bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Stomatal density responses of temperate woodland plants over the past seven decades of CO2 increase: a comparison of Salisbury (1927) with contemporary data
Authors: Beerling D. J. , Kelly C. K.
Published: April 2006

We investigated the possible effect of recent (1927–1995) increases in the concentration of atmospheric CO2 on the stomatal densities of leaves of a wide range of tree, shrub, and herb species (N = 60) by making new measurements for comparison with corresponding data reported by E. J. Salisbury in 1927—a time when ice core studies indicate CO2 concentrations ~55 µL/L lower than present. A detailed intraspecific study of the herb Mercurialis perennis showed plants of M. perennis in a Cambridgeshire woodland in 1994 had significantly lower stomatal densities, irrespective of leaf insertion point, compared with their 1927 counterparts. Comparisons made across species using evolutionary comparative methods (independent contrasts) revealed a significant (P < 0.01) decrease in stomatal density over the past 70 yr. The results of both the inter‐ and intraspecific comparisons are consistent with the hypothesis that historical CO2 increases have influenced leaf morphology in a manner consistent with recent experiments and the palaeoecological record. Further analyses suggested that the strength of the stomatal density response was independent of life form but dependent on “exposure” and the initial leaf stomatal density. Consequently, firmer predictions for future changes in stomatal density across all species, expected as a possible result of anthropogenically related CO2 increases, may now be possible.
Male sterility, protogyny, and pollen–pistil interference in Plantago maritima (Plantaginaceae), a wind‐pollinated, self‐incompatible perennial
Authors: Dinnétz Patrik
Published: April 2006

Evolution and maintenance of male sterility in seed plants can be explained by the maternal inheritance of mitochondria, which encode the trait, and by adaptive functions that enhance female fecundity in male‐sterile compared to hermaphrodite individuals. Protogyny and male sterility can independently decrease the negative effect of pollen–pistil interference in self‐incompatible species. In Plantago maritima, which possesses both traits, protogyny increases seed set in hermaphrodite individuals. This is shown both by a significantly positive association between seed set and retarded dehiscence of the anthers and by a more than 50% reduction in seed set following self‐pollination. Male sterility does not seem to increase seed set further, as female and hermaphrodite plants do not differ significantly in mean seed set per capsule. Bagging experiments demonstrate strong self‐incompatibility in the study populations. Hence, in P. maritima male sterility seems neither to prevent selfing nor to reduce the effect of pollen–pistil interference. Females had significantly larger stigmas than hermaphrodites, but seed set varied negatively with stigma length among females, indicating that the evolution of unisexuality in P. maritima is not due to prefertilization sex allocation. I therefore conclude that the genetical system of nucleocytoplasmic determination of gender is the main cause for maintenance of male sterility in P. maritima.
Cytological and molecular evaluation of the reproductive behavior of Tripsacum andersonii and a female fertile derivative (Poaceae)
Authors: Dewald C. L. , Kindiger B. K.
Published: April 2006

Research was conducted to characterize the reproductive behavior of the highly sterile Tripsacum andersonii Gray and its viable progeny through breeding, cytological, and molecular studies. Four progeny were obtained from open‐pollinated seeds of clones (M‐34445, M‐34450 and M‐34455) of T. andersonii maintained at the USDA‐ARS National Germplasm Repository, Miami, Florida. One of the progeny had 64 chromosomes, which is typical of T. andersonii, and probably resulted from apomictic reproduction. Karyotypes of the other three progeny indicated a tetraploid Tripsacum genomic constitution (2n = 4x = 72) plus a haploid set of Zea (1n = 1x = 10) chromosomes. Two of these progeny were completely sterile, whereas one (95‐51) produced ∼5% seed set when crossed with diploid (2n = 36) T. dactyloides (L.)L. The partially fertile 95‐51 produced four progeny, one with 2n = 72 (elimination of 10 Zea chromosomes), two with 2n = 82 (apomictic reproduction) and one with 2n = 100 (sexual polyploidization). Polymerase Chain Reaction ‐ Random Amplified Polymerase DNA analysis verified that T. andersonii accessions from seven countries were genetically uniform, and that its progeny were derived through apomixis and sexual polyploidization. This analysis also confirmed that chromosome elimination, apomixis, and sexual polyploidization reproductive behaviors occur in the T. andersonii derivative 95‐51.
Immunities in Old Russia
Authors: Dewey Horace W.
Published: April 2006

The oldest Russian document has been called an “immunity charter.“ It dates from the first half of the twelfth century. Many other immunity charters have survived and are among our most prized sources on medieval Russia. Although few date back to the twelfth through fourteenth centuries, about five hundred remain from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and a recent survey lists 1,039 for the years 1504-84. Such documents have been found from each of the sixty-three districts (uezdy) which comprised the Russian state before Ivan IV's conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan, and newly discovered charters, or references to previously unknown charters, are still turning up. The terms of individual charters are usually clear, but scholars have advanced conflicting views on what these documents, taken together, really tell us about Old Russian immunities. Is one justified in claiming that such immunities even existed? If they did, two vexing questions remain.
Leo Diaconus and the Ethnology of Kievan Rus'
Authors: Terras Victor
Published: April 2006

Today, no less than in the days of Lomonosov and Schlozer, the question of the ethnic identity of the early Kievan rulers is a controversial one. The late Adolf Stender-Petersen's criticism of the Normanist school, “that it replaced a real, well-founded historical view of the course of things by an a priori plan, in which things were arranged as well as possible,” also applies—mutatis mutandis, of course—to the historical-sociological method of the contemporary Soviet anti-Normanist school. What is needed in the field are good editions, with detailed, objective commentary, of all the sources known to us. Eventually these may lead to the “comprehensive edition of all the sources from which we can acquire knowledge as regards the Varangian problem” envisaged by Stender-Petersen. The edition of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio by Gyula Moravcsik and R. J. H. Jenkins and the commentary edited by the latter may be cited as an important step toward this goal.
Sienkiewicz's First Translator, Jeremiah Curtin
Authors: Segel H. B.
Published: April 2006

Let Peary seek his Arctic goal;His countrymen prefer a PoleLess brumal and uncertain;And Roe and Howells the prolixMust bow to Henry Sienkiewicz,Democratized by Curtin.Anonymous, "Columbus Sienkiewicz,"The Outlook, New York,March 12, 1898

The subject of Henryk Sienkiewicz and America is hardly exhausted with the acknowledgment of the enormous popularity of Quo Vadis in the United States. Sienkiewicz himself visited America in 1876, in fact traveled extensively through the country and recorded his impressions at some length in his Listy z Ameryki (Letters from America), a large part of which was translated into English and published in 1959. Sienkiewicz's relations with Helena Modrzejewska (Modjeska) and her debut in the American theater at the time of his visit add to the interest of his sojourn in the United States. Another phase of Sienkiewicz's relations with this country embraces the fascinating career of his American translator, Jeremiah Curtin, whose name remains as intimately linked with translations from Polish literature, particularly the works of Sienkiewicz, as Constance Garnett's has been with English renditions of the Russian masters of the nineteenth century.
Ukrainian Historiography 1953-1963
Authors: Horak Stephan M.
Published: April 2006

Although the study of Ukrainian historiography is rather new, it can boast of three distinguished names: Dmytro Doroshenko, Oleksander Ohloblyn, and M. I. Marchenko. To Doroshenko goes credit for the first work on Ukrainian historical writing ever published. His study, the only comprehensive survey, covers the period from the eleventh century to 1920. Doroshenko's book was supplemented and updated to 1956 by another Ukrainian historian, Ohloblyn
Muscovy and Kazan: Some Introductory Remarks on the Patterns of Steppe Diplomacy
Authors: Keenan Edward Louis
Published: April 2006

“Patterns” is a term infrequently used in our historical writing; many historians associate it with certain more modern sciences. I have chosen it here in order to stress the need for a somewhat more highly elaborated methodology in the study of the matters discussed below. We are so far from adequate understanding of many of these subjects that we cannot be squeamish about borrowing any applicable method from the faster-moving sciences—whether these devices are to be called “matrices,” “models,” or “patterns” will be a matter of taste. I have, for present purposes, chosen the last, for what I should like to do is to suggest a comparative approach to the history of Muscovite-Tatar relations based upon systems, or patterns, of phenomena so arranged that the logic of the arrangment provides information concerning phenomena about which there is no direct evidence.
Moscow, the Golden Horde, and the Kazan Khanate from a Polycultural Point of View
Authors: Pritsak Omeljan
Published: April 2006

The seventeenth-century chronicles record an interesting event under the year 1574:

At that time Tsar Ivan Vasil'evich enthroned Simeon Bekbulatovich as tsar in Moscow and crowned him with the crown of the tsars, and called himself [simply] Ivan of Moscow; he left the city and lived in Petrovka. All the offices of tsardom he passed to Simeon, and himself rode simply, like a boyar with shafts, and whenever he comes to Tsar Simeon, he sits at a distance from the Tsar’s place, together with the boyars.

That such an event did in fact take place, we have the testimony of contemporary witnesses, the English envoy Danyell Silvester and the imperial envoy Daniel Printz a Bucchau, as well as official documents which have been preserved from the time of Simeon’s reign as tsar.
The Costs of “Westernization” in Russia: The Gentry and the Economy in the Eighteenth Century
Authors: Kahan Arcadius
Published: April 2006

I leave my inheritors in extreme poverty, since my debts, most illustrious Madam, exceed half a million rubles—[they accumulated] during my thirty years of service in the Admiralty, where, particularly in the beginning, I was compelled to entertain many guests, to feed almost everybody, and to get them accustomed not only to high society but also to affluence.

Count I. G. Chernyshev to Catherine the Great (1794)

Historians have Described the gentry as the most powerful and influential social group in eighteenth-century Russia. The gentry developed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a social class, or estate, from the fusion of the old feudal aristocracy with the younger military and administrative service class. The view that the gentry was the pillar of absolutism and of the Russian state was virtually unchallenged during the eighteenth century. The special status of the Russian gentry derived principally from the fact that its members constituted the first social group that could not be treated arbitrarily by the state. The Russian state recognized certain rules of conduct in respect to the gentry, and by and large observed those rules, at a time when other social groups possessed no safeguards, as individuals or collectively, in their dealings with the state.
Themes in Recent Soviet Russian Literature
Authors: Gibian George
Published: April 2006

When I looked over the notes I had made in the margin of Professor Erlich’s article, most of them were check marks and exclamations such as “Yes,” “Very important,” and “Amen.”

His emphases, conclusions, and observations along the way move me to agreement and fill me with admiration and envy. He has said what I should have liked to say. I therefore can only add that this is an excellent and important analysis, and then do two things: sketch in some related areas, not in opposition but in supplementation of what Professor Erlich has written; and make some minuscule objections. As for the last, they will be found grouped below in a long “Ungenerous Footnote of Picky Points.”
Religion as An Instrument of Culture Change: The Problem of the Sects in the Soviet Union
Authors: Ethel  , Dunn Stephen P.
Published: April 2006

The Russian Old Believer and sectarian movement, as it appears in history, can be thought of, in anthropological terms, as a nativistic movement: that is, a movement of resistance to outside (in this case Western) cultural influence, and a reaffirmation and renewal of the native culture. In this sense, the movement comprised Old Believers, with or without priests, and an assemblage of sects of indigenous origin—Dukhobors, Subbotniki, Molokans, Skoptsy, and others. During the first period of its existence, the Old Believer and sectarian movement, besides being a nativistic movement, was at the same time a focus of resistance to the regime, as any form of religious dissidence must be under an essentially theocratic state.
The Dioscuri in the Balkans
Authors: Wenzel Marian
Published: April 2006

This article is an attempt to establish a certain number of conclusions concerning the Dioscuri which are different from previous surmises. These conclusions are: First, an individual, on horseback or on foot, shown stabbing another figure beneath need not represent the triumph of good over evil, or the vanquishing of a foe, and in a set number of cases does not represent this. Second, at least one kind of antique mystery cult did not develop from a puberty initiation ritual, but from something else. Third, much of pre-Greek, or perhaps Thracian, religion, as indicated by contemporary ethnographic survivals, may have consisted of one extended ritual which could be segmented for a number of different purposes, excluding that of puberty initiation, for which, in this context, I have found no trace. Finally, the Dioscuri were an anthropomorphized object, of an ascertain-able kind. The evidence leading to these conclusions is given below.

In the village of Mijatovci, in Hercegovina, at the site known as “Kalufi,” there was a tombstone dated to the fifteenth century on which is depicted a woman between horsemen (Figure 1). The same, or a similar, motif appears on other tombstones in neighboring graveyards (Figure 2, d, e). These horsemen have been identified with the Dioscuri. That is to say, they exhibit such striking features in common with classical monuments known to be representations of the Dioscuri that the possibility of chance coincidence is, in fact, eliminated.
The Polish Communist Party 1938—1942
Authors: Korbonski Andrzej
Published: April 2006

The purpose of this paper is to fill in some of the gaps in the history of the Polish Communist movement in the interval between the dissolution of the old and the formation of the new Communist party. English-language sources in particular devote little space to the period or contain serious factual errors. Consequendy, there is a need to put the record straight by presenting new evidence which has been appearing in Polish sources since the spring of 1956, when the prewar Polish party was officially rehabilitated. Obviously, not all the evidence is in as yet, and some of it may never be made available. Nevertheless, the new sources represent a significant step forward and throw light on some hitherto obscure segments of the history of Polish communism.
Constantine Pavlovich: An Appraisal
Authors: Walker Franklin A.
Published: April 2006

None of the many riddles in the reign of Tsar Alexander I is so intriguing as that of the position of the heir apparent, the Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich. His secret renunciation of his right to the throne cast doubt on Nicholas I's succession and contributed to the opportunity of the Decembrist conspirators. Moreover, as commander of the armed forces in Poland he was the chief figure in its government. The uprising of November 1830 signified the failure of Alexander's Polish plans, but it was also a personal tragedy for Constantine, who had so thoroughly identified himself with the new kingdom. His role in history was important; by his own choice it had not become much greater, but neither his contemporaries nor historians have agreed as to his qualifications to rule an empire.

Accounts differ even as to his capacity to manage the Polish army, or indeed to govern himself. A British historian in the nineteenth century described him as “a savage prince whose conduct and character made him more like a brute than a man.” This opinion was an extreme version of a common view of Constantine in the last century; the attitude is reflected by some writers of our own age, although few have gone so far as one modern author who pictured the Tsesarevich as “that insane hyena.” Polish writers, to further their justification of the 1830 revolt, assigned much of the discontent in that country to Constantine's “despotic” conduct, but even Russian and other historians have agreed that his explosive temperament and dislike for the Polish Constitution contributed to the uprising.
Rumania's Foreign Trade in the Postwar Period
Authors: Montias John M.
Published: April 2006

In 1960, for the first time in the postwar period, the Central Statistical Office of the Rumanian People's Republic released data on the country's foreign trade in its official statistical yearbook.

The coverage of the statistics given out at this time was highly selective. It comprised only the total value of imports and exports in "foreign-currency lei" in 1958, index numbers linking these data to 1950 and 1955, a geographical breakdown of trade by countries for 1958, and the volume of imports and exports of the "principal commodities" traded in that year. From 1959 to 1963 these figures were each year brought up to date, but no additional information was given out. In the 1964 yearbook there appeared a breakdown of imports and exports by commodity groups (nine in all) covering the years 1950, 1955, and 1959 to 1963. While these published statistics were extremely valuable in themselves, they did not supply an adequate basis for an understanding of the most important trends in postwar trade, including the trade expansion associated with the first period of intensive industrialization from 1949 to 1953, the stagnation period that followed the introduction of the New Course in mid-1953, and the major restructuring after 1958 of Rumania's trade relations with its Comecon partners and with Western markets, which is only imperfectly reflected in the geographical distribution of imports and exports in recent years.
Recent Soviet Books on the History of the Secret Police
Authors: Slusser Robert M.
Published: April 2006

Throughout its existence–barring a brief spell of uncharacteristic loquacity in its earliest years, quickly suppressed–the Soviet secret police has followed the policy of making public as little information as possible about its current activities. Terse communiques reporting the apprehension of malefactors, brief and studiously noninformative press releases concerning the punishment of enemies of the Soviet state and people–these have been the forms preferred by the secret police for its communications to the outside world.
The Function of Imagery in War and Peace
Authors: Curtis James M.
Published: April 2006

Tolstoy the man, whose awe-inspiring personality haunts us still, poses an enormous obstacle to those who wish to write about his work. One frequently encounters interpretations of the novels, plays, and short stories based on Tolstoy's aims in creating them and on what his consciously held values were or are believed to have been. Unfortunately for anyone who attempts this kind of evaluation, Tolstoy, one of the most complex and baffling men who ever lived, is notorious for his self-contradictions. Although we have some good biographies, Tolstoy deserves the attention of a scholar—probably not a literary critic—with a sophisticated view of human personality and the relationship between the individual and society, who will write an analytical account of his problems comparable to Erik Erikson's widely admired Young Man Luther.
Herbert Hoover's “Treaty” with Soviet Russia: August 20, 1921
Authors: Weissman Benjamin M.
Published: April 2006

In March 1921 Lenin predicted, “If there is a harvest, everybody will hunger a little and the government will be saved. Otherwise, since we cannot take anything from people who do not have the means to satisfy their own hunger, the government will perish.“ By early summer, Russia was in the grip of one of the worst famines in its history. Lenin's gloomy forecast, however, was never put to the test. At almost the last moment, substantial help in the form of food, clothing, and medical supplies arrived from a most unexpected source —U.S. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover.

Hoover undertook the relief of Soviet Russia not as an official representative of the United States government but as the head of a private agency —the American Relief Administration (A.R.A.).
Czartoryski as a Polish Statesman
Authors: Morley Charles
Published: April 2006

When one thinks of Poland in the nineteenth century, the revolutions of 1830 and 1863 come immediately to mind. Yet not all Poles believed that the problem of the relations between Poland and Russia could be resolved only by revolution. There were many who preferred reconciliation. The number in the one camp as against the other at any particular time was a direct reflection of the political atmosphere in Russia. Whenever conditions gave rise to hopes for liberalization and reform among the Russians themselves, the policy of reconciliation would gain adherents among the Poles. This was the case under Alexander I, at the beginning of Alexander IPs reign, and following the revolution of 1905.
The Karamzin-Lelewel Controversy
Authors: Mocha Frank
Published: April 2006

The intellectual debate which was taking place in Russia during the reign of Alexander I included a polemic which, although little known today, involved the most important Russian and Polish historians of the time, Karamzin and Lelewel, as well as other historians, writers, and journalists. Among the latter, the transplanted Pole, Tadeusz Bulharyn (Faddei V. Bulgarin), played a crucial part. The polemic developed into a controversy touching on the leading issues of the day, and it produced a sensation commanding the interest of the highest official and intellectual circles, including, reportedly, Alexander I himself. The polemic was largely provoked by the political views of Karamzin.

According to Marc Raeff, the political ideas of Nikolai M. Karamzin (1766-1826) are a subject by themselves—still needs investigation. A writer of immensely popular sentimental stories, an innovator in the area of the Russian language, and a member of the progressive literary circle “Arzamas,” Karamzin nevertheless had become the spokesman of the old-fashioned, conservative, serf-owning nobility. It seems that Karamzin's first conservative leanings were a reaction to the later, more radical, phase of the French Revolution. They were voiced, subsequently, in his historical novels. Later, the Napoleonic Wars on the one hand and Alexander's liberal aspirations on the other further strengthened Karamzin's conservative feelings, which were finally provoked, under the influence of the Grand Duchess Catherine, Alexander's ambitious sister, by current projects for the reorganization of Russia.
The Distribution of Nonagricultural Labor Incomes in Communist and Capitalist Nations
Authors: Pryor Frederic L.
Published: April 2006

In the economic literature one finds a plethora of propositions about the macro-economic determinants of the distribution of labor incomes. One of the theories is that as the level of economic development rises, labor incomes are bound to become more equalized. Another view is that the larger the nation, the greater will be the separation of labor markets and the greater the inequality of labor income. Unfortunately there is relatively little speculation in the West about the impact of the economic system on the distribution of labor incomes, and those propositions that can be found are quite contradictory. Some have argued that labor incomes should become more equal under socialism because of the more equal distribution of education and because the government is able to reduce the power of noncompeting labor groups to raise their incomes far above those of the average workers. Others have suggested that the government's power to manipulate wages between industrial sectors and branches in order to attract workers to priority sectors could lead to greater inequalities in labor incomes. Since all of these arguments are based on what a socialist government “could” or “should” do, rather than what they actually are doing, their validity can be established only through empirical investigation.
Czechoslovakia’s Foreign Trade
Authors: Michal Jan M.
Published: April 2006

Czechoslovak foreign trade is of special interest for several reasons: First, Czechoslovakia is the East European country most active in trade in terms of per capita exports and imports of goods and, with a few exceptions (for instance, Bulgaria), also in terms of the ratio of visible trade to national product. In 1965 exports per inhabitant amounted to $189, compared with $181 in East Germany, $150 in Hungary, $144 in Bulgaria, $71 in Poland, $58 in Rumania, and $35 in the USSR. In the same year per capita imports were $188 in Czechoslovakia, $151 in Hungary, $ 149 in East Germany, $144 in Bulgaria, and $35 in the USSR. As in other Communist countries (with the exception of Yugoslavia), the ratio of foreign trade to national product is difficult to determine, mainly because of the almost complete divorce between domestic and foreign trade prices. One can only very roughly estimate that in 1966 Czechoslovakia’s ratio of visible exports to gross national product, in terms of approximative factor cost, was one fifth and the ratio of imports to GNP only slightly less than one fifth. Thus, Czechoslovak economy is again as dependent on foreign trade as it was in 1937.
Hamlet and Soviet Humanism
Authors: Mendel Arthur P.
Published: April 2006

The “thaw” slips farther back into History. Displaced from our attention by the renewed obscurantism, those heady days are seldom studied any more. This is unfortunate. For, it seems to me, it is particularly now, as a counter to the broadening repression, that we should gather and preserve the achievements of that hopeful decade. It is in this vein that I want to go back to the period and recall a dramatic and brilliant expression of the liberal, “thaw” spirit, as well as a splendid contribution to the rich gallery of Russian Aesopian polemics: Soviet Shakespeare criticism and, especially, the revival of sound and insightful commentaries on Hamlet by Soviet critics and playwrights.
Russian Counterfeit Dollars: A Case of Early Soviet Espionage
Authors: Krammer Arnold
Published: April 2006

The history of Soviet espionage, by the party’s own admission, did not begin in earnest until 1927, when the tiny and previously ineffectual military espionage operation came under the direction of a Moscow-trained Latvian immigrant, Alfred Tiltin. Living in New York as a Canadian under the fictitious name of “Joseph Paquette,” the debonair new director of the Soviet Military Intelligence organization in the United States recruited arid began grooming a second-in-command who would assume control of the spy group Upon Tiltin’s recall to Moscow early in 1929. The man was Nicholas Dozenberg, an early member of the American Communist Party, the first editor of the Communist publication Labor’s Voice, which later became the Daily Worker, and a man whose dedication to the Comintern was above question.
Problems of Source Criticism (with Reference to Medieval Russian Documents)
Authors: Luria J.
Published: April 2006

The problem of criteria and methods of historical source criticism has rarely been the subject of special study. It is most often set forth in textbooks of historical method or in general introductions to historical study. And yet a number of extremely complex and important problems are related to source criticism: principles of evidence in historical study, the relation between deduction and induction, between synthesis and analysis, and so on.

For historians of medieval Russia, as for medievalists in general, these problems are of particular significance. In this field we constantly encounter the situation when one or another fact is attested by a small number of sources, sometimes a single one. The paucity of sources, their far from complete information, and their frequent tendentiousness—all this confronts scholars with the necessity of studying them with intensity and with extreme caution.
Eugene Schuyler, General Kaufman, and Central Asia
Authors: Siscoe Frank G.
Published: April 2006

In his article “Kaufman of Turkestan: An Assessment of His Administration, 1867-1881” in the Slavic Review (June 1967, pages 265-85) Professor David Mac- Kenzie appears to have been unduly sensitive to any critical contemporary comment concerning General Kaufman. In his protective zeal he has sought to undermine the reputation of Eugene Schuyler, one of the most capable American diplomats of that period, whose diplomatic and literary careers were distinguished by perceptive and candid reporting.

Nothing in Eugene Schuyler's writings justifies the generous use of depreciatory language in Professor MacKenzie's article. To claim that Schuyler was “unfair or malicious,” “misrepresented” Kaufman's work, and presented a “distorted picture“ of his regime is unwarranted by the record.
Schuyler: Honorable but Misled
Authors: MacKenzie David
Published: April 2006

Let me Thank Mr. Siscoe for raising some pertinent issues relating to my article “Kaufman of Turkestan.” His objections refer almost exclusively to my brief references to Eugene Schuyler's appraisal of the Kaufman administration. It was definitely not my intention, as Mr. Siscoe suggests, to undermine or discredit the reputation of Schuyler. Unquestionably, he was an able, conscientious American diplomat, and his book, Turkistan,contains a wealth of valuable material about the region, its people, and the Russian impact upon Central Asia. Mr. Siscoe could contribute significantly to scholarship by describing at greater length Schuyler's role as diplomat and traveler.
Fate and Fantasy: A Study of Turgenev's Fantastic Stories
Authors: Kagan-Kans Eva
Published: April 2006

I ot sudeb zashchity net.

Pushkin, “Tsygany”

Turgenev's acceptance of a fate that governs human existence found expression in the use of the supernatural in certain of his stories. In the past most critics tended to turn away from these stories, in distress at not being able to reconcile this trait with their interpretation of Turgenev the realist, who portrayed the Russian social byt of the nineteenth century. And yet, a total of ten stories (almost a third of his total output of stories) in which there is a touch of the supernatural and the irrational cannot be dismissed as mere caprice.
Count Joseph Marie de Maistre and Russian Educational Policy, 1803-1828
Authors: Edwards David W.
Published: April 2006

During the quarter century from 1803 to 1828, the Russian imperial government followed an educational policy which ranged from practical to classical, democratic to class-oriented, progressive to conservative. The decrees, rescripts, and regulations may have been contradictory, but they are simply pieces of a puzzle which, in the end, provide the outline of a rather clear picture. This picture, as we shall see in more detail later, shows a movement, in the most elementary terms, from functional to classical, from open to restricted, from modern to traditional. In all respects, the law of 1828 opposed those of 1803 and 1804, but the line of march between the two points was straight and constant.

Another puzzle, however, is more difficult to solve: why did Russian educational policy follow this particular trend ? Among the possible solutions to this question, the activities of Count Joseph Marie de Maistre deserve more study. Maistre is remembered today as a theocratic political philosopher with an eloquent pen, but during his term in Russia (1803-17), as the diplomatic representative of the Sardinian king, he deeply involved himself in the internal questions facing the Russian government. Education particularly interested Maistre, and he turned his attention to this topic from June of 1810 until the end of the following year. During this eighteen-month period, he wrote four works dealing with the question of education in Russia, hoping to influence policy and bring about specific changes.
Questions of Art, Fact, and Genre in Mikhail Prishvin
Authors: Parrott Ray J.
Published: April 2006

It is customary in Soviet criticism of Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin (1873–1954) to speak of the unique blend of fact and fantasy, of science and art in his work. In fact, this view is not restricted to Soviet discussions of the writer’s art. It is a reasonable view, if cautiously considered as no more than a convenient generality. Something of the same generalizing nature operates in discussions of the literary forms which Prishvin most often employed in his narrative art: the ocherk, the rasskaz, and, less frequently, the povestf. Scholars and critics speak of the writer’s inimitable mastery of these forms, but rarely in definitive terms. Briefly summarized, Prishvin’s preferred forms are the halfsketch and half-tale, or the novelette-sketch; his pieces represent an amalgam of fact and fiction. They are, above all, lyrical and poetic, but they are also “scientific.” They are the one and the other, but their specificity seems almost too elusive to capture and define.
Lord Whitworth and the Conspiracy Against Tsar Paul I: The New Evidence of the Kent Archive
Authors: Kenney James J.
Published: April 2006

Tsar Paul I died at a critical moment in the affairs of Europe. During the last fifteen months of his life he had become estranged from Great Britain and Austria, his erstwhile allies, who were being hard pressed by their French enemy on several fronts. By the beginning of 1801 the tsar's government seemed on the verge of concluding an alliance with Napoleonic France. Russia's “cold war” with Britain heated up as the tsar ordered the confiscation of British merchant vessels in his ports and the incarceration of British seamen. A British fleet under Admirals Parker and Nelson was dispatched to the Baltic to deal with the new threat to British interests. Then, quite suddenly, the tsar was dead.
Labor and Liquidators: Revolutionaries and the “Reaction” in Baku, May 1908-April 1912
Authors: Suny Ronald Grigor
Published: April 2006

In the years after 1905, Social Democrats in Russia agonized over the form of struggle in which to engage. The defeats suffered in the revolution and the new legal possibilities offered after 1905 led to strains among the socialists and changed considerably the nature of their debates from the prerevolutionary years as each faction attempted to deal with the potential of a legal labor movement and the actuality of continued police repression. Paradoxically the years of “reaction” were also the seedbed of Russian trade unionism. Many Social Democrats, most notably the so-called likvidatory (“liquidators”), believed that the time had come to concentrate on the legal labor movement, to broaden its appeal and deepen its roots among the working class. Others, tied to the traditions of the underground party and the primacy of political work, opposed the new reliance on legal activity. All Social Democrats inside Russia were faced with the reality of economic depression, a decline in labor activism, and political repression. They faced together a strategic dilemma. The deeper they retreated into the underground, the more tenuous their ties with the workers became. Yet the more actively they engaged in trade unionist and other legal activities, the more vulnerable they were to police persecution.
V. L. Ianin and the History of Novgorod
Authors: Langer Lawrence N.
Published: April 2006

An historian of early Russian history faces many methodological problems, not the least of which is the paucity of sources for the Kievan and Mongol periods. Because of the dearth of material, historians of the medieval Russian town, such as M. N. Tikhomirov and A. M. Sakharov, have generally presented a static conceptualization of urban society, thereby obscuring the dynamic processes and nuances of historical development. Despite the many studies of Novgorod, one can fairly state that historians have often described fourteenth and fifteenth-century Novgorod as though it were virtually unchanged since 1136, when the town declared its independence from Kiev. While recognizing the importance of the Sovet gospod (Council of Lords) and posadnik (mayor), some historians have nevertheless insisted that the veche (assembly) was the sovereign body of the republic. Its meetings were open to the town's citizens, and though the veche at times degenerated into brawls, no prince or posadnik could effectively govern without its concurrence. Indeed, George Vernadsky characterized Novgorod as a democratic republic, somewhat reminiscent of the Greek polis, while Tikhomirov viewed Novgorod's political traditions as similar to those of the urban communes of medieval Europe.
A Proposal for Transliterating Russian И and Й
Authors: Hill Steven P.
Published: April 2006

In scholarly publications we transliterate Russian names with consistency: linguists use the “international system” (with j, š, etc.), social scientists the “modified Library of Congress system.” But whenever any of us needs to communicate with a broad public of nonspecialists, such as the readers of a weekly news magazine or those who consult our own college catalogues, he finds himself on the horns of an old dilemma.
Col. Philip R. Faymonville and the Red Army, 1934-43
Authors: Herndon James S. , Baylen Joseph O.
Published: April 2006

Prior to the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1933, American military intelligence on the Red Army was limited to what it could glean from foreign military sources and travelers who had observed the Red Army inside the Soviet state. Thus, from 1920, the end of the period of Russian Civil War and Allied Intervention, to 1933, information on the Soviet military establishment was gathered by American military attachés from European diplomatic and military officials in Riga, Berlin, and Warsaw. To a lesser extent, intelligence on the Red Army was also available in London, Paris, Vienna, Stockholm, Tokyo, and Peking. American military intelligence dispatches and reports during the period reflected the heavy reliance upon secondary and indirect sources, although the information was often remarkably accurate. But with the American diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union and the opening of an American embassy in Moscow, American military intelligence gained the opportunity to supplement information received from foreign military sources with data received directly from the American military attaché.
“My Literary and Moral Wanderings”: Apollon Grigor'ev and the Changing Cultural Topography of Moscow
Authors: Whittaker Robert
Published: April 2006

Modern Russian literature created its image of Moscow by depicting a number of typical inhabitants of the city and by identifying specific locales in which they lived. These settings — buildings, streets, squares, small neighborhoods, and larger regions — lent the authenticity of recognizable landmarks to generalizations about personality and life style. Similarly, descriptions of “typical” if fictitious Muscovites provided actual Moscow locations with specific, characteristic qualities. As these literary images of Moscow evolved, so too did their settings: first one area and then another became the “typical” Moscow. Thus the city's cultural topography changed with the values symbolized by Moscow's landmarks and local populations.

In nineteenth-century Russian memoir literature no work succeeds better than “My Literary and Moral Wanderings” at vividly evoking the historical circumstances of a specific time and place. In this, his best known work, the critic and poet Apollon Aleksandrovich Grigor'ev (1822–1864) depicted the Moscow of his childhood in the late 1820s and early 1830s. However, writing in 1862 and 1864, Grigor'ev described a Moscow that had changed radically in the intervening thirty years. The city's image had been preeminently aristocratic for several decades following 1812, but by mid-century a new image of merchant Moscow began to appear. The “Wanderings” confirm this change with rich descriptive material illustrating the concomitant shift in the city's cultural topography.
Vladimir Nabokov’s Solus Rex and the “Ultima Thule” Theme
Authors: Johnson D. Barton
Published: April 2006

Nabokov’s unfinished novel, Solus Rex, composed in Paris during the winter of 1939-40, was the final flowering of the author’s “last season of Russian prose writing.” The novel was ultimately abandoned following Nabokov’s emigration to America in May 1940. Nabokov apparently intended to resume work on it, for in a letter of April 29, 1941, to his new friend Edmund Wilson, he remarked that he had “left Europe in the middle of avast Russian novel which will soon start to ooze from some part of my body if I go on keeping it inside.”There was no resumption, however.
Young Radicals and Independent Statehood: The Idea of a Ukrainian Nation-State, 1890-1895
Authors: Himka John-Paul
Published: April 2006

An assumption common to many modern political theorists is that the nation-state is the natural goal of national movements. But for the submerged peoples of nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, the formulation of the goal of independent statehood required a leap in ideological development from essentially cultural and social to overtly political nationalism. In this article, I am interested in the ideological leap taken by the Ukrainians, particularly in the role played by the young intelligentsia in the formulation of the goal of a nation-state. My argument has three stages: a narrative account of events, designed to correct misconceptions in the existing historiography and to show that the goal of independence was put forward in the context of a generational conflict within the radical intelligentsia; an examination of the opposing ideas advanced by young and old radicals; and an explanation of why the young radicals could formulate the demand for Ukrainian statehood while their senior contemporaries could not.
Recent Contributions to Retrospective Greek Bibliography
Authors: Batalden Stephen K.
Published: April 2006

In his recent study of publishing in eighteenth-century Russia, Gary Marker has called attention to the importance of publication and distribution of the printed word as one measure of the reception of Western thought into Eastern Europe. For historians of the Balkans, no less than for Russian specialists, a crucial aid in this type of study has been the publication of systematic retrospective national bibliographies. Nowhere in the Balkans has this concern for retrospective bibliographical control been so closely linked with historical scholarship as in Greece. Even before the monumental publication of Émile L. J. Legrand's multivolume Bibliographic hellénique, modern Greek historical and philological study was closely linked to bibliographical coverage of Greek imprints during the Turcocratia. Since World War II, this concern for retrospective national bibliography has been closely identified with the study of the Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment and Greek literature from the fall of Byzantium to the modern period.
Continuity and Change in Two Bulgarian Communities: A Sociological Profile
Authors: Whitaker Roger
Published: April 2006

The ways in which members of a community think, act, or believe are always changing. Sometimes the pace of change is imperceptibly slow; at other times it is so rapid that it can distinguish an era from its recent past. The rural communities of Bulgaria have experienced rapid change over the last three decades. It began on September 9, 1944, when the Bulgarian monarchy was overthrown and the Bulgarian Communist Party emerged to lead Bulgaria on a path of socialist development. The seizure of power was a revolutionary act but, more important, from a sociological point of view, it was an act that made revolutionary change possible. My purpose is to illustrate several ways in which Bulgarian rural communities have participated in the revolutionary transformation of community and family life in the 1970s.
Prince Andrei: The Education of a Rational Man
Authors: Orwin Donna
Published: April 2006

To refer to Prince Andrei as a rational man seems to flout Tolstoian psychological theory. In a passage from the second (unpublished) part of Youth that Boris Eikhenbaum treats as autobiographical, Tolstoi explains that one of his earliest maxims arose from a refutation of Descartes's “I think, therefore I am.“

I recall that the basis of my new philosophy was that man consisted of body, feelings, reason and will, but that the essence of the soul was will, not reason: that Descartes, whom I had not read then, in vain had said Cogito, ergo sum, because he had thought because he had wanted to think. Consequently it was necessary to say Volo, ergo sum.

Tolstoi alters Descartes's maxim to make it consistent with the metaphysical underpinnings of science and psychology as he understands them. Life is self-propelled motion, while reason is the principle that defines it or, as he puts it in the second epilogue of War and Peace, gives it form. The essence of a living being, therefore, must be desire or impulse, not thought, which gives form to impulse but does not itself move. To live is to will, not to think.
Boris Pasternak's My Sister—Life: The Book Behind the Verse
Authors: O'connor Katherine Tiernan
Published: April 2006

“You have a book in you,” said Charents, listening to M.'s poems about Armenia. (This was in Tiflis—in Erivan he would not have dared to come see us.) M. was very pleased by these words: “Perhaps he's right—I may really have a book in me.” A few years later, at M.'s request, I took a sheaf of his Voronezh poems to Pasternak, who, after looking at them, suddenly spoke of the “miracle of a book in the making.” With him, he said, it had happened only once in his life, when he wrote “My Sister Life.” I told M. about this conversation and asked: “So a collection of verse doesn't always make a book?” M. just laughed.“
The Crisis in Russian Agriculture: A Comment
Authors: Hamburg G. M.
Published: April 2006

Not long ago Randolph Starn observed that the word “crisis” is a particularly ambiguous term which historians have not always used with the requisite care. “One historian's crisis lasts moments, another's decades, even eras; political, social, economic, mental, or moral crises are blurred by one historian's insistence on treating them discretely, while another lumps them together under the confusing rubric ‘general crisis.’ “ Starn's strictures about the abuse of common terminology and about the confusion resulting from such abuse deserve our attention, especially now that Professor James Y. Simms has asserted that Russian historians have been wrong in thinking that there was an agrarian crisis in the late nineteenth century.