This paper examines the character and significance of embezzlement in the woollen industry of the West of England in the years from c. 1750 to 1840 in the light of the recent debate which sees the period as witnessing major developments in the eradication of perquisites and in the formulation of the wage. It examines the dimensions of embezzlement, its correlation with economic fluctuations and its importance for the economy of both the clothier and the embezzling worker. It shows that tighter legislative sanctions failed to check the illicit trade in embezzled wool, which by the early nineteenth century constituted a well-organised black market, and it considers the effect of this trade in “slinge” upon economic and social relations in the industry.

This article explores how Russian revolutionaries, in particular the Russian Marxists, used the image of Jesus to explain their political choices and commitments. These revolutionaries were almost uniformly hostile to institutional Christianity. Yet a number of Russian Marxists, such as Anatolii Lunacharskii, considered Jesus a genuine precursor of socialism. In 1917 many Bolsheviks and Bolshevik sympathizers interpreted the October Revolution in Christian terms, principally as a spiritual resurrection and rebirth. And in 1924, following Lenin's death, some Bolsheviks analogized Lenin to Jesus, and claimed that both were revolutionary martyrs. Finally, the article argues that Russian revolutionaries invested the Russian lower classes with a Christlike virtue, making it easier for the revolutionaries, once in power, to justify everything they did as advancing the interests of these classes.

The following survey regards the upper nobility, urban patricians and the clergy of medieval Bohemia as the more privileged, and groups such as the gentry, peasants and urban poor and women as the disadvantaged. There were exceptions within each group. The ethical and moral ideals of Hussite leaders addressed social and economic inequalities and gave hope that a society with greater benefits for the disadvantaged was possible. People from all groups participated in the revolution which in the end however did not produce the hoped for community. Economically, socially and politically Hussite society was not that different from the rest of Europe. Nevertheless, ideas such as religious toleration, popular sovereignty, the dignity of the common man and woman and the destructive powers of greed and violence all raised by the Hussites have survived within European civilization.