The phenomenon called the “First Wave” of Russian emigre literature made its appearance in the West under unique circumstances. Disoriented and defensive, this distinguished group of cultural and literary figures had to start over, straight from the throes of the October Revolution. Émigré literature never became a “movement” in the way Symbolism was. It had too much variety, too many factions, and too few consistent platforms to fit into any “ism.” But what it did share, and what, in the absence of a viable Soviet literature, gave it a certain birthright and moral authority, was the political fact of exile. Reworked and refined in a multitude of literary permutations, the theme of exile was the émigré writer's idée fixe, always hovering at the edge of consciousness. This fact needs stressing from the outset because rarely in the course of world literature has there been so vivid an example of extraliterary causality on such a scale. And since the “birth” and “death” of the First Wave coincide neatly with events outside it, namely the Revolution and World War II, perhaps something like a biological metaphor for this phenomenon would be, in terms of literary history, not merely decorative or iconographic but bizarrely realized. The fate of Russian émigré literature between the wars suggests, in almost Spenglerian terms, that something as large and diverse as a national literature can have a life and death. One aim of this study is to show how the politics that gave the First Wave life were, mutatis mutandis, the politics that led to its eventual demise. After briefly establishing a context, I will turn to the years immediately following World War II and to the case of Ivan Bunin, a writer who was known, ironically, for his fastidious avoidance of politics. My central thesis is that the postwar years were marked by controversy and that a leading figure in this controversy was Bunin.

In this article I propose to undertake a semiotic analysis of a novel by a contemporary Czech underground writer, Ludvík Vaculík's Morčata (The Guinea Pigs). A semiotic reading of the relation between the semantic and formal levels of the text is particularly rewarding because this novel combines features of several genres ranging from children's literature to the realistic novel and the surrealistic novel. This study is intended as a contribution to the analysis of the multileveled novel in general.

The Guinea Pigs is a unique modern blend reminiscent of the Latin American current of magic realism that we find in the works of Alejo Carpentier and Gabriel García Marquez. It is a highly experimental novel in which the author has reached the peak of his literary efforts thus far and includes himself in the tradition of the absurd, showing traces of dadaism and elements of surrealism and continuing the introspective existentialist line of Dostoevskii and Kafka, refreshed with a light touch of humor and an unpretentiously naive point of view reminiscent of Hašek's Good Soldier Švejk.

Over the last three years, the Polish United Workers’ Party has suffered a major crisis, the most substantial crisis of any Communist party in any Communist party state. The disintegration of the party was at least partly responsible for both the development of Solidarity in the summer of 1980 and the imposition of martial law in December 1981. The lack of trust in the party and its authoritarian and unrepresentative character led the workers to demand an institution more responsive to their own needs. But the growth of Solidarity during 1981 and the continuing disintegration and fragmentation of the party led the military to preempt the leading role of the party in 1982.

The collapse of the party in 1980 and 1981 was due to a number of factors. The party leadership had to bear the burden of the economic failures of the late 1970s and the consequent decline in the standard of living. The party itself had grown rapidly in size during that period, even though the influence of ordinary party members and local party organizations declined in the face of increasing tendencies toward centralization in the second half of the decade. This development led to problems of morale even within the party and to the growth of horizontal barriers between the membership and its leaders. The population at large was increasingly annoyed and disgusted with the failure of the party to improve the economic situation and to allow a more honest and open discussion of Poland's problems. The dissatisfaction was compounded by the widespread perception that the elite was increasingly looking after its own interests only and that benefits and privileges were accruing only to those in power.

To the Memory of Arcadius Kahan, 1920–1982

Ever since the publication of V. L. Ianin's study of the Novgorodian mayors (posadniki) in 1962, the commonplace image of republican Novgorod with its political institutions grounded in the sovereignty of the veche—the “democratic” assembly of the city's free male population—has undergone considerable change. It is now generally conceded that Novgorod was essentially a boyar oligarchy, but controversy still surrounds Ianin's contention that the veche from its inception was primarily composed of boyars and other wealthy landowners, who in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were known as the well-to-do (zhit'i liudi). Most scholars are willing to accept the view that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the veche was dominated by a boyar oligarchy, but some, including Knud Rasmussen, Henrik Birnbaum, and Jörg Leuschner, believe that the composition of the veche in the twelfth century was more complex and that Novgorodian “democracy” was more evident, at least until the late thirteenth century, when the boyars working through the Council of Lords (Sovet gospod—first recorded in 1291) usurped the “rights” of the populace. Following the work of Klaus Zernack, Leuschner believes the veche was composed of all the free males including those from the subordinate towns (prigorody) outside Novgorod. But in the last two centuries of the republic's existence, certainly following the reforms of 1416 and 1417, Novgorod changed, in Birnbaum's words, “from a quasi-democratic form of government based on the veche to a purely oligarchic rule determined exclusively by the feudal lords.“ Having admitted that representation in the veche became limited to some forty “feudal” clans, Birnbaum accepts the contention of Carsten Goehrke that Pskov, the political and legal institutions of which are thought to have approximated those of Novgorod, retained its genuinely democratic veche throughout the fifteenth century. Thus Pskov is brought to the front lines to debunk the “extreme views” of Ianin, characterized by Goehrke as increasingly dogmatic and speculative, and is now caught in the controversy surrounding Novgorod.

Historians of imperial Russia have agreed unanimously and confidently that Russia's humiliation in the Crimean War (1853–1856) led directly to the emancipation of the serfs and to wide-ranging social, economic, political, and military changes of enormous historical significance. In addition, whether liberal interpreters were waxing eloquent about a so-called “epoch of great reforms” or Marxists were emphasizing pressures of a “revolutionary situation” in a country in transition from feudalism to capitalism, the reforms of the Russian army introduced by D. A. Miliutin, war minister throughout most of Alexander II's quarter-century long reign, have been acclaimed unanimously as one of the most successful and lasting attempts at modernization in this period of considerable change. Miliutin was appointed war minister only in November 1861, however, more than six and one half years after Alexander II acceded to the imperial throne, leaving an apparent gap at a time when preparations for reform were begun in most other spheres of government and society. Indeed, the period after the Crimean War is so well known as a time of change of enormous historical significance for the future of Russia that inactivity in the military seems remarkable, especially in the aftermath of military defeat.

Although many Western scholars believe that 5 million Soviet peasants died as a result of forced collectivization, this inference is not firmly supported by official prewar census statistics. Official statistics suggest that there may have been as many as 9.2 million excess deaths between 1927 and 1939, a figure more than ample to cover hypothesized collectivization fatalities, but Frank Lorimer has argued that half of this discrepancy may be explained by a 27 percent underestimation of the mortality rate in the census of 1926. The possibility that standard Western estimates substantially exaggerate estimated collectivization fatalities therefore cannot be dismissed, even before allowance is made for victims of the famine of 1933-1934, Gulag forced labor, and the terror.

The plausibility of the hypothesis that collectivization claimed millions of lives is diminished further by Gosplan's estimate of the Soviet population in 1933, 165.7 million, a figure consistent with demographic trends of the late 1920s. Assuming that Gosplan had access to the relevant data when this estimate was made in 1937, it appears to follow that all excess deaths calculated from the census of 1939 occurred after rather than before 1933.