In the Nazi search for Lebensraum the Ukraine was assigned a highly important role. Nazi leaders viewed the abundance of Ukrainian raw materials as a valuable source of supply for German industry. They considered the Ukraine's fertile soil not only as a significant food base for the Third Reich, but also as an indispensable area for future German agricultural settlement. Finally, they envisaged the Ukraine's strategic location as an excellent starting point for further German economic and political penetration into Central Asia, the Near and the Middle East.

Perhaps more than any other assembly in Soviet history, the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union held in Moscow on February 14-25, 1956, is destined to play an important role for years and decades to come. Certainly in its impact at home and abroad it has been the most sensational and most controversial of all the Moscow meetings to date.

The main reason for this is, of course, the speech delivered in a closed session during the last two days of the Congress by Nikita Khrushchev, the Party's first secretary and the country's "first among the equal" within the collective leadership succeeding the late dictator, Josef Stalin.

When The Russian Duma was called into existence, in 1906 by Tsar Nicholas II, only a small section of the Russian intelligentsia greeted the event as a fulfillment of its liberal aspirations, and as the beginning of a new era in Russia. The rest of the country was either indifferent, or fundamentally hostile to any compromise with the Crown, or else disappointed by the half-hearted nature of the reforms.

Diehard supporters of autocracy were unwilling to cooperate with any of these groups. Eleven years later, when the Duma was abolished, new, more important events claimed the attention of the scholar, and radically modified the way of life of all sections of the Russian people. As a result, the Duma was soon forgotten, and it passed on into history as a mere incident in the history of the Romanov autocracy.

To many Englishmen, and to still more young Scots, Russia in the later eighteenth century seemed a land of opportunity, comparable to America in the scope it offered for the acquisition of wealth and the free exercise of talents. Samuel Greig, a shipowner's son of Inverkeithing in Fife, became the creator (after Peter I) of the Russian Navy. John Rogerson, an Edinburgh doctor, for four decades acted as personal physician to successive rulers of Russia. Careers such as these seemed to show what could be achieved in this great partly-known country by a young man of enterprise and ability. Of the considerable number of Englishmen who sought their fortunes in Russia during this period, Samuel Bentham was in many ways not typical. There is none, however, whose movements and impressions are easier to follow, since the British Museum possesses an extensive collection of his correspondence written during the years he spent there, and addressed mainly to his father, Jeremiah Bentham, and his famous brother, the political philosopher Jeremy.

Little is known about the immediate historical background of the 1497 Sudebnik. According to Karamzin, the Sudebnik's compilation was largely the work of one Vladimir Gusev. A few months after the code was finished, a strange conspiracy came to light. This same Vladimir Gusev was arrested, along with a number of henchmen, for plotting the murder of Dmitrij, the grandson of Grand Prince Ivan III. Also implicated in the conspiracy were Ivan's own son Vasilij and his wife Sophia; the latter had reportedly been receiving visits from witches bearing mysterious potions.

Most historians consider the reign of Anna Ioannovna (1730-40) one of the saddest epochs in Russian history. It is the purpose of this article to examine the chief accusations levelled against Anna Ioannovna's government, with a view to determining to what extent they are justified.

The severe condemnation of Anna's era by two outstanding historians, Professors S. F. Platonov and V. O. Kljuchevskij, is typical for the views generally held of her reign.

Twenty years ago the League of Nations met defeat in its only serious attempt to impose economic and financial sanctions against one of its members. At that time the USSR was a strong supporter of a system of collective security against the threats of Germany and Japan, and the chief Soviet delegate at Geneva, Maxim Litvinov, took a consistent stand for stronger measures against Italy. In numerous statements he warned his colleagues that sanctions must be made to work against Italy because more serious threats to world peace were on the horizon.

A favorite method of estimating population for the Soviet Union among contemporary specialists is the method used by Theodore Shabad and Harry Schwartz, based on the reported number of election districts. Using the number of election districts reported for the 1950 elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Union, Shabad arrives at a figure of 201,300,000 for the USSR post-war territory. Most subsequent estimates of Soviet population have used that figure as a base.

Further examination of election data suggests some corrections to this method. The 1950 estimate is based on a figure of 671 districts, the normal standard for elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Union being 300,000 inhabitants per district.

The post-Stalin (or, as it is generally referred to by Soviet citizens, post–Beria) regime has already made far–reaching concessions to popular dissatisfaction with the Stalinist system of law and justice, and is preparing still further reforms. To appreciate the significance of this movement, it is necessary to understand the place held by law in the daily lives of Soviet citizens and in the running of the economy. It is a popular misconception outside of the USSR that Soviet law, and especially Soviet courts, are only window dressing to conceal the fact that the Communist Party and the secret police run the country by command and by force.The truth is that although there are certain areas of Soviet life–particularly in top-level politics–where law does not penetrate, there are hosts of problems which are resolved in the judicial process according to general standards declared in statutes and codes.

The strenuous effort to indoctrinate Komsomol and Soviet youth which has been witnessed in the past decade may be traced in origin to the months immediately preceding V-E Day. In January, 1945, a plenary session of the Komsomol Central Committee opened a discussion on the need to "assist youth in the formation of a communist world outlook, in mastery of all the riches of knowledge accumulated by mankind, to nurture youth from the earliest years in conscious and disciplined toil, to temper it physically, to work out organizational traits in youth, to develop its creative forces and abilities."

While The Impact of the Bolshevik Revolution upon international socialism has attracted considerable attention, the international impact of the revolution of March, 1917, has largely been ignored. It is the purpose of this paper to survey the effects of the March revolution upon one important segment of the Socialist International, the German, and particularly to describe the efforts of the German majority socialists to achieve a separate peace between their Government and the Provisional Government in Russia.

A unique occasion for outside observation of Soviet local administration arose when the German forces invaded the USSR in 1941. While they generally appear to have devoted little study to this aspect of the Soviet system, German military authorities did compile extensive information on administration in nine predominantly agricultural Ukrainian rajons. Analysis of these reports provides detailed statistical data on the Soviet administrative apparatus in what was probably a typical area of the Ukraine.

Though The Persian Cossack Brigade, which played such a fateful role during the revolution of 1905-1911, has attracted attention, relatively little is known of its origins and early development.

George W. Curzon devoted to the Brigade only a few of the 693 pages which make up the first volume of his monumental work on nineteenth-century Iran. Edward G. Browne, while discussing at length the role of the Brigade in the events of 1905-1909, erroneously fixed the date of its formation in 1882 and named Colonel Kozakofski (sic) as its first commander. Russian historians have done no better.

It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of Poland's bituminous coal. It is her major natural resource and the most important single item in supplying foreign exchange. Coal provides the main source of industrial energy, and is the principal raw material for her expanding chemical industries and metallurgy. Coal mining overshadows her other mining and quarrying industries, constituting roughly two-thirds of the net material product contributed by the mineral industries to the net national product. Poland ranks as the fifth largest coal producer in the world.

Cotton cultivation may have come to Turkestan before the time of Christ. There is some evidence that it was brought from Persia to the valleys of the Amu Daria and the Syr Daria with Alexander of Macedon. Chinese travelers of the seventh century noted the cotton garments of the natives, while Arabs later reported the cultivation and processing of cotton and wool, both of which were stimulated by the opportunities for exchange with the steppe nomads after contact with these peoples had been made in the ninth and tenth centuries. These same nomads, however, blocked trade relations between Turkestan and the Slavs. At the same time, Indian and Egyptian cotton monopolized the markets to the south, and the development of maritime routes forestalled the entry of Turkestan cotton into Oriental markets. Production was, therefore, limited to domestic requirements and those of immediate neighbors down to the eighteenth century when trade relations, albeit at a low level, were established with Russia on a fairly regular basis.

Many basic features of Marxist ideology have an idealistic and equalitarian content. The Soviet Union, while certainly influenced by Marxist ideology, has steered a fairly pragmatic course in its economic policies. True, when faced with alternative methods of achieving an objective, the planners are more likely to choose, all other things being equal, that method which conforms more closely to accepted ideology. Should the alternatives differ substantially in potential effectiveness in achieving the given ends, however, the more effective is likely to be chosen even if it happens to be less acceptable in terms of ideology.

The Political Bureau of the United Polish Workers’ Party (PZPR —Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza) occupies the most powerful position in contemporary Communist Poland. It represents the summit of the Party and governmental pyramids, supplying the policies which determine the direction and rate of Poland's development and includes the highest level of such decision-making as Moscow leaves to the Polish Communist Party. The internal operations of this high command have been cloaked mostly in secrecy, although a few facts came to light in connection with the Gomułka controversy. No records of its deliberations, however, are accessible.

With peace coming to the continent in 1871, Europe settled down to the practical application of the slogan "liberty, equality, and fraternity;" that is, as it was interpreted by the bourgeoisie. Gone was the despotic king, except, of course, in the more backward countries, and the privileged aristocracy had been superseded by, or merged with, the middle class, whose most energetic member, the entrepreneur, had made the discovery that the theory of individual liberty was very useful in handling the new economic conditions arising out of the industrial revolution.

In The Traditional Peasant Society which characterized rural Bulgaria until rather recently conservatism was a value of importance, which meant that the school was not prized as a means of active social change. There were few programs of immediate community betterment and the curriculum was urban-oriented, with little concern for everyday village affairs. The changes that did occur were to be from generation to generation, with sons and daughters expected to do some things differently from their parents, particularly in economic matters, but by such a gradual adoption that there would be little strain or stress in community patterns. In direct contrast to this conservatism, with its respect for older ways and its hesitation at moving quickly into untried practices, we find the Communist program of cataclysmic change. Therefore, the school becomes immediately oriented toward daily life and the current exigencies rather than preparation for a far-off tomorrow.

Among different genres of historical writing, historical biography seems to have exerted in recent years a particularly strong attraction on students of history. This attraction is easily explicable: the life of a person provides a clearly outlined chronological and topical pattern, while within it liberty still remains for the literary or psychological treatment of outstanding personal events. This latter opportunity has greatly enlarged the circle of historical biographers, bringing into it writers, whose interest and method is less historical than purely biographical. This advent of the biographers might be welcomed if it were accompanied by the recognition of the necessity to borrow from the historian his method, whenever nonbiographical problems appear in the historical biography. Still, a method is not easily borrowed, and writers skilled in other fields such as literature or journalism have sometimes erred on this score. This study has been undertaken in order to show through the analysis of an outstanding case the danger of such neglect of historical method.