I am concerned in this paper with investigating the complex relationship of Maksim Gor'kii with the literature of his day, including the so-called realists, but particularly with the decadents, the symbolists, and other writers generally thought of as alien to Russian realism, whether critical or socialist. The stereotype of Gor'kii still dominant in some quarters presents him as walled off from “decadent” and “bourgeois” literary styles and from the carriers of such “contamination.” But Gor'kii was much more complex and more interesting than we have supposed, and he functioned during much of his career as part of a literary world in which “symbolism,” rather loosely denned, was the dominant literary tendency. I would like to adduce evidence of the effect on his writing of symbolist and other modern influences and of his close relationship, at the same time, to the popular culture of the day.

In the decade between the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, many of the Russian radical intelligentsia believed that Dostoevskii had anticipated their moral dilemmas. Critics, such as D. S. Merezhkovskii, argued that the experience of that turbulent period confirmed Dostoevskii's discovery about the nature of moral choice: Namely, there existed no single system of beliefs, no coherent ethical code, that could resolve all problems of ends and means and that this was so because, on some of the most fundamental issues of moral choice, the promptings of reason and feeling could not be reconciled. To be internally consistent, any ethical systems (and the religious and political creeds that embodied them) must therefore ignore or deny some of the moral imperatives rooted in man's nature. No system of belief, however compelling, could thus confer immunity from guilt, doubt, or self-contempt.

The year 1929 was a watershed in the long history of the St. Petersburg Imperial, later Russian, and, finally, Soviet Academy of Sciences. In that year the leadership of the academy, its membership, and personnel were drastically and irreversibly changed. Even during the first postrevolutionary decade the academy retained semi-autonomy in its traditional capacity as a local scholarly body. The modern Soviet Academy of Sciences, however, is known to be a huge bureaucratic “empire of knowledge.” It is rigidly controlled by the party apparatus and regarded as an important instrument for the realization of the scientific, technological, and ideological policy dictated by the Soviet leadership and the general political interests of the Soviet ruling class. Undoubtedly, the historical transformation of the academy passed through many stages, but the process itself originated in 1929.

Speaking recently about the impact of Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost’ on Russian culture, the exiled Russian scientist Zhores Medvedev expressed skepticism about the artistic benefits of the reforms, comparing them unfavorably to those ushered in by Khrushchev's liberalization: “Whereas Khrushchev's thaw brought many new names and new talents into literature, no new talents have emerged in the past two years.“' Medvedev's statement suggests that he has not been reading Soviet literary journals assiduously. Otherwise he would have noticed the emergence of at least one remarkably talented newcomer on the literary scene—Tat'iana Tolstaia, the most gifted young woman writing fiction in Russia today and arguably the most noteworthy prosaist of the young generation at large.

From the 1950s to the 1970s the views of sex roles in general and of childbearing in particular that were held by women in the United States changed considerably. Some evidence also indicates modest changes in ideas about sex roles occurred in the Soviet Union over these decades, but there is less reason to expect that similar changes took place in attitudes specifically towards childbearing. This article explores areas of stability and change between these two decades in Soviet women's emotional responses to pregnancy, childbirth, and newborn care and their sources of advice and support during the transition to motherhood. Similarities and differences between two cohorts, one composed of women who gave birth in the 1950s and one composed of women who gave birth in the 1970s, are discussed in terms of the prevailing family ideologies and social and economic conditions of the two decades.