The precise nature of Russian-American diplomatic relations during the War for American Independence has always presented a problem for historians. On the one hand, the Declaration of Armed Neutrality by Catherine II in February 1780 seemed to represent an effort to limit British sovereignty on the seas, and news of its promulgation was greeted with enthusiasm in the struggling American colonies. But on the other hand, the reception by the Russian empress of Francis Dana, the American envoy (1781-83) sent to St. Petersburg in the aftermath of the declaration to obtain Russian aid, was far from hospitable, and was in part responsible for the strained diplomatic relations between the two nations for several years thereafter. This contradiction, more apparent than real, prompted Frank A. Golder, one of America's first historians of Russia, to call for more research in the area of Russian-American relations.

“Our famous patriot and first leader of the new-born nation”—in these words an eminent Lusatian Serb scholar once described the awakener of his people, Jan Ernst (Arnost) Smoler (1816-84).

Historians of Russian literature would nearly all agree that the 1860s, the most radical period of nineteenth-century Russian intellectual life, witnessed a sharp decline in the esteem in which poetry was held, that it began to recover its prestige only in the 1880s, and that it did not fully regain its previous position until the birth of the symbolist movement. At no other time in the history of Russian literature did poetry and “aesthetics” come under heavier assault.

Western specialists have long recognized the importance of the private sector1 of Soviet agriculture to the economy in general and to family subsistence and income in particular. It provides a large proportion of the country's crop and vegetable output (primarily potatoes, vegetables, and fruits) and an even larger share of the products obtained from animal husbandry. In 1966, for example, the private sector produced 55,800,000 tons of potatoes or 64 percent of the USSR's total gross production of potatoes; 7,400,000 tons of vegetables or 43 percent of total production; 40 percent of its meat; 39 percent of its milk; and 66 percent of its egg production (see table). Of paramount significance is the fact that the private sector produces these quantities on only slightly more than 3 percent of the USSR's total sown land.