In terms of ultimate consequences, history may well record the past two years as among the most significant for the future of Russia and the world. The following three quotations indicate a key to analysis:

But with the suppression of the political life throughout the land, the life of the Soviets also must grow more and more paralyzed. Without general elections, unrestricted freedom of the press and of assembly, free conflict of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, be-comes a mere semblance of life, in which the bureaucracy remains alone as the active element. No one can evade this law. The public life gradually falls asleep, a dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless idealism direct and govern. Among these, the actual leadership is exercised by a dozen pre-eminent brains, and a selected group of the workers is invited to meetings from time to time to applaud the speeches of the leaders, and to approve by unanimous vote the resolutions laid before them.

One of the most noticeable features of the nineteenth century was that nationalism played a much more important role in the lives of Europeans than ever before. The underlying causes for the increased importance of nationalism are to be sought in the general economic, social, and cultural history of the time. In the present study the last of these factors will be discussed under the title of “Romantic Nationalism” as it applies to one country, Russia.

The words “romanticism” and “nationalism” tend to be vague and have been used in varying contexts. Here the expression “romantic nationalism” will have two connotations: i) a romantic-outlook with regard to life in general and specifically to nationalism as opposed to the rationalism and cosmopolitanism of the Enlighten-ment; 2) historicism as defined by Meinecke in his Entstehung des Historismus.

The romantic outlook is one which exalts intuition, passion, and spontaneity, and defends feeling and freedom in general against the demands of reason, society, and the standards of classical esthetic criticism.

That question has been recently answered affirmatively by Professor Oscar Halecki of Fordham University in an article entitled “Imperialism in Slavic and East European History” in the February 1952 issue of this journal. Mr. Halecki's charges necessitate a reexamination of underlying issues. The following article will state briefly the views of a few Russian and Polish historians and indicate how their views might affect any answer which might be made to the question; moreover, since the charge that Muscovite Russia was imperialistic is based mainly upon developments in the second half of the fifteenth century, discussion will focus upon that period.

Before examining the works of historians, it would be useful to indicate a little of the history of Muscovite Russia and Lithuania, the two states central to a discussion of this question, during a broader period, namely that from the fourteenth century through the sixteenth century. It would also be useful to take up the problem of defining imperialism.

A collection of two hundred and forty-one highly incriminating documents which expose Russian policy during the critical decade of the eighteen-eighties was originally published in Bulgaria in 1892 by D. Petkov under the title, The Occupation Fund. The documents are best known to Western scholars in the French and German translations of R. Leonoff, entitled Documents secrets de la politique russe en orient, 1881-1890, and Geheime Dokumente der russischen Orient-Politik, 1881-1890 respectively. Since they were allegedly stolen from the secret archives of the Russian consulates in Bulgaria and Rumania by a former Russian official, Mikhail Jakobson, the group is frequently referred to as the Jakobson collection. The Documents secrets created a great sensation in their day, were denounced as forgeries by the tsarist Government and historians, and have remained a controversial collection ever since their publication.

The October 1953 issue of The American Slavic and East European Review contains an article by Charles and Barbara Jelavich entitled “The Occupation Fund Documents: a Diplomatic Forgery.”

The recent pronouncements on Party agricultural policy (September-October, 1953) were accompanied by quite frank admission that all is not well on the Soviet farm. This melancholy story of low yields and stagnant output went far in substantiating what critical students of Soviet agriculture have long indicated—often in the face of rather astounding claims to general success. For example, they have pointed to the wide variations in prosperity and efficiency among kolkhozy (collective farms) in the same area, a fact only now admitted and subject to wide comment in the official press. Unfortunately, however, available materials have been far too scanty to allow a detailed assessment of agriculture in any one area; statistics which do exist purposely omit a great deal. While the fact of low peasant incomes in some areas is admitted (indeed Khrushchev spoke of migration of discontented peasants to the towns), the actual level of these incomes remains a state secret. What is more, the practice generally followed has been one of giving detailed descriptions, in glowing terms, of kolkhozy which are quite atypical of their particular area.

In recent years polish historians have become increasingly interested in the history of the Polish socialist movement. This interest, though undoubtedly stimulated by the political and economic changes which have taken place in their country since the last war, has been shared alike by opponents and supporters of the present regime. So far, however, the main emphasis has been placed on the later stages of the movement's development. The history of the first Polish socialist organization, Lud Polski (The Polish People), founded in 18 3 5 by a group of emigre peasant soldiers in the English seacoast town of Portsmouth, has not hitherto received adequate treatment.

The theories of this organization were, indeed, based on the peasantry and were concerned almost exclusively with the organization of agriculture, for Poland still had a predominantly agrarian structure. With industry only in its infancy, “the people” for these early Polish socialists, as for Herzen and the Russian narodniki of the seventies, could in fact mean only the peasantry.

Although Rilke was born and grew up in Prague, and although he was in immediate contact with the Czech language for twenty years, he never acquired enough Czech to be able to do without an interpreter. One of his interpreters was Valerie David, niece of the Czech poet Julius Zeyer, with whom Rilke was in contact from the beginning of 1893 until the end of 1895, and thus at the time when his first volume of poetry, Leben und Lieder came out, and his second volume Larenopfer was in preparation. Valerie David, a young lady of noble birth from Rhonfeld, is, in fact, the “Vally von R.” to whom Rilke's first book is dedicated. Rilke's frequent correspondence with Valerie David gives several direct and indirect testimonies concerning Rilke's attitude to the Czech language. Among these an especially eloquent witness is to be seen in Rilke's comments on a resolution from the Town Council in Prague IX, answering in Czech, a request by Rilke, written in German, for admission to the Public Gardens on 2izka Hill.