bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Gastronomy, Gogol, and His Fiction
Authors: Kolb-Seletski Natalia M.
Published: April 2006

The mention of “gastronomy and Gogol” may immediately make us think of the good-natured pair in Old-Fashioned Landowners, who, if they were not eating, were sure to be sleeping. Or perhaps what comes to mind is that remarkable five-by-five figure of Peter Petrovich Petukh, whom Gogol appropriately described as a “round watermelon.” And who can forget how Sobakevich ever so quietly and “innocently” alone dispatched that noble sturgeon at the breakfast party given by the chief of police, or how the thoroughly tipsy Khlestakov bragged about the “dream of a soup” that was delivered to him in St. Petersburg from no other gastronomic paradise than Paris itself. Nor can we forget Khlestakov's other soup—the one more like the River Nile (with feathers)—which was so ill-received and yet eaten with such alacrity by the starving braggart. Perhaps only Vladimir Nabokov did not laugh at Puzatyi Paciuk and his ingenious way of transporting varenyky to his mouth without moving an inch—and he first had to dip them into a dish of sour cream that was placed on a low barrel in front of him. And what about that pan of fried eggs that was rushed onto the stage in Meyerhold's production of Gogol's The Marriage, in which one of the suitors for the hand of the merchant's daughter—much to the confusion of the others—is called “Fried Eggs.”
V. N. Karazin, the Gentry, and Kharkov University
Authors: Flynn James T.
Published: April 2006

It is easy to ignore the career of Vasilii Nazarevich Karazin, and, indeed, most treatments of imperial Russia do so. When Karazin is mentioned, he is usually described as a rather ridiculous figure, the putative “Marquis Posa“ of Alexander I who had a spectacularly short public career, or simply as that “harebrained Ukrainian.“ Yet Karazin is hardly unknown; he is almost universally credited with being the founder of Kharkov University and is the subject of a number of works that picture him as an able, active public figure. The purpose of the present paper, however, is not to argue Karazin's importance or to decide whether or not he was “harebrained” but to explore his role in the foundation of Kharkov University as a useful case study of the relationship between the autocracy and the gentry in the early nineteenth century.
The Art of Andrei Siniavsky
Authors: Brown Deming
Published: April 2006

The imprisonment of Andrei Siniavsky in 1965 stilled, in mid-career, the most original and enigmatic voice in contemporary Soviet literature. At the time of his arrest he was known in the USSR solely as a gifted, liberal literary critic and scholar. Abroad he was known as Abram Tertz, a mysterious Russian author—possibly not even a resident of the Soviet Union—who had written a brilliant, devastating critique of socialist realism, two short novels (The Trial Begins and Liubimov), six short stories, and a small collection of aphorisms (Unguarded Thoughts).
Education of the Non-Russian Peoples in the USSR, 1917—1967: An Essay
Authors: Bilinsky Yaroslav
Published: April 2006

In Any Multinational State the language and content of elementary and secondary education are liable to become controversial political issues. The dedicated nationalist will be concerned about safeguarding the purity of his people's heritage. On the other hand, many parents want their children to achieve responsible positions that call for higher education. Equal access to universities and technical institutes by students of all nationalities then becomes the touchstone of equitable educational policy. This essay seeks to evaluate briefly Soviet educational policy toward the non-Russian peoples that together make up nearly one half of the total population of the USSR (454 percent in 1959).

The problem of educating constituent peoples and ethnic, cultural, or racial minorities equitably is, of course, not limited to the Soviet Union. The classic example of a genuinely multilingual state, with four official languages, is Switzerland. But even in that country, higher education is available only in French and German. Nonetheless, despite their linguistic differences the Swiss remain exceptionally attached to their little country, which was founded in 1291. Not so united is Belgium, a creation of the nineteenth century. In February 1968, for the first time in that country's history, the long-smoldering language dispute brought down a government: the division of the country into Wallonia and Flanders, with a theoretically bilingual Brussels enclave, has not worked out smoothly, nor has the division of Louvain University into French- and Dutch-speaking sections.
Lenin's Utopianism: State and Revolution
Authors: Barfield Rodney
Published: April 2006

General histories give little credence to the Utopian side of Lenin's revolutionary thought, especially in relation to his only formal Utopian work, State and Revolution. Most histories pass off that book as an “intellectual deviation” resulting from Lenin's “revolutionary fever” of 1917 or as a piece of political opportunism, while offering What Is To Be Done? as the statement of orthodox Leninism. In keeping with the tone of What Is To Be Done? Lenin is generally portrayed as the political realist par excellence, a pragmatist of the first order, a “hard-nosed” strategist confined by neither intellectual theories (not even Marxism) nor human emotions. This neat and simple formula is most convenient in attributing the success of the November Revolution to Lenin's talents for organization and political astuteness.
The Problem of the Aristocratic Origin of Russian Byliny
Authors: Oinas Felix J.
Published: April 2006

Among the theories about the origin of the Russian heroic epic songs (byliny), the theory of their aristocratic origin has aroused the greatest controversy. This theory was advanced by the main representative of the so-called historical school, Vsevolod Miller, at the turn of this century. In the introduction to his Ekskursy he compared the byliny to grandiose ruins, in whose upper chambers and towers princes once lived, but in whose sheds that were still habitable some unpretentious Olonets peasants had finally settled. Miller dealt with this problem in greater detail in his Ocherki, stressing first that the byliny sang of princes and retainers and their military feats. He argued that “they were created and disseminated among the population that was, in its development and social standing, close to the princely court and retinue, belonging, according to contemporary notions, to the ‘intelligentsia.'” The byliny were, according to Miller, composed among the cream of the society, where the pulse of life throbbed more strongly, where there was affluence and leisure, and where there was a demand for songs.
Lenin and the Politics of Education
Authors: Lilge Frederic
Published: April 2006

Men whom Hegel defines as world-historical figures because they shape the lives of generations by establishing systems of rule, law, or belief are sometimes called educators of their times. In such a general and figurative use of the term, the title educator is of course honorific and not bestowed for achievements specifically educational. This has happened to Lenin. When a historian attributes to him “an enormous pedagogical success,” he really means that Lenin managed to impose upon his party a style of rule in which expedient action is supported by ideological justification. The educator in this case is a master political strategist and might seem to be a more suitable subject of inquiry for the political scientist than for the historian of education. The metaphor, however, conceals a part of reality. It is true that Lenin wrote no treatise on education.
Bolshevik Approaches to Higher Education, 1917-1921
Authors: Mc Clelland James C.
Published: April 2006

The period 1917-21 in Russia found the fledgling Bolshevik government engaged in desperate military struggles with imperial Germany, with several White Russian armies assisted in varying degrees by foreign troops and supplies, with national movements for independence, and with a newly restored Poland. Yet despite an ever-present military threat to the very existence of the new government, many Bolshevik leaders remained constantly aware that theirs was a revolutionary regime, with the goal of achieving a radical trans? formation of the social, economic, political, and cultural institutions they had inherited. Consequently this same period witnessed, in addition to the crucial military conflicts, several experimental efforts to achieve thoroughgoing institutional change.

Higher education was one such target of reform, and this paper will describe succeeding attempts undertaken during 1917-21 to implement three radically different blueprints for reform of the higher educational system.
Annularity as a Melodic Principle in Fet's Verse
Authors: Briggs Anthony D.
Published: April 2006

The meaning and value of Fet's poetry have provided food for debate for over a century, but its musicality has long stood beyond question. Whatever the decision about their ultimate worth, his melodic lyrics undoubtedly call up some of the sweetest sounds of nineteenth-century Russian verse. Just as there is hardly a Russian poet who has been more widely or successfully parodied, so scarcely is there one who has been more often set to music. As a mid-century poet he had serious rivals for the favors of composers and yet defeated them all—A. K. Tolstoy, Polonsky, Mei, Grigoriev, even the redoubtable Nekrasov. His whole poetic manner seemed to impinge so far upon music itself that the composer could see immediately how the music should be written and set to work at once with the enthusiasm of any expert who suddenly finds before him a small challenge which is right in his own field.
The Society for Equality in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848
Authors: Deme Laszlo
Published: April 2006

Hungary was a feudal monarchy at the beginning of 1848 and was part of the multinational Habsburg Empire. Although Hungarian publicists continually emphasized that the country could look back to nearly a thousand years of statehood and national existence, the foreign relations and the fiscal and military affairs of Hungary were directed almost exclusively from Vienna. Internally the country was governed by the native nobility, which constituted about 5 percent of a population of approximately fifteen million. The nobility exercised its power through the Diet and elective county assemblies. Nobles alone had the right to vote. Until 1844 they alone held public office, and most of them paid no taxes. The immense majority—the peasantry—lived in feudal bondage. The taxes of the serfs maintained the state, and their dues and labor services supported the nobility.
The USSR: Oligarchy or Dictatorship?
Authors: Wesson Robert G.
Published: April 2006

By the summer of 1971 Leonid Brezhnev had apparently become effective head of state of the Soviet Union and its spokesman. When Chancellor Brandt visited the Soviet Union in September he conferred with no one else, and Pravda reported (September 19) that “responsible members of the Secretariat of the General Secretary” participated in the conversations. One is reminded of the power obscurely exercised by Stalin’s personal secretariat, especially the mysterious Poskrebyshev during the later years of his rule, and of the role of Hitler’s secretariat, headed by Martin Bormann. Yet Brezhnev is certainly not the despot implied by these analogies. Officially, he has assumed no new powers. More important, no one has been ousted from the top circle since 1965, when the regime seemed to be truly a plural leadership in which no individual was clearly dominant. Yet it is practically the first task of a new tyrant to replace with his dependents those who were formerly his equals or at least potential rivals.
“Peter I's Testament“: A Reassessment
Authors: Subtelny Orest
Published: April 2006

For over a century scholars have been intrigued by one of history's most famous apocryphal works, the “Political Testament of Peter the Great.“The central theme—a warning of the danger Russia represents to all her neighbors —has always been a relevant topic for discussion. However, a satisfactory explanation of the document's genesis is yet to be given. One thing is clear: the “testament” is a forgery, an attempt to “frame” Peter I. But who is the culprit? The question has aroused the instincts of the detective in many historians and set them on the miscreant's trail.

Suspects were not lacking. Initially, circumstantial evidence pointed to Napoleon as the author or inspirer of the fabrication, since it was in 1812 in France that the first published version of this document appeared. Soon, however, suspicion fell on C. L. Lesur, one of the emperor's propagandists and the author of the work which contained the published text.
Tuition and Social Class in the Russian Universities: S. S. Uvarov and “Reaction” in the Russia of Nicholas I
Authors: Flynn James T.
Published: April 2006

S. S. Uvarov, minister of education from 1833 to 1849, is usually described as a reactionary. The reason for that judgment is clear. Many of the steps Uvarov took as minister seemed designed to block the realization of the liberal goals set by the reformers who assisted Alexander I in founding the modern Russian educational system in 1801-4. One important aspect of that liberal, modern, system was its “all-class” character. An educational system which admitted students of all classes was perceived by “reactionaries“ as a threat to the established order, despite the relatively small numbers of people involved. Thus, “Uvarov was disturbed by the trickle of students from lower classes who were finding their way into the universities. As in secondary schools, the admission of such students was hindered by legalistic formalities and an increase in tuition fees.“
István Friedrich and the Hungarian Coup d'État of 1919: A Reevaluation
Authors: Balogh Eva S.
Published: April 2006

On August 6, 1919, a bloodless coup d'état occurred in Budapest, forcing the Socialist “trade union” government to resign, and bringing Hungary’s radical phase to an abrupt end. Hungary’s revolutionary experiments had been resounding failures, and the majority of the population was relieved. The first revolution of October 31, 1918 had promised democracy, independence, and unimpaired territorial integrity but had brought instead only disappointments— political instability and foreign occupation. The second revolution, which declared Hungary a Soviet republic on March 21, 1919, was no more successful than the first. The proletarian dictatorship, originally welcomed as a remedy for the discredited democratic institutions, rapidly lost its appeal, and the world revolution, initially held out as an answer to Hungary’s territorial mutilation, failed to become a reality. By the end of July, the Rumanian army was at the gates of Budapest and internal dissatisfaction had assumed threatening proportions.
The Cheliabinsk Grain Tariff and the Rise of the Siberian Butter Industry
Authors: Mote Victor L.
Published: April 2006

A score of years ago geography was characterized as spatial interaction, the underlying concepts of which were complementarity, intervening opportunities, and distance. Without additional consideration of the first two, the last of these concepts is intrinsic to this study. According to Ullman, distance, which may be interpreted in many ways, is measured economically, that is, in terms of the cost and time involved in transporting a product. A good is transportable only when its inherent value is sufficient to overcome the “friction“ of distance. Hoover states this clearly: “When goods of high value per pound are shipped, the transfer charge constitutes a smaller relative addition to the total cost of the delivered article, and such goods are said to be ‘more transportable’ or to be capable of bearing a higher transfer charge.“
Communism and the East: The Baku Congress, 1920
Authors: White Stephen
Published: April 2006

The First Congress of the Peoples of the East was held in. the city of Baku from September 1 to 8, 1920. It has tended, on the whole, to attract attention rather more because of the colorful Oriental pageantry which surrounded it than because of the importance of its debates and resolutions. The first account to become available in the West, for instance, was that of H. G. Wells, who had been in Russia when the Congress was taking place. He reported that Zinoviev and his associates had "held a congress at Baku, at which they gathered together a quite wonderful accumulation of white, black, brown, and yellow people, Asiatic costumes and astonishing weapons.
The Ambiguous Legal Status of Russian Jewry in the Reign of Catherine II
Authors: Klier John D.
Published: April 2006

A Russian proverb knowingly reminds us that “the law is like a wagon-tongue —whichever way you point it, there it goes.” It is useful to remember this observation when examining the position of the Jews in the nineteenth-century Russian Empire. The legal basis for that position, which was characterized by exclusion and discrimination, has commonly been traced to the period from 1772 to 1796, when Russia's Jews first entered the empire in large numbers. This study will describe the creation of the legal “wagon-tongue” during the late eighteenth century, and will suggest that the legal precedents cannot be understood by only considering the directions in which the law was later to be pointed. Emphasis will be placed on the initial evolution of an ad hoc body of law, confused, contradictory, and ambiguous, capable of subsequent interpretation and elaboration with either sympathy or hostility.
The Arrest of Alice Masaryk
Authors: Unterberger Betty M.
Published: April 2006

Historians are generally agreed that during the first two years of World War I American feeling against Germany was far stronger and more intense than against Austria-Hungary. While relations between the Germanic and American peoples had not been truly friendly since the 1880s, attitudes in the United States toward Austria-Hungary were much less antagonistic. Historically there had been little direct contact between the latter two countries. It scarcely seemed necessary to Americans. The area was not only remote geographically but also remote from the national interest. As a result, there appeared to be no deep-rooted bitterness or resentment in the historic relationship between the two nations. Indeed, in the period immediately preceding the war, relations between Austria-Hungary and the United States had consisted largely of diplomatic formalities even though before the war, Austria-Hungary, next to Italy, had furnished the largest European immigration to the United States. Americans for the most part were unaware that Austria-Hungary was a multinational empire composed of many diverse ethnic groups. Few Americans knew of the vast numbers of immigrants who had come from Austria-Hungary from the areas of Slovakia and Bohemia.
Hungarian Counterfeit Francs: A Case of Post-World War I Political Sabotage
Authors: Klay Andor
Published: April 2006

Stalin's little-known 1928 caper, the production and distribution of bogus hundred-dollar bills, was preceded by an even less known venture of the same sort. Specialists in East European history have left it unexplored during the decades which have passed since it occurred, and several aspects of the plot behind it, as well as some of its most powerful supporters, remain unknown. It happened in 1925, and involved a string of high-ranking Hungarian civilian and military personages, with a prince at one end and a bishop at the other.
Nikolai Rubakin’s Library for Revolutionaries
Authors: Senn Alfred Erich
Published: April 2006

For almost forty years the private library of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Rubakin, located first in Baugy-sur-Clarens and subsequently in Lausanne, Switzerland, served as a major fund of Russian books in Western Europe, and it attracted many of the great figures of the Russian Revolution. Rubakin in turn welcomed every new reader; his motto, imprinted on his bookplates, declared: “Long live the book, a powerful weapon in the struggle for truth and justice.” Upon his death in 1946 the Soviet Union inherited the collection, variously estimated at 80,000 to 100,000 volumes, and its departure represented a great blow to East European studies in the West.
Comments on Professor Dallin’s “Bias and Blunders in American Studies on the USSR”
Authors: Armstrong John A.
Published: April 2006

In his article on Western studies of Soviet power, purpose, and policy—which I shall call Sovietology—Alexander Dallin has brought us to a timely reconsideration of the needs and prospects of our area field. Part of the problem is whether the “remarkable catalogue of hypotheses later abandoned or disproved” really indicates that specialists in Sovietology have been relatively ineffective. Still more important are the real reasons for our failures—and surely they are numerous.
The Traditional and the Modern in the Writings of Ivan Pnin
Authors: Ramer Samuel C.
Published: April 2006

Studies of political reform in the Russian Empire during the first decade of Alexander I's rule have focused largely on the emperor and his most prominent advisers: the unofficial committee of four close friends who counseled him in secret during the first two years of his reign; powerful court factions, particularly those nobles who sought to augment the status and political power of the Senate; and, finally, high state officials such as Michael Speransky. The nature of reformist thought emanating from sources less directly involved in the actual preparation of legislation has been unduly neglected. There were, for instance, a number of minor writers who sought to influence state policy by submitting their ideas to Alexander. A study of the kind of society they hoped to create and the ways in which they thought social change achievable can enhance our appreciation of the variety of reformist thought in Russia at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Soviet Policy Toward Germany During the Russo-Polish War, 1920
Authors: Himmer Robert
Published: April 2006

The Russo-Polish War occasioned some of the most anxious moments in the history of relations between Soviet Russia and the Weimar Republic. Within Germany, the advance of the Red Army toward Warsaw in 1920 aroused strong, but contradictory emotions. First, it led many Germans to anticipate the destruction of Poland and to hope for the restoration of the Reich’s former eastern territories. Simultaneously, however, the westward Russian march raised fears of the invasion of Germany by Bolshevik forces. Within Russia, a similar dichotomy of views about Germany existed. On one hand, the German government was considered a hostile, though negligible and temporary—a Communist revolution there was thought imminent—factor in Russia’s situation. On the other, Germany was held important enough to Russia that serious proposals of a far-reaching alliance against Poland and the Entente were made to her. The former view rested on a fundamentally optimistic assessment of Russia’s prospects; the latter, on a sober one. Grounds for concern were afforded by the Soviet Republic’s grave economic problems and by worry about whether the weary Red Army could defeat Pilsudski’s forces, whose offensive capacity had been demonstrated by their capture of Kiev in May 1920. If Germany, which had had military forces in the field against the Bolsheviks only a year before, should actively assist the Poles, Russia’s situation could be appreciably worsened. Surprisingly, therefore, although there are several recent, excellent studies of Soviet-Polish affairs and the Russo-Polish War, and a voluminous literature on relations between the Soviets and the Weimar Republic, little attention has been paid to Soviet policy toward Germany during the conflict with Poland. To explain that policy, and its apparent contradiction, is the purpose of this article.
Reply
Authors: Hunter Holland
Published: April 2006

Messrs. Campbell, Cohen, and Lewin have very usefully augmented my fragmentary efforts. It is good to have Dr. Lewin's informed judgment concerning the prospects for modest, steady growth in off-farm agricultural output during this period. He has sketched the direct link that Professor Campbell queries between the first plan's targets and the “waste, turbulence, sacrifice, and destruction” that gave rise to a whole new state system. Professor Cohen supplies illuminating detail on the relation of the Stalin-Bukharin struggle to the formulation of the First Five-Year Plan. His suggestion that regional leaders' efforts to get more projects for their regions had the effect of driving up the plan's investment (and therefore output) targets seems especially important. The proposition that Stalin's “socialism in one country,” having won out over Trotsky's stress on “permanent revolution” in the out-side world, should turn out to embody renewed domestic revolution (or civil war) is a major insight. Professor Campbell's eggs and bacon analogy is likely to become a permanent addition to our pedagogy, especially since this dietary problem still exists in the USSR.
German Policy in the Eastern Baltic Sea in 1918: Expansion or Anti-Bolshevik Crusade?
Authors: Herwig Holger H.
Published: April 2006

The Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917 offered Germany the first serious prospect of ending the two-front war dilemma. General Erich Ludendorff, anticipating resultant cessation of major military operations in the East, decided to seek a military victory in the West. But the ensuing peace negotiations with the Bolsheviks at Brest-Litovsk revealed basic policy differences within the German camp. Richard Kühlmann, state secretary of the Foreign Office, felt that the Bolshevik victory had sufficiently crippled Russia's armed might and had thereby eased the military burden in the East. Kühlmann as well as his successor, Admiral Paul von Hintze, successfully opposed all proposals to oust the Bolsheviks. Because they both believed that Bolshevik rule would assure long-term chaos in Russia, they sought a compromise peace in the East. The Foreign Office, through the first German ambassadors to Moscow, Count Wilhelm von Mirbach-Harff and Karl Helfferich, even extended financial aid to the Bolsheviks in order to keep them out of the Entente camp. In short, Germany's diplomats possessed a clear conception of their policies regarding the Bolsheviks and were consistent in them, desiring no armed conflict in the East but rather a concentration of military might in the West. The Army Supreme Command, and especially Ludendorff, rejected any compromise formula in the East, despite the decision of November 1917 to seek a military victory in the West. Ludendorff sought to end the war with either victory or defeat. Nonetheless, in the summer of 1918 he proved willing temporarily to accept the plan of the Foreign Office to cooperate with the Bolsheviks and “use” them to attain German goals, a decision that paralleled his original agreement in April 1917 to transport the Bolshevik leaders in Switzerland to Russia.
What Is Good Design?: A Comment
Authors: Granick David
Published: April 2006

I am fully in agreement with Mr. Hutchings as to the major importance of design in determining the quality of an economy’s products. Indeed, I would extend this view to a statement that design is equally important in determining the appropriateness of specific methods of production in the light of the economy’s physical and human resources. I think that we are all indebted to Hutchings for making the case and for distinguishing between design and technology. However, while Hutchings discusses the contribution of design to various Soviet industries, he fails to provide criteria for distinguishing between good and bad product design. It is to this elementary task that I wish primarily to direct my remarks.
Reply
Authors: Hutchings Raymond
Published: April 2006

It is a professionally valuable experience to debate with such eminent critics. Although the focus here will be on our disagreements (because of space limitations some criticisms must go unanswered), I regard as chiefly significant our agreement that Soviet design is important, and has attracted too little attention.

David Granick’s essay, complementary to mine and unlike the others from a strictly economic standpoint, calls for little rejoinder. I would merely add that if (as I concur) much Soviet design has been “surprisingly” good, this may be partly attributable to a certain autonomy of indigenous design principles, which leads back to one theme of my work.
Chaikovskii’s Visit to Prague in 1888
Authors: Wiley Roland John
Published: April 2006

The foreign travels of Petr Il'ich Chaikovskii have never been a particular issue to scholars of his life and work. Even in such demonstrably important cases as his visits to the opening of the Bayreuth Festival and to Paris during which he heard Bizet’s Carmen for the first time, his tours—which brought him as far as New York City for the opening of Carnegie Hall—are treated perfunctorily, without objectivity, balance, or due regard for the impact his travel may have had on his music. This is not surprising, since Chaikovskii was not by profession a touring virtuoso; it is his musical composition which looms large in the biography as a whole. An experience which was called “the high point of earthly glory” the composer was destined to achieve, however, merits examination in detail. Chaikovskii himself claimed his visit to Prague in February 1888 constituted the “best and happiest days of [his] life” and brought him a “moment of absolute bliss.” An investigation of why Chaikovskii considered his stay there important is essential. Because the exploration of these questions depends on a scrutiny of Russian sources, this article will also be an investigation of how documents are used (or misused) to write history.
Chekhov's Response to Dostoevskii: The Case of “Ward Six”
Authors: Durkin Andrew R.
Published: April 2006

The relationship between Chekhov's fiction and earlier nineteenth-century Russian fiction still awaits thorough critical investigation. Certain aspects of the problem, notably Chekhov's intellectual and literary reaction to Tolstoi, have frequently been discussed, but the question as a whole, as well as many specific facets of it, has not been adequately treated. For instance, until very recently, the name of Dostoevskii has been virtually absent from Chekhov criticism. The reasons for this are under-standable. In contrast to abundant information on Chekhov's attitudes toward Tolstoi and his works, the documentary record contains little evidence which sheds strong light either on the extent of Chekhov's familiarity with Dostoevskii's works or his opinion of them. Political or literary-historical preconceptions may also have imposed critical blinders. Despite the dearth of external evidence, it seems highly improbable that so widely ranging a reader as Chekhov would not have made some acquaintance with the major works of a writer of Dostoevskii's artistic stature and public prominence.
Steven Rosefielde’s Kliukva
Authors: Davies R. W. , Wheatcroft S. G.
Published: April 2006

Steven Rosefielde’s article has two objectives: first, to display the major features and the “revolutionary implications” for Soviet economic history of evidence provided in Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago; second, to devise “a coherent and consistent countertheory to the prevailing interpretation of Soviet industrialization.” In pursuit of these objectives, he initiates “a complete reconsideration of the causes and consequences of the First Five-Year Plan.”
Russian Endeavors for the Polish Crown in the Seventeenth Century
Authors: Wójcik Zbigniew
Published: April 2006

Polish-Russian relations have from their very beginning been characterized by intense political rivalry and military confrontation. This is no surprise, since after the Polish-Lithuanian union (1386, 1569), Poland was drawn into the conflict between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the great Muscovite principality over hegemony in Eastern Europe. Struggles between Lithuania and Muscovy were thus transformed into wars between the Russian state and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. During the reigns of Polish kings Stefan Batory (1576–86), Zygmunt III (1587–1632), and Wladyslaw IV (1632–48), the commonwealth gained a military advantage over its eastern neighbor. This was especially evident during the Time of Troubles (smutnoe vremia), when the Polish army occupied Moscow (1610–12) and when Wladyslaw IV defeated the Russians in the War of Smolensk (1632–34).
Idealism and Decadence in Russian Symbolist Poetry
Authors: Bristol Evelyn
Published: April 2006

Statements of doctrine by Symbolists both in France and in Russia indicate that the literary movement was based on a form of philosophical idealism, often Neo-Platonism. But its theoreticians were silent about the decadent themes which appear in Symbolist poetry. Symbolists liked to represent themselves as attuned to the ineffable—or if mystics, to the divine—but their works reveal an inclination to philosophical pessimism and other forms of melancholia. Indeed, a tension between belief and cynicism can be noted in their works which resembles, and sometimes overlaps with, a juxtaposition of good and evil. Among the French, Charles Baudelaire called the opening section of Les Fleurs du mal (1857) “Spleen et Idáal.” Paul Verlaine dedicated his collections of verse alternately to Christian ideals of purity, as in Sagesse (1881), and to self-indulgent bohemianism, as in Parallélement (1889). Stáphane Mallarmá's satyr in “L'Apràs-midi d'un faune” (1876) is the emblematic representative of amorality brought to glimpse the world of Platonic Ideas. And Joris-Karl Huysmans's archdecadent hero, des Esseintes, exhausted himself in sensual delights before being brought near to a Catholic conversion.
CIA Publications on the Soviet Economy
Authors: Moskoff William
Published: April 2006

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been charged with the responsibility of collecting, analyzing, and disseminating information on the economy of the USSR. This review analyzes the quality of the CIA’s research, compares it with academic Sovietology, and raises certain questions regarding the internal mechanisms of the agency. For obvious reasons, the inquiry is confined to the unclassified materials produced by the agency. Moreover, I will be reviewing only a selected proportion of the published materials. The sheer volume is overwhelming: a request for publications produced a box weighing forty pounds. While my general comments refer to older materials, I will be concentrating on the most recent publications. The number of publications and variety of subject matter prohibit a traditional review article. Consequently, I intend an overall and much more general evaluation of research by the CIA.
The Origins of Revolutionary Defensism: I. G. Tsereteli and the “Siberian Zimmerwaldists”
Authors: Galili y Garcia Ziva
Published: April 2006

The Moscow Station in Petrograd was the scene of a familiar ritual of the Revolution late on the night of March 20, 1917 — the triumphant return of exiled revolutionary leaders. The red banners on the locomotive from Irkutsk read “Train of the Social Democratic Deputies of the Second Duma.” On board were the legendary leader of the arrested Social Democratic faction, the Georgian Menshevik I. G. Tsereteli, and a group of his followers known as the Siberian Zimmerwaldists. They were experienced in revolutionary politics, closely knit, and completely dedicated to the policies and leadership of Tsereteli. Within ten days of their arrival in the capital, these men would take control of the bloc of Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries which held the majority in the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet and the First All-Russian Conference of Soviets. In the coming months they would provide effective, often forceful leadership for the Soviets, guiding them by a new and distinctive political strategy which they called Revolutionary Defensism.
Recent Publications on Archives and Manuscript Collections in the Soviet Union: A Selective Survey
Authors: Grimsted Patricia Kennedy
Published: April 2006

Ten years have elapsed since the publication of my general directory of archival repositories in Moscow and Leningrad and six years since its first bibliographical supplement. Space does not allow a full review here of all the finding aids and related reference literature issued in subsequent years. Yet a number of significant new publications deserve attention. A further incentive for this review is the appearance — in the western Ukrainian center of Lviv — of an extensive new directory of Soviet archives and manuscript collections. The appearance of such a long overdue, basic reference tool immediately arouses considerable interest.

The publication of this volume in Lviv evokes a long and distinguished tradition of archival development and historical scholarship in Galicia. Yet the inherent problems and logistics of preparing a directory of all-union scope in Lviv might explain some of the problems of the volume, while its issue in Lviv, unfortunately, makes the volume more difficult to obtain in the West. Nevertheless, the breadth and scope of the contribution stand as a tribute to the vision and energy of the author-compilers from Lviv University, Iu. M. Grossman (Iu. M. Hrossman) and V. N. Kutik (V. N. Kutyk). A detailed review of the Lviv directory can here also draw attention to other recently published archival reference aids and recent Soviet archival developments in general background literature and bibliography and in Grossman and Kutik's coverage of specific institutions and their finding aids.
How Complete is Lenin’s Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii?
Authors: Elwood R. C.
Published: April 2006

The fifth edition of V. I. Lenin’s Sochineniia is an imposing piece of work. Its fifty-five volumes, first published by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism between 1958 and 1965, are attractively bound, nicely printed, and reasonably priced. Perhaps for these reasons, they have sold over six hundred thousand copies in Russian alone and are now in their fourth large printing. In comparison with the preceding four editions, the fifth is far more substantial in content: the first edition of twenty-six volumes (1920–26) contained some 1500 writings by Lenin; the second and third editions of thirty volumes each (1925–32) had 2700 works; the fourth or Stalin edition of thirty-five volumes (1941, 1946–50) included 2927 items; and the fifth comprises almost 9000.
The Ordinary, the Sacred, and the Grotesque in Daniil Kharms's The Old Woman
Authors: Nakhimovsky Alice Stone
Published: April 2006

The work of Daniil Kharms was lost to the West for many years. A poet and black humorist, creator of Russia's short-lived literature of the absurd, Kharms shared the fate of many of his contemporaries. His work, which was passed from hand to hand after his disappearance in 1941, began to surface in print only in the late 1960s. But in spite of a number of recent publications, Kharms remains largely unknown and misunderstood. His eccentric, often grotesque stories are too easily dismissed as lacking depth. Part of this misunderstanding stems from an incomplete knowledge of Kharms's work: because Western readers are limited to published materials, they are unable to perceive the strong religious strain that underlies much of Kharms's writing.
Chaadayev as Russia's First Philosopher
Authors: Zeldin Mary-Barbara
Published: April 2006

The title of this paper might suggest that it is intended to describe Chaadayev's philosophy. This is not so. An attempt will be made, rather, to argue the following points: first, that Chaadayev is chronologically the first philosopher of Russia because earlier persons to whom that distinction has been attributed do not really deserve it; second, that, unlike these so-called predecessors, Chaadayev in his writings provides a body of material which qualifies as a philosophy and which is presented as such; and third, that his philosophy is distinctively Russian, even though Chaadayev combines many Western philosophical characteristics with his native Russian outlook.
Pretenders to History: Four Plays for Undoing Pushkin's Boris Godunov
Authors: Emerson Caryl
Published: April 2006

Among the problematic works of great writers, Pushkin's Boris Godunov occupies a special place. This strange hybrid of history, drama, narrative poetry, and prose Pushkin called a “romantic tragedy,” and he considered it his masterpiece. Yet the play's publication in 1831 was met with surprise and dismay. By consensus of a baffled public, Boris Godunov was a failure—neither romantic, nor feasible on the tragic stage.

Since that time, generations of critics, playwrights, and producers have tried to come to terms with this troublesome text. Tolstoi's famous comment—that all great nineteenth-century Russian works defy clear generic classification1—has been invoked in defense of many irregular texts, but not this one. Boris remains stubbornly, inexplicably “undramatic.” Criticism has in fact tended to redefine the play rather than to investigate it. Boundaries are routinely blurred between the historical Tsar Boris, the historical period when his tale is retold, and the world of the fictional creation itself.
Mandel'shtam's Mandel'shteln (Initial Observations on the Cracking of a Slit-Eyed Nut, OR a Couple of Chinks in the Shchell)
Authors: Pollak Nancy
Published: April 2006

But the impervious geodeWas entered, and its inner crustOf crystals with a ray cathodeAt every point and facet glowedIn answer to the mental thrust.Robert Frost, “All Revelation”

A crucial year for Osip Mandel'shtam was 1930: it was in October of that year, in Tiflis, on the way back from Armenia, that poetry returned to him, after five years during which he wrote almost no verse. The Armenia poems (numbers 203-218) are among the first of the “new verse,” and, with their theme of penance for unproductivity and attempt to transform the factors of disturbance—the sense of limitation, confinement, deprivation—into sources of new energy, they testify to Mandel'shtam's current concern with the operations of his work. Moreover, at this juncture Mandel'shtam gives programmatic attention to the principles of his writing.
An Experiment in Competition: The 1987 Elections to the Local Soviets
Authors: Hahn Jeffrey
Published: April 2006

For western observers, one of the most striking policy shifts articulated by Mikhail S. Gorbachev since he became general secretary of the CPSU in March 1985 has been his insistence on greater democratization (demokratizatsiia) and self-government (samoupravlenie). In his speech to the Communist party's Central Committee on 28 January 1987 he explicitly identified “the many-sided development of democracy and selfgovernment“ as a key component of what he meant by the reconstruction (perestroika) of Soviet society. His speech to the plenum dealt in large part with this theme. In it, Gorbachev startled his audience both at home and abroad with proposals for the introduction of a degree of competitiveness in the elections of party leaders, state officials, and enterprise managers.
Tower and Dome: Two Revolutionary Buildings
Authors: Milner-Gulland Robin
Published: April 2006

Since the 1960s much informed attention has been paid to the Russian artist Vladimir Tatlin (1885-1953), culminating in the recent appearance of John Milner's expert and sensitive study; with his centenary year one can only expect such interest, in east and west, has intensified. Though Tatlin's fields of activity were extraordinarily diverse (and by no means all conventionally “artistic“), attention has been concentrated both in his lifetime and since on what is, by common consent, the greatest (or most notorious) of his endeavors: the project, unrealized at full scale and probably unrealizable in his lifetime (though several maquettes have been produced) for his Monument to the Third International, popularly dubbed “Tatlin's Tower.“
Flight of the Angels: The Poetry of Lev Loseff
Authors: Smith Gerald S.
Published: April 2006

Among the poets of the Third Emigration are a few who were officially recognized and published in the Soviet Union. The vast majority of them, though, hardly published anything in that country; sometimes because they were denied access and more often because they did not seek publication in the Soviet Union, preferring samizdat or publication abroad. Lev Loseff is a unique figure who falls into neither of these categories. He was a professional journalist and writer for children until he left the Soviet Union in 1976, but, although he was a popular figure in Leningrad's unofficial literary life, he was not known to be a poet. In fact, Loseff began as a serious poet in 1974 at an age—thirty-seven—that by any standards is very late and by Russian standards is something like the beginning of the afterlife: It is the age at which Pushkin was killed.
Soviet and American News: Week of Intensive Interaction
Authors: Mickiewicz Ellen , Haley Gregory
Published: April 2006

In 1940, there were only 400 television sets in the Soviet Union. By 1950, there were 10,000; a decade later, some 4.8 million. Then in the five years between 1965 and 1970, the availability of television sets more than doubled, and by 1976, Soviet industry was producing 7 million sets annually. In 1960, only 5 percent of the Soviet population could watch television, but by 1986 that figure had risen to 93 percent, and television signals could be received in more than 86 percent of the territory of the U.S.S.R. Nearly all the households that are unable to receive television are in sparsely settled rural areas, mainly Siberia.

Although television is a relative newcomer to the Soviet media system, it has exerted an enormous effect on leisure time use. It has also reoriented patterns of information acquisition. Of the events in the world abroad covered by the Soviet media 86 percent are known to people through television, 77 percent through the newspaper, and 62 percent from radio.
Systemic Changes and Unemployment Growth in Yugoslavia, 1965–1984
Authors: Primorac Emil , Babić Mate
Published: April 2006

The Yugoslavs are infected by what calls the disease of “historical optimism.” Shocks, emanating from the international economy over the last decade or so, were seen as a developmental problem or, at worst, a transitory difficulty. This argument seems to follow these lines: Contemporary capitalism, of course, is doomed to collapse sooner or later; contemporary etatism is also in a state of crisis and will evolve toward Yugoslav self-management socialism. The socialism of self-management, however, could not itself be in crisis, because, if it is in crisis, what is left?

In fact the word crisis was not used to describe the state of the Yugoslav economy until September 1982 when it was discovered that foreign debt could not be serviced and required rescheduling. By then the Yugoslav foreign debt was $20 billion, the unemployment rate stood at 10 percent to 16 percent (depending how you measure it), and inflation was at 40 percent. Only then did the policymakers realize that these problems were a consequence of prolonged economic mismanagement, excessive borrowing abroad, arbitrary decision making, and an autarchic economic policy in general.
Reaching a Reader: The Master's Audience in The Master and Margarita
Authors: Avins Carol
Published: April 2006

At the end of Dr. Zhivago, Zhivago's old friends sit overlooking Moscow and read together a collection of his writings, compiled through the efforts of his devoted and somewhat mysterious half-brother. For all the dark times depicted in the novel, it ends with a dual affirmation of the power of art and of the spirit to survive. Zhivago's writings endure not only by virtue of having been created and not only in the minds of those who know them, but on paper as well. In this respect Boris Pasternak's novel offers an intriguing contrast to one completed in a bleaker period, The Master and Margarita. In Mikhail Bulgakov's novel the problem of preserving the protagonist's writing and conveying it to readers is neither as simple nor as successfully resolved, despite intervention of a more mysterious, even supernatural, sort.