: Some Reconsiderations
Authors: Eissenstat Bernard W.
Published: April 2006

One of the most interesting and seminal figures in Soviet historiography is the historian M. N. Pokrovsky, whose influence has continued to be felt up to the present day. He was active in the 1917 Revolution in Russia, and in political and institutional developments during the first decade and a half of Soviet rule. He became what may be euphemistically called the "dean" of Marxist historians, yet after his death on April 10, 1932, he was ritually accused of being responsible for most of the "shortcomings" of Soviet historiography. Among the many accusations leveled against Pokrovsky the following have appeared with considerable regularity: (1) Because he was "dictator" of the historical front from 1928 to 1932, his interpretations of history were the "official" interpretations of that time and consequently had to be "reflected" by other Soviet historians.
Mayakovsky and Whitman: The Icon and the Mosaic
Authors: Peterson Dale E.
Published: April 2006

Vladimir Mayakovsky, who knew hardly a word of English, once upbraided his friend Kornei Chukovsky for his “too confectionized” (chereschur bonbon'-erochno) rendering of Walt Whitman into Russian. Chukovsky, it seems, was deeply impressed by Mayakovsky's instinctive feel for Whitman's rugged diction. Ever since, Chukovsky has detected in the Russian poet's verse the permanent impress of the American “kosmos.” This notion, propagated by the translator in numerous places, has fully infiltrated both Western and Soviet scholarship on Mayakovsky. In a recent philological study, Vera Timofeeva has suggested that Mayakovsky's anthropocentrism and his flair for concrete metaphors are a direct legacy from Whitman. And Helen Muchnic, following up a clue from Chukovsky, has referred to Chelovek (Man) as “a Whitmanesque poem,” though admitting that it lacks somewhat the “geniality” of the “Good Gray Poet.” Such remarks perpetuate a rather loose impressionism. Chelovek, as we shall later observe, is hardly a “Whitmanesque poem.“
Multilingualism and Ranges of Tone in Nabokov's Bend Sinister
Authors: Gove Antonina Filonov
Published: April 2006

”… ‘Oh, I love her hands, Van, because they have the same rodinka (small birthmark), because the fingers are so long, because, in fact, they are Van's in a reducing mirror, in tender diminutive, v laskatel'noy forme’ (the talk—as so often happened at emotional moments in the Veen-Zemski branch of that strange family, the noblest in Estotiland, the grandest on Antiterra—was speckled with Russian, an effect not too consistently reproduced in this chapter—the readers are restless tonight).“—Ada

The interpolation of other-language material into the primary language of discourse is a well-known phenomenon in the speech of bi- and multilinguals. Social scientists studying bilingualism have termed this practice “code-switching.” In literature, code-switching is potentially available to any writer who commands another language besides his own and is not restricted from its use by literary canon. Practitioners of code-switching in the West include Petronius and Cicero, medieval translators, Rabelais and Montaigne, Sterne, Tolstoy, Pound, Eliot, Joyce, e. e. cummings, Hemingway, and Anthony Burgess. The motives for literary code-switching are many—terminological precision, connotative nuance, citation and allusion, display of erudition, an illusion of verisimilitude, irony, and word play.
Tsarist and Soviet Elite Administrators
Authors: Armstrong John A.
Published: April 2006

During the past ten years Russian area students have directed increasing attention to comparing aspects of their specialty with those of other social systems. That this interest was so late in developing has caused some of them to be defensive, if not apologetic. Often, however, both practitioners and the critics of Russian area studies have failed to realize that from its inception the field has been devoted to an implicit comparison, not between geographically distinct social systems but between successive periods in the region we have commonly designated “Russia.” The failure to note, or at least to stress, this- comparative aspect of Russian area studies has many causes, but two stand out. For area specialists, the relation between the Soviet and the prerevolutionary periods was so obvious it scarcely needed emphasis. For general empirical theorists, on the other hand, the problem of temporal boundaries of social systems has rarely been salient.
The Master and Margarita: The Reach Exceeds the Grasp
Authors: Delaney Joan
Published: April 2006

When The Master and Margarita first appeared some five years ago in the journal Moskva and soon after in the English translations, it caused the sensation appropriate to long-withheld Russian literary works. On all sides it was hailed as a literary event of broad implications. American and British reviewers, introducing Bulgakov to their reading public, stressed the significance of this thirty-year-old novel in relation to progressive tendencies in contemporary Soviet literature. The novel was also generally assessed as a work of major literary importance in its own right. But there were reservations. Rich in conception and striking in form, The Master and Margarita seemed to many somehow flawed in the execution. These readers found the book extremely attractive on various levels, yet felt, along with the novel's British translator, Michael Glenny, that the keystone had just missed being slipped into place.
The Origins and Development of Soviet Anti-Semitism: An Analysis
Authors: Korey William
Published: April 2006

Classical Marxism, in contrast to various forms of Utopian socialism, anarchism, and syndicalism, treated anti-Semitism with utter contempt. The German Social Democratic leader August Bebel summed up the prevailing attitude of classical Marxism when he dubbed anti-Semitism the “socialism of fools.” Lenin was even sharper in his denunciation: “Shame on those who foment hatred towards the Jews,” he cried in March 1919. Yet fifty-five years after the Bolshevik Revolution the Soviet Union has become the principal exemplar of the “socialism of fools,” with anti-Jewish discrimination practiced in various areas of politics and employment and in the ethnic-cultural field. Especially disquieting is the massive anti-Zionist propaganda campaign which incorporates the traditional negative stereotypes of Jews.
Indigenous and Foreign Influences on the Early Russian Legal Heritage
Authors: Kucherov Samuel
Published: April 2006

For long years Russia’s legal history has intrigued the scholars of Eastern Europe, and some in the West, but little attention has been devoted in English to the most ancient sources, those to be found in the chronicles and the Russkaia Pravda. Although Russian legal history offers little of the continuity of institutions to be found in Anglo-Saxon law, its earliest documents are matters of concern even to Soviet legal historians in an effort to understand a heritage that has left its impact upon contemporary developments. In order to sketch a part of that heritage conveniently for English-language readers, this brief article has been prepared.
Lenin and Pravda, 1912-1914
Authors: Elwood Ralph Carter
Published: April 2006

In 1962 a gathering of Soviet historians at the Academy of Sciences chose the fiftieth anniversary of Pravda’s founding to call attention to certain shortcomings in Soviet scholarship concerning V. I. Lenin’s leadership of the famous Bolshevik daily. It was noted that although a considerable amount had been written on Lenin’s literary contributions to the paper, insufficient attention had been paid to the problem of its political leadership during the crucial two years before the war. This observation heralded the publication of several detailed studies which predictably found that Stalin, Molotov, and certain other “conciliatory elements” within Pravda’s editorial board had hindered Lenin’s efforts to complete the work of the Prague Conference in equating the Bolshevik faction with the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.
The Reconstruction of Soviet Statistics
Authors: Kaser Michael
Published: April 2006

The Soviet statistical authorities first published an input-output table (for 1959) in their statistical yearbook of 1960; they had recommenced issuing their general abstracts in 1956—a direct consequence of, and only a few weeks after, the Twentieth Party Congress—following a lapse of nearly two decades. The input-output table as published was incomplete, and the coverage of the annual abstracts has only modestly increased since it reached its present size in 1958. The lacunae have presented a challenge to Western economists in three respects. The first difficulty is in reconstructing a series only part of which has been officially published. The best example of this lies in the reconstruction of input-output tables described below. The second challenge is to estimate aggregates (including the filling in of time series) which the statistical authorities of the USSR choose either not to make public or to publish in nontabular form.
The American YMCA and the Russian Revolution
Authors: Davis Donald E. , Trani Eugene P.
Published: April 2006

In hope it began; in perplexity it ended. The twenty-three-year presence of the American Young Men’s Christian Association in Russia that began in 1900 and reached a peak between 1917 and 1920, when more than 440 YMCA staffers served in that country and the Association spent almost eight million dollars for its operation, was over in 1923. In fact, the Association was required to curtail certain of its activities between 1917 and 1920 by both the conservative Kolchak movement in Siberia and the radical Bolshevik government, and eventually, like other groups, it was forced out.
Images and Ideas in Russian Peasant Art
Authors: Netting Anthony
Published: April 2006

A close look at Russian peasant art yields two divergent impressions. The profusion of styles and techniques is amazing, testimony to the ready creativity of peasant craftsmen. But throughout this wealth of invention, a constant tone prevails: the images portrayed are few and everywhere much the same.

Two images predominate: the sun, at times accompanied by flowers, birds, and animals; and a flowering tree (drevo zhizni) or a woman raising her arms, with two figures, often armed men on horseback, at either side. Most designs in peasant art involve one of these persistent images. The concern of the present paper is to explore what they may have meant.
The Stalin-Tito Conflict as Reflected in Literature
Authors: Kadić Ante
Published: April 2006

The causes and effects of the Soviet-Yugoslav dispute of 1948 are too well known to need repeating here. Various historians, military strategists, economists, and specialists in Communist affairs have established the basic facts and correctly pointed out the importance of that first break in the Soviet-controlled bloc. Vladimir Dedijer even wrote (supposedly quoting Henry Wallace) that Tito could be compared, though in a different field, to Martin Luther. The independent brand of communism recently proclaimed by the Italian, French, and Spanish Communists (the so-called Euro-Communists) definitely has its precedent in the astounding and courageous example of the Yugoslavs.

I shall limit my analysis mostly to Yugoslav writers and describe how they reacted toward this discord in the “socialist” camp. They all basically defend the same point of view, but they differ in their approach and, above all, in literary quality. The older writers, for example, were intimately involved in the Soviet-Yugoslav dispute, and they display a passionate hostility toward Stalin. To varying degrees, they often combine an excessive reverence for Tito, the perennial Yugoslav leader, with boastful self-approval. Recent works, though duly emphasizing the tragedy for thousands of citizens, avoid cliches and journalistic reporting.
Soviet Policies Versus International Cartels: Four Historical Case Studies
Authors: Gerschenkron Alexander
Published: April 2006

When this study was originally prepared nearly thirty years ago, it was part of a larger government memorandum. As such it was written within a framework of exploring problems of economic relations with the USSR after the war, with the expectation of a large and mutually beneficial trade in mind. At the time, I presented a general analysis of these problems in a longish pamphlet. I was unable, however, in that publication to touch upon the problem of Soviet policies on, and relations with, international cartels, because the government document in question was classified as “secret,” as was the information I had obtained in the course of preparing it. The recent declassification of that document by both the Department of State and the Department of Justice (from whose Antitrust Division a large body of valuable information had been received) has caused me to consider publication of the material on the four case studies of Soviet participation in international cartels—to wit, the cases concerning matches, phosphates, potash, and platinum. I feel that such publication is warranted essentially for two reasons.
Turnover and “Family Circles” in Soviet Administration
Authors: Oliver James H.
Published: April 2006

Students of the Soviet political system have frequently noted the high turnover rates and the short terms of office of middle and lower ranking Soviet party and governmental officials. Soviet leaders have striven to combat the formation of informal structures within the party and governmental bureaucracies which, if allowed to go unchecked, could erode the control of the central political leadership.
The Russian Peasant Rediscovered: “Village Prose” of the 1960s
Authors: Hosking Geoffrey A.
Published: April 2006

The name of Solzhenitsyn so dominated the Soviet literary scene in the 1960s that the ordinary Western reader might be forgiven for supposing that in the writing of fiction he was the lone star in an otherwise featureless sky. This is far from being the case. Solzhenitsyn himself, in a recent interview with Western correspondents, pointed out that there are a number of other writers of major stature at work in Russia today, though understandably he was inhibited from naming any of them.1 In fact, in the return to the moral concern, insight, and compassion which are the great heritage of the nineteenth-century realist novel, Solzhenitsyn has been by no means alone. On the contrary, he is merely primus inter pares among a whole school of writers who have made it their aim to digest and reassess Russia’s apocalyptic recent past, and in the light of it to reflect on man’s moral nature.
The “Runner” in Pskov Church Ornamentation
Authors: Bryner Cyril
Published: April 2006

A decorative belt in the form of an indented frieze, which in Pskov is called a “runner” (begunok or begunets), surrounds the drums supporting the domes and graces the apses of Pskov churches to form one of their most distinguishing features. It consists of three bands, the two outer ones formed of quadrangles, while the inner one is made up of interlocking triangles whose apexes alternately point upward and downward (fig. 1). Above the begunki, on the drums, usually there are additional decorative “brows” formed by a series of indented arches. But these are not unique to Pskov and will not be dealt with in this paper. The ornamentation on the apses usually is composed solely of the Pskov begunok.
A Brackish Hippocrene: Nekrasov, Panaeva, and the “Prose in Love”
Authors: Gregg Richard
Published: April 2006

Some say the world will end in fire,Some say in iceFrom what I've tasted of desireI hold with those ivho favor fire.But if I had to perish twice,I think I know enough of hateTo say that for destruction iceIs also greatAnd would suffice.Robert Frost
Pavlov’s “Demon” and Gogol's “Overcoat”
Authors: Shepard Elizabeth C.
Published: April 2006

On Sunday, February 24, 1852, the epilogue to the tragicomedy which was N. V. Gogol's life was played out in the University Chapel in Moscow. Curiosity seekers, government officials, members of high society—“people who had not wanted to know Gogol during his lifetime,” Khomiakov bitterly remarked later—thronged the final rites performed over the writer’s emaciated body. Among the crowd in the chapel was Gogol's old acquaintance, N. F. Pavlov (1803-64), a former serf, actor, university student, law clerk, and journalist who had made his way into Moscow’s beau monde and had married a wealthy heiress.
Nationalism in Slovakia and the Communists, 1918-1929
Authors: Jelinek Yeshayahu
Published: April 2006

“The attitude toward the national question always constituted in Czechoslovakia the touchstone for political understanding of the defense of revolutionary positions,” the Czech-German-Jewish historian of communism in Czechoslovakia, Paul Reimann, wrote in 1931. In these few words Reimann expressed the dilemma of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia. And to this dilemma my study is also devoted.

The peace treaties concluded after the First World War buried the multinational empire and created in its place a multinational republic. The Communists in Czechoslovakia labored hard to define their stand in relation to the national question. The purpose of this paper is to describe closely the policies of Communists toward Slovakia. We shall argue that confusion, inconsistency, ideological perplexities, and opportunism characterized the party's dealings with problems of nationalism and nationalities in that country.
Tsarist Anti-Semitism and Russian-American Relations
Authors: Healy Ann E.
Published: April 2006

For over a hundred years the fate of Russian Jews has been of special concern to many Americans. During the first half of this period, tsarist policies toward the Jews were the major irritant in the otherwise comparatively harmonious relations between the United States and Russia. The result was a recurring diplomatic dispute over the Jewish question, the course of which provides a barometer for gauging the changing situation of the Jews in the Russian empire. The dispute centered largely on individual acts of discrimination by Russian officials against Americans. Many of them involved naturalized citizens of Russian origin, most of whom were Jews. Behind the State Department protests on their behalf lay the more complex issue of mounting American indignation at the increasingly difficult situation of Jews in Russia after 1880.

American reactions varied from holding public meetings on the issue to exerting pressure on United States government agencies. Former president Ulysses Grant was one of the main initiators of a rally in New York in 1882 protesting anti-Jewish atrocities in Russia. The pogroms received considerable coverage in the Western press: the April 1882 Century, for instance, carried a vivid account of riots that raged for more than twenty-four hours in Elizavetgrad during Easter Week of 1881 and spoke of “world wide sympathy, and a protest almost unprecedented in its swiftness.”
The Electoral Achievements of the Communist Party in Estonia, 1920–1940
Authors: Parming Tönu
Published: April 2006

Estonia's Communist movement has received little attention in the West. The chief exceptions are its role in an abortive putsch in 1924 and the Soviet occupation and annexation of Estonia in 1940. Existing Western sources — primarily general histories or surveys — that deal with the interwar period of 1918 to 1940 tend to dismiss the Estonian Communist Party as electorally insignificant and to view it as a mere branch of the Party in the neighboring Soviet Union. In contrast, Soviet sources see it mainly as a native movement of significant popularity, the activity of which was suppressed by a bourgeois nationalist regime. Since the Estonian Communist Party participated in all parliamentary and local elections through fronts, a more accurate interpretation of its popular appeal may be gained through an examination of national election statistics. Detailed results of parliamentary elections are available and have remained an untapped source of primary data.
Art, Architecture, and Design: A Commentary
Authors: Senkevitch Anatole
Published: April 2006

Although interest in Soviet art, architecture, and design has grown appreciably in recent years among Western historians of art, architecture, and culture, the results of the knowledge thus obtained do not appear as yet to have been sufficiently absorbed into the work of Western economists, sociologists, and political scientists. Dr. Hutchings’s work on Soviet design thus clearly stands apart from the mainstream of recent studies by Western Sovietologists in asserting the importance of design for examining and assessing Soviet affairs.
Herzen and the Existential World View: A New Approach to an Old Debate
Authors: Weidemaier William Cannon
Published: April 2006

Nineteenth-century Russian writers often displayed an existential quality that is significant not only because it was apparently indigenous but because it was one of the first features of Russian thought to influence the West. There is no accepted label for this trait—Geoffrey Clive uses the term “intuitive existentialism,” while Marc Raeff speaks simply of a “more or less existentialist” philosophic temperament —but, by any name, its influence on the development of existential thought in the West is undeniable. Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus each acknowledged the importance of Dostoevskii in relation to their own thought, while many religious existentialists, and even the atheistic Heidegger, have found their concerns partly anticipated in a work such as Tolstoi’s Death of Ivan Ilich. Similarly, if less frequently, Vladimir Solov'ev, Konstantin Leont'ev, Lev Shestov, V. V. Rozanov, and especially Nikolai Berdiaev have attracted the attention of specialists on existentialism.
Interrepublic Inequality in Agricultural Development in the USSR
Authors: Evans Alfred
Published: April 2006

Soviet statements of policy on nationality relations traditionally have expressed a commitment to equalize economic development among the union republics of the USSR. As early as the 1920s, Soviet leaders promised to reduce differences between more advanced and more backward republics. The program adopted in 1961 by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union reaffirmed the intention of “devoting special attention to those areas of the country which are in need of more rapid development.” The goal of economic equalization among union republics is said by Soviet sources to have broad social and political significance, and the elimination of disparities in the economic base is thought to be necessary for the achievement of harmony among Soviet nationalities.
Portrait of an Elite: Russian Marshals of the Nobility, 1861-1917
Authors: Hamburg G. M.
Published: April 2006

In his short sketch, “Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District,” Ivan Turgenev imagined the provincial marshal of the nobility to be “a man of unrestrained and dignified expression entirely in keeping with his starched shirt-front, infinitely broad waistcoat, and round snuffbox full of French tobacco.” For Turgenev and many contemporaries, the marshal's studied pomposity and ostentatious cosmopolitanism signified the overweening social pretension and thin veneer of Westernism which constituted the worst features of the Russian nobility. The marshal of the nobility was a frequent target for social satirists through most of the nineteenth century.
Maiakovskii's Lenin: The Fabrication of a Bolshevik Bylina
Authors: Peterson Dale E.
Published: April 2006

A single witty remark delivered by Roman Jakobson at the expense of Maiakovskii's last, civic-minded poems may still be cited as a measure of prevailing Western attitudes toward the postrevolutionary bard of Russian Bolshevism: “Very good, but not as good as Mayakovsky.” Certainly, many Western appreciators of Russia's most Soviet, major poet have tuned out large portions of Maiakovskii's music. In that long oscillation between lyric and civic impulses that characterized Maiakovskii's poetic career, Western monitors have shown remarkably little interest in or patience with the extensive stretches of public poetry and narrative verse. This bias of the Western ear has not gone unnoticed. One Soviet commentator has responded with a witticism of his own: “It's a hopeless business — this attempt to tear apart his lyrics into two portions, into what is 'soul' and what is 'Soviet.'” Still, selective listening is not the monopoly of Western criticism alone. Soviet scholarship on Maiakovskii is as embarrassed by the irrepressible singer of a larger-than-life self as Western exegesis is by the propagandist who so proudly declaims Soviet hero-songs. Given Maiakovskii's extravagant temperament and his odd combinations of poetical and political revolutionism, it is probably inevitable that different portions of his work will be discriminated against by different readers for being “not as good as Mayakovsky.” But literary criticism has the task of overcoming tone-deafness to both the political resonances of his lyric verse and the poetic reverberations of his most partisan songs.
Giving Birth to the New Soviet Man: Politics and Obstetrics in the USSR
Authors: Bell John D .
Published: April 2006

The “psychoprophylactic method” of preventing or minimizing pain in childbirth was developed in the Soviet Union in the late 1940s by Il'ia Zakharevich Vel'vovskii, a neurologist working at the Ministry of Transport's Central Psychoneurological Hospital for Southern Railroad Workers in Khar'kov. In 1951 the Ministry of Health adopted Vel'vovskii's method as standard procedure for normal births in all obstetrical institutions in the USSR and undertook a large-scale program to provide the facilities and trained personnel for its implementation. This decision was based on more than simple recognition of a successful medical innovation, particularly since Soviet obstetricians were far from giving it unqualified approval. It owed more to the political and ideological imperatives of Stalin's regime which were then intruding deeply into the work of Soviet scientists and physicians.
New Light on Trotskii's Economic Views
Authors: Nove Alec
Published: April 2006

This paper should begin with a series of disclaimers. It cannot pretend to be an analysis of all of Trotskii's ideas on economics and the economy, because this would call for a long book and because this author has not gone through the Trotskii archives or read all relevant published works. There is plenty of room for much more research on these matters, and I hope that Baruch Knei-Paz's admirable book on Trotskii's political ideas' will be followed by one that “reconstitutes” the great many fragments in which Trotskii's economic ideas are presented. Trotskii was not a professional economist, any more than Lenin was, but he did have much to say on economic affairs. What I shall do here is describe and analyze some of Trotskii's more important opinions and pronouncements.
Russian Bureaucracy at the End of the Ancien Regime: The Imperial State Council, 1897-1915
Authors: Mosse Werner E.
Published: April 2006

The Russian ancien régime presents a paradox. Like other anciens régimes, it exhibited many signs of decay. The government had been unsuccessful in its major military enterprises ever since the Crimean War, its diplomatic defeats ranging from the Congress of Berlin to the Bosnian annexation crisis of 1909. Failure abroad was accompanied by signs of weakness within. The crisis of 1879-82 had shown the strength of internal opposition. In 1905, ignominious defeat at the hands of Japan proved to be the prelude to a revolution that shook tsarism to its foundations and clearly displayed its structural weaknesses. The last two “Autocrats of All Russia” were men of mediocre talent. The tsarist court, especially under Nicholas II, was ridden with scandals typical of a declining, unsure, and, indeed, frightened regime. Meanwhile, Russia’s ruling class, the hereditary landed nobility, improvident and debt-ridden, its landholdings reduced from 73.1 million desiatins in 1877 to a mere 43.2 million by 1911, was in headlong decline.
A Note on the Speech of Peter Alekseev
Authors: Otto Robert
Published: April 2006

The speech of the worker Peter Alekseev, delivered on March 9, 1877, at the famous trial of “the fifty,” occupies a sensitive position in the debate concerning the contributions and participation of workers and peasants in the Russian revolutionary movement. Between 1877 and 1917, the speech was reprinted more than twenty times by both populists and Marxists, thus providing the Russian free press with one of its classic publications. Adam Ulam has recently questioned Alekseev's authorship of the printed text on two grounds. First, Ulam considers the printed speech too polished to have been written by a worker.
Institution Building in Bolshevik Russia: The Case of “State Kontrol'”
Authors: Remington Thomas
Published: April 2006

One of the dilemmas of revolutionary regimes is the difficulty they experience in creating new structures of rule out of resources inherited from the ancien regime. In Russia, the Bolsheviks came to power dedicated to building a socialist society and creating new institutions whose forms were predicated on an unfolding theory of how the transition to socialism would occur. Such a method of shaping institutions was deductive and synoptic, standing in sharp contrast to the evolutionary adaptation of old institutions to new functions. One may wonder how free revolutionary regimes in fact are to construct institutions a novo. The early Bolshevik attempt to establish “control” structures, that is, institutions and procedures for the external auditing and monitoring of economic and other public organizations, is a case in point. Of interest are the extent to which the Bolsheviks were successful in creating effective control bodies and the reasons behind their success or failure.
The Opening Phase of the Struggle for Germany
Authors: Slusser Robert M.
Published: April 2006

Ever since the Berlin blockade of 1948 the attention of historians of modern and recent international relations has been engaged by the problem of how Germany and its capital, Berlin, came to be divided, first among the major powers of the anti-Hitler Grand Alliance—Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and France—and then, in 1949, into two rival states, the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany. This problem lies at the heart of the much-debated question regarding the origins of the Cold War. This review article makes no pretense at being a comprehensive report on the literature of the German problem. My aim is, rather, to call attention to some recent contributions to the literature and place them in context.
The Biblical Story of Joseph in Dostoevskii's The Brothers Karamazov
Authors: Miller Richard C.
Published: April 2006

The large role which literary allusion plays in The Brothers Karamazov has often been noted by critics. Ralph Matlaw calls the novel “one of the most ‘literary’ books ever written.” Victor Terras more recently has observed that “more than any other novel of Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov is a work ‘written in the margins of other books.’” If scholars took the time to investigate in detail every literary reference in this novel, no doubt the size of current Dostoevskii bibliographies could be doubled within the year, though without contributing substantially to our knowledge of the work. Why then should a lone reference to the biblical story of Joseph merit intensive consideration? The answer concerns both the context and the content of the reference, which is found in the subchapter entitled “Of the Holy Scriptures in the life of Father Zosima.” The bible stories mentioned in this section might be considered as a body in order to illustrate what role the Scriptures have played in the elder's life, and what role they may play in the regeneration of all men. Within this subchapter no fewer than a dozen biblical stories and books are singled out, yet only two are discussed at any length: the Book of Job and the story of Joseph. In the latter case not only is the story paraphrased and quoted (or, better, misquoted) but it is also given a particular and untraditional interpretation by Zosima.