This article is an attempt to establish a certain number of conclusions concerning the Dioscuri which are different from previous surmises. These conclusions are: First, an individual, on horseback or on foot, shown stabbing another figure beneath need not represent the triumph of good over evil, or the vanquishing of a foe, and in a set number of cases does not represent this. Second, at least one kind of antique mystery cult did not develop from a puberty initiation ritual, but from something else. Third, much of pre-Greek, or perhaps Thracian, religion, as indicated by contemporary ethnographic survivals, may have consisted of one extended ritual which could be segmented for a number of different purposes, excluding that of puberty initiation, for which, in this context, I have found no trace. Finally, the Dioscuri were an anthropomorphized object, of an ascertain-able kind. The evidence leading to these conclusions is given below.

In the village of Mijatovci, in Hercegovina, at the site known as “Kalufi,” there was a tombstone dated to the fifteenth century on which is depicted a woman between horsemen (Figure 1). The same, or a similar, motif appears on other tombstones in neighboring graveyards (Figure 2, d, e). These horsemen have been identified with the Dioscuri. That is to say, they exhibit such striking features in common with classical monuments known to be representations of the Dioscuri that the possibility of chance coincidence is, in fact, eliminated.

Since World War II, Polish legal theory has focused principally on the sociological aspect of the law, dealing with its origin and social function. Detailed research and analytical studies have supplied information about which social groups have in the past influenced the enactment of legal norms, what their motives were, and what benefits they derived from these laws. As a result of this research the law lost its sacred character. It ceased to be thought of as something extraordinary and came to be regarded realistically as an instrument for the realization of the interests of those groups which had influenced the enactment of the law. This kind of research, however, proved to be insufficient and somewhat one-sided. Consequently, new problems are being considered, and, of these, three are receiving special attention: (1) the evaluation of positive law, (2) the relationship between legal consciousness and socialist consciousness (which might also be called Marxist consciousness), and (3) comprehensive legal research. All of these problems have practical implications for us which, I trust, justify a brief discussion of them here. Inasmuch as these problems are still being investigated and discussed, I will confine myself to mere presentation of them and mention of the efforts that have been made toward their solution.

In general histories of Russian social and philosophical thought we usually find a gap between 1790 (publication of Radishchev's Journey) and 1815 (the establishment of the first secret societies by the future Decembrists). This quarter of a century could boast neither a prominent personality nor a cause cèlèbre of government persecution. True enough, there was Karamzin and his Zapiska o drevnei i novoi Rossii (Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia); but the tract remained long unknown, and its author is usually dismissed as a lone figure whose impact on the development of the ideologies that were to matter was, at best, peripheral. General histories of literature treat this period primarily in terms of the philological debate between Karamzin and Shishkov and as prologue to Romanticism. Thus, in the one case, the period is described exclusively in terms of Russia's literary history, which is not very satisfactory to the student of social and political ideas; for literature—even as engagé a literature as was Russia's in the nineteenth century—is hardly an adequate source or form of ideology. In the other case, Radishchev must perforce be viewed as an isolated figure, a maverick, without either followers or immediate influence. Furthermore, the obvious implication is that there were no direct links between the Decembrists and eighteenth-century Russian ideas, so that the young rebels of 1825 must have been influenced exclusively by their experiences with the life and thought of Western Europe.

On the strength of the testimony of all contemporaries, however, the first decade of the nineteenth century was a period of great intellectual ferment, of exhilarating optimism about Russia's prospects for “modernization” (to use a fashionable term). Compared with the last years of Catherine II and with the reign of Paul, these decades also offered greater freedom, more opportunities for the expression of ideas and hopes. Could indeed the outrage and disillusionment at Alexander's so-called reactionary stance after 1815 be understood if it were not for the fact that his reign had opened on such a strong note of optimism and vitality?

The Apostasy of Lev Aleksandrovich Tikhomirov, one of the few surviving giants of the Executive Committee of Narodnaia volia, was among the most severe disasters which the Russian revolutionary movement sustained in the decade following the assassination of Alexander II. In the summer of 1888 Tikhomirov, the coeditor of Narodnaia volia's Geneva journal, published a pamphlet entitled Pochemu ia perestal byt' revoliutsionerom (Why I Ceased to Be a Revolutionary), and early the following year he returned to Russia, having received a full pardon from the tsar.

In the words of Nikolai Apollonovich Charushin, a friend and colleague since the old days of the Chaikovskii circle, Tikhomirov's recantation produced the effect of an “exploding bomb” in both the official Russian and the émigré press. According to the liberal historian Bogucharskii, rumors were rife around Moscow that Pobedonostsev had made Tikhomirov's return conditional on his retiring to a monastery to atone for his sins. The Moskovskie vedomosti, of which Tikhomirov was subsequently to become editor, greeted the prodigal son with joy. Referring to Why I Ceased to Be a Revolutionary, a Vedomosti writer noted that “here we find the frank confession of a man who took an important part in the criminal sedition of the last fifteen years, whose conscience has finally been awakened, and whose sanity has been restored, in place of that madness with which his comrades strive toward their absurd, impossible goals.”

The purpose of this paper is to fill in some of the gaps in the history of the Polish Communist movement in the interval between the dissolution of the old and the formation of the new Communist party. English-language sources in particular devote little space to the period or contain serious factual errors. Consequendy, there is a need to put the record straight by presenting new evidence which has been appearing in Polish sources since the spring of 1956, when the prewar Polish party was officially rehabilitated. Obviously, not all the evidence is in as yet, and some of it may never be made available. Nevertheless, the new sources represent a significant step forward and throw light on some hitherto obscure segments of the history of Polish communism.

None of the many riddles in the reign of Tsar Alexander I is so intriguing as that of the position of the heir apparent, the Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich. His secret renunciation of his right to the throne cast doubt on Nicholas I's succession and contributed to the opportunity of the Decembrist conspirators. Moreover, as commander of the armed forces in Poland he was the chief figure in its government. The uprising of November 1830 signified the failure of Alexander's Polish plans, but it was also a personal tragedy for Constantine, who had so thoroughly identified himself with the new kingdom. His role in history was important; by his own choice it had not become much greater, but neither his contemporaries nor historians have agreed as to his qualifications to rule an empire.

Accounts differ even as to his capacity to manage the Polish army, or indeed to govern himself. A British historian in the nineteenth century described him as “a savage prince whose conduct and character made him more like a brute than a man.” This opinion was an extreme version of a common view of Constantine in the last century; the attitude is reflected by some writers of our own age, although few have gone so far as one modern author who pictured the Tsesarevich as “that insane hyena.” Polish writers, to further their justification of the 1830 revolt, assigned much of the discontent in that country to Constantine's “despotic” conduct, but even Russian and other historians have agreed that his explosive temperament and dislike for the Polish Constitution contributed to the uprising.

“We are Argonauts of peace.” Under this self-description a delegation of Russian socialists sailed to western Europe in the summer of 1917 to rally popular support for a great conference of world socialism to meet at Stockholm for the purpose of reuniting the International and ending the war. Of all the peace flurries of the war none other roused such hopes and fears as the “Stockholm Conference.” Its proposal caused sharp crises in the governments and in the socialist parties of all the belligerent powers. That it never met contributed mightily to the outcome of the Russian Revolution and the Bolsheviks' coming to power.

The Stockholm Conference was the child of the Russian Revolution. There had been several abortive efforts during the war to reconvene the International, and now the Russian Revolution encouraged some neutral socialists to form a Dutch-Scandinavian Committee to make another effort. It met with a rebuff from the socialist parties of the belligerent powers. The intervention of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies, however, drastically changed the situation. The Soviet took its first, tentative step into international affairs with the issuance on March 14/27 of a general appeal to the peoples of all countries to unite for peace. Soviet backing for an international socialist conference took more concrete form when the “Siberian Zimmerwaldists,” led by Irakli Tsereteli, returned to Petrograd in late March and asserted their control over the Soviet.

During the Eastern Crisis of 1876-78, and the years preceding the victory of W. E. Gladstone and the British Liberal party in the Midlothian general election in April 1880, the renowned Slavophile and Croatian patriot Josip Juraj Strossmayer, Roman Catholic bishop of Diakovo, attempted with some success directly and indirectly to enlist Gladstone's support for South Slav nationalist aspirations. Bishop Strossmayer was an ardent advocate of the liberation of the South Slavs from Austrian, Magyar, and Turkish rule, a vocal partisan of South Slav unity, and, at times, a thorn in the side of the Vatican. As the long-time bishop of a large diocese which embraced Slavonia and parts of Bosnia and Serbia, he labored for over fifty years to advance the national traditions and culture of the South Slavs and to promote an awareness among the South Slavs of their common ethnic and cultural origins. Strossmayer achieved notoriety and won the close friendship of Lord Acton and Dr. Johann von Dollinger by his opposition to the Dogma of Papal Infallibility in the Vatican Council of 1869-70 and attracted the attention of Gladstone and many Anglican clerics by his efforts to effect the reconciliation and reunion of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. He was also interested in promoting the union of the Western and Eastern churches as a device to remove the religious rivalry which hindered the unification of the South Slavs and persevered in his endeavors to facilitate spiritual unity among the Balkan Slavs, even though these efforts alienated many of the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic clergy.

The collection of Zemstvo Publications (Kollektsiia zemskikh izdanii) in Leningrad is undoubtedly the most important source of materials for the study of the zemstvo institutions which existed in Russia from 1864 to 1917. Because the work of these institutions touched every phase of Russian society, the collection is valuable for countless other topics as well. Containing approximately 100,000 volumes, it was formed in the 1950s from the library of the former Free Economic Society. It is little publicized and has not been utilized, even by Soviet scholars, to the degree it deserves. As of June 1966 the collection had been used, according to the staff, by only two American scholars, although access to it is granted to almost any scholar who has a card for the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library, of which it is a branch.

The collection is one of the fonds which make up the Fondy Vol'nogo Ekonomicheskogo Obshchestva (Fonds of the Free Economic Society), which are housed in a room of the Fontanka Embankment Library at 36 Fontanka Embankment, Leningrad, approximately three blocks from the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library. In the same building are the main library's newspaper collection and newspaper reading room and various other reading rooms for graduate and undergraduate students.